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At f/4 this lens is sharp, but the Jupiter-9 85mm it is sharper still already when opened at two more stops (at f/2). That being said, I find the Jupiter better for b/w work (smoother tonalities), while I like the 90 M-Rokkor much more for its colors. It is extremely compact, and together with the 28/2.8 and the 40/2 M-Rokkor it takes the same space of a tube of chocolates Understory, Sila mountains, Italy (vignetting added in post) Beach house walls, Cetraro, Italy "Tasso" forest ("Beaver" forest) under the snow Winter sea at Lampetia cape, Cetraro, Italy

This lens has been dubbed, I don't remember by what famous photographer, the "water lens" for the way it treats the out-of-focus areas. It is quite sharp straight on from f/2 (but there are sharper lenses out here at that aperture) and becomes really really sharp stopping down. At least on my sample there is a super-correction of the borders at f/4: this means that the center is less sharp than at f/2, but the borders are sharper than at f/8 and almost as sharp at f/11. This lens is the twin of the Leica Summicron-C 40/2; what changes is the exterior of the lens, that in the Leica version sports a 39mm not-standard threading filter ring, while the Minolta uses 40.5mm filters. Also, rumors have that the Minolta version is multi-coated, while the Leica version is not. I don't know if that's true, but like you can see I've had no trouble even shooting straight into the light. "Tasso" forest ("Beaver" forest), Italy "Fossiata" forest, Italy

One of my all time favorite lenses. From tests I've seen online sharper than the 2nd version Leica Elmarit M. It's sharp, but it will not be the sharpness per-se that will win you over. There is something, at least to my eyes, in the way this lens treats the tonal values of an image and the out of focus areas (no, I'm not talking about bokeh, more about the areas that are not "exactly" in focus) that I find extremely captivating. I have serious trouble leaving this one out of my bag. Luckily it is so small that I can tuck it in every small remaining space! Many of them suffers from what, in large format circles in reference to another brand, is called "Schneideritis". Basically the glass will looks full of tiny bubbles (even though these should not be bubbles in the glass, but according to many just spot of antireflective paint coming off the "walls" of the lens). This is my second one and it is clean; my first one, on the other hand, was affected pretty heavily by Schneideritis. Even so, the only thing I noticed with it was a certain propensity to flare more easily, but it was sharp as ever, in fact in my opinion probably ever so slightly sharper than the clean sample I have now. Acquappesa marina in the winter, Italy Storm clouds out of my kitchen window