X-e1 user looking to buy new lenses.. sample photos i took at the shop. Need help

[zammboss]

Hello all. So.. I have had my x-e1 with kit lens (18-55) for several years now. Only ever got the kit lens that came with it. I think the camera was too advanced for me at the time when I bought it and never really dove too deep into quality of my pictures. I would just snap away in auto mode and use the photos right out of the camera, not even post processing them.

 

Come a few years later and i've learned more and more about (and have a pretty decent knowledge about all the aspects of a photo) and even started post processing in LR. Still learning but know a heck lot more than i did before. So now before i upgrade my camera, i wanted to upgrade my lens game. Have done a ton of research on what glass i'd like and the first ones out would be a 16mm f1.4, 23mm f2, and the 56mm f1.2. Will be doing mostly: street, landscape, and portrait. I just want these images to be as sharp as possible.

 

Before spending the money on these I wanted to take some sample shots with my camera and those lenses to see if it would be even worth putting on the x-e1. My local shop was kind enough to let me try them in the store and so I did. I took a quick few shots and wanted to see on my computer how sharp these images would be. 

 

This is where i need some help. I have linked the raw files of the images in this post. I don't know if i'm crazy or these are how the images should look with the camera combo I have. I really don't find them as sharp as I thought they would be... Would anyone be able to tell me if that is the quality i will be getting with the x-e1 or if put onto something like the x-h1 (which i am wanting as my next upgrade) they would look even sharper. Or was it that my settings for the photos were just completely off? Found to be a lot of noise in some of them. I know the ISO was high in a few of them but I had kept that at Auto so i don't know. 

 

I know that some of the apertures that i took in the pictures were not ideal as you should "never" shoot at the highest and lowest apertures of the lens, unless ideal situation, but I guess i wasn't paying that much attention while I was snapping the pics as I didn't want to take much of the salesman time. 

 

Any feedback would greatly help in leading me in the right direction of if I should invest in the lenses and see a big improvement once I upgrade my camera, or if this is really how the images will always look. Thanks!

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/saaino9yd76tanr/lens test.zip?dl=0

[milandro]

no the pictures won’t “ look” any sharper that the monitor that you are visualizing the images with (I doubt that you own a monitor with a resolution so high that you can see the difference ) you will be just able to print bigger.

 

As for “ looks”: uploading raw images is not the best way to judge sharpness because you can’t see a raw image, what you see is the embedded low res jepeg in a raw picture generated by the visualization software or raw converter.

 

THat’s why they are not as sharp as you” thought” they would be, because they aren’t and can’t be.

Edited June 27, 2018 by milandro