Can you pick the one taken by a lens that is considered the sharpest there is vs the one that isn't considered the best in IQ?
3rd one thrown in just to make it more challenging. Only lens correction in LR has been done. No special lab techinques done either just a quck snap shot. This is just the way it is done in real world use.
@ebiggs1 wrote:"You don’t have consistent focus."
These were snap shots just they way most people use their cameras. The distances with each is similar, not exact but reasonably close. This is not a lab experiment.
Ok but... that completely invalidates the whole point of a comparison.
If you were to say "I'm goint to take the same shot, the same settings, the same focus point, and the ONLY difference will be which lens I selected" then we'd know that any difference we see... must be due to the lens you chose and ONLY due to the lens you chose.
But when you focus on different spots... AND the lens changes between shots... we are no longer sure if the difference in focus has to do with the chosen lens... or the chosen focus point... or maybe a combination of both.
And since we can't safely draw a conclusion... it sort of defeats the whole point of doing a comparison.
I DO realize at this point you probably think I am picking at nits. But it's because doing these types of comparisons at all is also sort of picking at nits. I'm a scientific-minded person. To my way of thinking ... if you're going to do a test at all... then do it accurately (otherwise what's the point?)
There's SO much more to a lens than how "sharply" it focuses. Roger Cicala of LensRentals had a blog article where he picked at the term "sharpness" because it's not really "a" thing... it's a combination of things that combine to a result. He also points out that sometimes a flaw creates a beautiful effect (a lens that scores more poorly can create a photo that is more beautiful).
Some lenses have a more pronounced out-of-focus meridonal blur... so the out of focus areas sort of seem to be swirling around the center (but only because it's out of focus ... in focus areas are still in focus). You might be tempted to think of it as a bit of a flaw... except it can actually look appealing.
And there are more factors... barrel distortion, focus breating, chromatic abberation, focus speed performance, image stabilization performance, and the list goes on.
You have to be careful with expressions like "snap shots just the way most people use their cameras" because I suspect "most people" are using their phones and only the fussy people (like us) are using DSLR camers with expensive lenses. 
I generally stay away from the "My ___ is better than your ___" debates. Most modern equipment is pretty good (as long you don't happen to have a defective copy). Often times those are subjective opnions or related to suitablility for a particular purpose that might not be valid for a different purpose. What really matters is that the equipment is working for your purposes. But when you really try to pin something down to a nit... "the focus motors in this lens respond faster than the focus motors in that lens".. now you've entered into area that can be compared based on an objective measurement and is no longer subjective. But of course those objective measurements are only valid if you perform the experiement in way that isolates the variables. It wouldn't be fair to test one lens' focus motor speed on a stationary subject... while testing the other lens on a moving subject. Everything must be the same.
Guys I actully can't tell either by just looking at them. I purposely deleted the exif data so no one else would either. However, I did write it down on a post-it note.
A is the Sigma 35mm f/1.4 DG HSM Art Lens for Canon.
B is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM Lens.
C is the Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM Lens set to 35mm.
Each had lens correction done in LR upon import. Nothing else except to make the photos more or less the same AOV. Just a silly little exercise to try to show we just may make more out of the lens spec sheet than what it actually is. Working in the industry that I did, I had the chance to try and use a lot of camera gear at little cost to me. Since I retired from Hallmark I have explored this fascinating hobby of lens collecting. Playing with and using and passing them along. The bottom line I have learned now after 15 years of retirement is lab spec sheets do not tell the whole story.
It's all fun, ain't it?
