When the aperture is open contrast is good, and delineation is soft. The sharpness with the focal plane is excellent, with no optical flare. There are no obvious flares or ghosts at all, and in particular the defocused background image is superb. Even under these conditions there was no double-line effect, and the tonal gradation of the background remains excellent. Example 3 was taken under the worst possible conditions, with the sunlight shining into the lens, but even so image quality deterioration due to flare is minimal.
Tonal rendition is excellent, and background blurring beautiful.
There is a softness within the sharp focal plane, with delicate renditions. The result clearly shows the aberration correction characteristics, and the excellence of the coating. I would like to briefly run over the performance at various f-stops. I might add that there is very little vignetting , and that optical characteristics are quite uniform across the entire image. I think this would be ideal for outdoor snapshots and scenery.