Sharpness ("Chart Test")

As mentioned earlier, lenses optimized for subject isolation and background blur at wide open apertures are higher appreciated for smooth bokeh then for delivering crispy details of landscapes at the borders or edges. That said - meanwhile you can get both in one lens! Which of these lenses can also be taken into a studio e.g. for perfectly sharp fashion shoots or for landscape work where you expect them to deliver tons of details and high contrast across the whole frame? The following "chart test" series might give you an idea how the lenses perform in those situations. This was the setup:

The distance to the wall was about 1.8m (approx. 6 ft.), the shots were taken from a tripod and triggered with self timer. With a mirror I made sure that the camera was pointing perpendicular to the wall. The test target was a news paper, this is an example (Sigma at F8.0):

The targets were focused manually with 14.4x magnification in the center as well as in the upper left edge. To give you an impression of the field curvature produced by the lens, the following charts also contain crops taken at F1.4 (F1.8 for the FE Sonnar 1.8/55) with focus on edge. For each aperture setting, one crop from the center, one from about half way between center and edge ("midframe") and one from the upper left edge are shown.

Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 DG HSM:

Leica Summilux-M 1.4/50 ASPH:

Zeiss FE Sonnar T* 1.8/55:

Zeiss Otus Apo Distagon T* 1.4/55:

You can find a collection of albums (one album for each lens series) here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hh-tests/collections/72157639334640424/