@oldCarlos: It's not the question of "how much" coating you use - at least in this case less does not equal better. The coating is applied to suppress reflection from the glass-surface. As this is mostly specific to a wave-length (or color) of the light most manufacturers apply multiple coating for different optimized for different wave-length/colors. More on this topic can be found in this
article.
@pierovera: I think the absolute t-stop is hard to obtain. But you might experience differences in transmission between two lenses by photographing a constantly lit surface with the same exposure value (i.e. combination of aperture and shutter-speed) and measure the differences in brightness between them.
This is best been done at max open aperture and measured from a small crop in the middle of the lens. Why that?
- open aperture: because differences in the aperture-closing mechanism can lead to observed differences that have nothing to do with transmission of a lens but with the precision of the aperture-lever mechanism (see my latest experience with the
Tamron 24-70/2.8 VC).
- middle crop: because different light-fall-off in the corners of
each lens might influence the brightness of the image much more than differences in transmission.
@lagnificent: Yeah right, I forgot: Canon lenses s*ck and Nikon lenses rule
@all: I personally wouldn't bother about transmission differences that are around or below 1/3 EV, honestly!
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