Are lenses that are considered good for digital also good for film?

[George Mann]

Two trolls accusing me of trolling. Brilliant.

 

[Dan Fromm]

Will someone please explain what this pointless wrangle about LF lenses and the existence, or not, of active ultra large format photographers has to do with the question of whether, in general, recently designed lenses intended for use with digital sensors are safe to use with film?

 

[Sal Santamaura]

Will someone please explain what this pointless wrangle about LF lenses and the existence, or not, of active ultra large format photographers has to do with the question of whether, in general, recently designed lenses intended for use with digital sensors are safe to use with film?

Sure, Dan. Easy peasy. When trolls troll, and others take the bait, resulting wrangles have nothing to do with the thread topic. They're simply the thing that sustains trolls.

Would that more made effective use of the ignore function.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

They do exist....now.

Essentially, with a DSLR you are still limited by having to provide geometric correction that looks good enough in the viewfinder not to be too offensive.

With newer camera's where all viewing is through a EVF that shows a image that has already been corrected this goes completely out of the window.

For example on the L Mount platform, the 24-105mm zoom has such strong and complex distortion at the wide end that i couldn't ever imagine disabling correction.

That said, unless you explicitly disable it you would never know as it's corrected throughout the whole pipeline of viewfinder -> on camera preview -> editing -> output.

Also, in my personal testing the 24-105 f/4 is sharper then my Summicron-R 50 at f/4 so i suppose the engineers know what they are doing

This sort of distortion is typical of tele-wide zooms, particularly if they have a constant aperture, where there is a tradeoff between curvilinear distortion and curvature of field, and usually there’s a certain amount of distortion one accepts to keep the corners sharp. Maybe since it’s now digitally correctable, the zoom range is increasing. So in the 1980s, the better zooms of this type were 35-105mm f:3.5 or 4.0. Since then, the range has gone wider at the wide end.

So I guess the question would be—Is a new 24-105 constant aperture zoom much worse uncorrected than one from 25 years ago? In other words, are lens designers allowing more distortion than they would have in the film era, because you can build in digital correction, or is it just that they’re applying the correction to lenses that are at least as good as lenses from 25 years ago? Of course that would mean that the digital images would be more corrected than the film images, but it wouldn’t necessarily mean that lenses designed for digital are necessarily worse (for film) than lenses designed for film.

 

[locutus]

I'd say that the Panasonic 24-105 uncorrected is so badly distorted as to be unusable in any scene that includes a horizon even for un-critical use, worse then a 1980's zoom.

I think they are probably doing this so that the designers have more freedom to correct other aberrations that are not fixable in software.

That said, given that throughout the whole image pipeline this is never visible to the end user i have 0 problem with this, especially given the performance otherwise of the system-as-a-whole.

 

[George Mann]

Will someone please explain what this pointless wrangle about LF lenses and the existence, or not, of active ultra large format photographers has to do with the question of whether, in general, recently designed lenses intended for use with digital sensors are safe to use with film?

Didn't you read the thread? It began with the premise that digital cameras are starting to exceed the resolution of lenses (specifically 35mm lenses).

I countered with the greater resolution, information (what have you) of large format, and pointed out the fact that large format lenses have less resolution than good 35mm primes.

A perfectly valid argument that in no way equates to trolling.

 

[film_man]

That said, given that throughout the whole image pipeline this is never visible to the end user i have 0 problem with this, especially given the performance otherwise of the system-as-a-whole.

And that exactly is what pedantic trolls seem to miss. They like to talk about theoretical applications of non existent things but at the end of the day to make a photo you have to consider the lens, the camera, the medium to record it (film, digital, whatever), the medium to display it (paper, screen, slide) the cost of all that plus the ever so important ability to carry said lens/camera combo effectively to the photographing location and the practicalities imposed through the entire photography process, from capture to display.

 

[blockend]

That said, given that throughout the whole image pipeline this is never visible to the end user i have 0 problem with this

Phone lenses have shown us that the final image bears little relation to our emotional expectation of the optics. A lens the size of a raindrop delivers what many brass and glass behemoths failed to provide.

 

[E. von Hoegh]

a modern plasmat (aka planar) is inferior ?
to what?
and in what way exactly?

A Plasmat is not a Planar. Plasmat is a development of the Dagor; the Planar is a double Gauss - just like the Summicron, and most other fast 50s for 35mm.

 

[BradS]

A Plasmat is not a Planar. Plasmat is a development of the Dagor; the Planar is a double Gauss - just like the Summicron, and most other fast 50s for 35mm.

Thanks...you're kinda late to the party though.

EDIT: and the distinction is very much irrelevant to the question I was asking.

 

[flavio81]

and pointed out the fact that large format lenses have less resolution than good 35mm primes.

Are you sure this is a fact? I reacll a very good thread on the internet on Robert Monaghan's website where this claim was discussed and then disproven.

 

[George Mann]

Are you sure this is a fact? I reacll a very good thread on the internet on Robert Monaghan's website where this claim was discussed and then disproven.

How can we ever be sure of anything beyond what our own experience tells us?

 

[flavio81]

How can we ever be sure of anything beyond what our own experience tells us?

Is this a philosophical question?

 

[markjwyatt]

How can we ever be sure of anything beyond what our own experience tells us?

What is "is"?

 

[George Mann]

Is this a philosophical question?

It surely comes into play.

 

[138S]

Show me a large format lens that will out-resolve a good 35mm prime.

George, LF lenses are very good, 35mm lenses are only slightly better in practice, once you expose the film other degradation factors are dominant. Optically, compare those graphs:

Nikon 50mm 1.4G:


APO Sironar-S 150mm


The 50mm blue line hits 50% MTF in the center for 30lp/mm wide open

The (also normal 4x5 focal) 150mm hits 80% MTF at 20lp/mm 2 clicks closed.

This comparisson gives an advantage to the LF lens, but's not totally fair because the 50mm 1.4G is wide open...

Anyway results may surprise many... Please read this: https://www.kenrockwell.com/schneider/150.htm

I was thinking he was joking until I tested my convertible 150 with CMS 20, if I find the scan I'll post it... crazy...

In general what is sharp is the photograper, not the gear...

Of course, in theory, 35mm and MF lenses should be lp/mm sharper than LF, but YMMV a lot !!!

 

[blockend]

Is this a philosophical question?

I long ago determined that any popular lens that wasn't broken or damaged, met my quality expectations. There are plastic optics whose aberrations are sufficient to exclude potentially important detail, and likewise there are lenses that will resolve a few more lines per millimetre - at a price. On the whole however, any decent quality lens occupies a set of expectations within its design and photographic format. Or put a different way, the subject - and to a lesser though important extent it's processing and printing - are more important than the exact rendering of a lens.

Of course there are people whose entire output relies on the Petzval look, or people so dedicated to Cooke triplets that any other design falls short. None of those aspects are about the essentially descriptive nature of the photographic image to create a visceral response in the viewer.

 

[Huss]

I have a Sigma Art lens which is great for digi so i wonder how this would work on film.

It seems that I was the only one that answered the question. Seeing that is what I use.

And it was ignored...

 

[George Mann]

It seems that I was the only one that answered the question. Seeing that is what I use.

And it was ignored...

Not by me. I just don't like the rendition of most modern lenses.

 

[George Mann]

SNIP

Sorry. But the results of a wide open lense does not equated to it's optimal performance potential.

 

[blockend]

Sorry. But the results of a wide open lense does not equated to it's optimal performance potential.

That's less true of some digital formats, where peak performance is wide open or within one stop of it. Micro four thirds is into diffraction territory by f5.6, and f4 gives front to back sharpness which is wide open for many zoom lenses.

 

[markjwyatt]

I long ago determined that any popular lens that wasn't broken or damaged, met my quality expectations. There are plastic optics whose aberrations are sufficient to exclude potentially important detail, and likewise there are lenses that will resolve a few more lines per millimetre - at a price. On the whole however, any decent quality lens occupies a set of expectations within its design and photographic format. Or put a different way, the subject - and to a lesser though important extent it's processing and printing - are more important than the exact rendering of a lens...

To some degree that may be true, but some lenses have a nice "look", while others create a fair image but are neutral (and that is ok for many shots). Even if you do not care about "bokeh", some lenses have disturbing or otherwise lousy bokeh, and that can distract from a photograph.

 

[David A. Goldfarb]

Two modern 35mm lenses that I like for their classic look are the Zeiss 35mm f:2.0 Distagon and the 85mm f:1.4 Planar. I’ve used them mainly for digital video and for still subjects that require the quick turnaround time of digital, but they look great on film as well. I don’t think any small format lens will have the look of a classic large format lens used on its intended format, but if one likes the classic large format look, there are small format lenses old and new that have an affinity for that look for when small format is more practical.

 

[blockend]

To some degree that may be true, but some lenses have a nice "look", while others create a fair image but are neutral (and that is ok for many shots). Even if you do not care about "bokeh", some lenses have disturbing or otherwise lousy bokeh, and that can distract of a photograph.

We have our preferences for sure. I've done a few editorial portraits recently, and use a couple of vintage lenses on digital which render nicely, whereas others do not. They are f2 and look better than my f1.4 alternatives. Except for portraits, the bokeh obsession is lost on me. Extreme subject isolation for its own sake is not something I'm interested in. At f5.6 and f8 most lenses look pretty similar, and that's where I mostly shoot.

 

[George Mann]

That's less true of some digital formats, where peak performance is wide open or within one stop of it. Micro four thirds is into diffraction territory by f5.6, and f4 gives front to back sharpness which is wide open for many zoom lenses.

Exceptions noted.