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Full resolution of film!

snusmumriken said:
Oh come on, where’s your empathy gone?
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Yeah, you're right. Sorry about that. I'm being grumpy, I guess.
Like you said, it's a rabbit hole, and yes, I've found myself in that one more often than I care for. I guess that's where the grumpiness comes from. It never amounted to much of anything, and I just want to warn anyone against going there, if photography is on their mind. Photographic technique is also fun, of course, and if that's the purpose of it all, then by all means indulge.
 

It’s OK, evidently we’re on the same page really!
 
When I was using digital cameras I cared about resolution and fine detail. Not sure why, but having switched to film I lost interest in this completely. Could just be coincidence though, as I've gotten older and hopefully wiser. Moreover, as I am looking at contemporary professional photographers who use digital cameras, I have grown to dislike the excessive and artificial crispness of those images.

There's also the cost of high resolving lenses: not only $$ but their weight. The laws of physics demand you to carry grams (or kilograms) of glass to get those fine hairs on a model's neck. Some of my Sigma Art of Zeiss Milvus lenses are just ridiculous compared to something tiny like Voigtlander Nokton f/1.4 35mm Mk2.
 

Seconded on all of that. It's one of the nicest side-effects of my film experience. Nowadays, the only lenses that "aren't good enough" are ones whose resolution decreases from center to edge badly enough to be visible in an 8x10 and does so in an uninteresting way. In my digital days I hated the term 'character lens' because it just seemed like a way to paper over obvious flaws, but on film it has real meaning. Though I still wouldn't bother using my Contax 50/1.5 on a digital camera!
 

I love shooting film even without the Leica APO Summicron…!
 

My film camera is a Nikon F2 and will not attach a Leica APO Summicron via adapter to it…!
 

My film camera is a Nikon F2 and will not attach a Leica APO Summicron via adapter to it…!
 
You're no better than you're weakest link, whether that be your lens or fllm itself, or your mode of outputting it in print,
including the enlarging lens itself, whether the film is perfectly flat or not, etc etc etc etc. Likewise with scanning. I happen to do optical printing using top-end apochromatic process lenses which, under a high quality grain focus device, show every tiny grain grain distinctly, even in Ektar, and then make the visible in the print itself under a magnifying loupe, if the printing medium itself is equal to the task (most papers are not, and certainly not inkjet).

But this kind of topic can easily lead to a lot of mumbo-jumbo obsession with secondary variables. They do all add up,
cumulatively, into something either better or worse. It can get downright silly, however, when people are willing to spend absurd amounts of money for a marginally better 35mm lens, while they'd experience for more improvement simply scaling up to even garden-variety medium format options.

Then those who resort to adapted microfilms assuming they'll get more out of those, pay the penalty of tonality loss, more micro-blemishes themselves, etc. If you enjoy that, fine. But again, if you want more detail, it makes more sense just to scale up your format and choose an easier film to work with.
 
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I take umbrage to that…!
 

Correct…!
 

Good advice..,!
 

Dito…!
 
Heck. Even on my own Nikon, my old 55/2/8 Micro is going to be hard to upstage at twenty times the cost. Yeah, for pro filmmakers using 35mm digi equip, there might be certain advantages using uber-expensive overtly heavy 35mm lenses. But for stills? More of an ownership obsession - bragging rights, or a temptation to thieves. Doubt you'll see much difference if any in a print, much less over the web.
 
Surprising? You only used the very centre of that lens, and probably at an aperture you wouldn't use much for large format.
 
I'm old enough to remember when the resolving ability of my most commonly used 35mm black and white films - Plus-X and Tri-X - was a (somewhat) limiting factor.
But only when I wanted to make a big print.
If I was using Kodachrome 64, the slides projected really nicely, on reasonably large screens, without any heroic efforts.
That involved mostly hand-held photographs, and fairly standard (Olympus Zuiko or even a Reomar) lenses.
I wasn't making technical photographs, with a need to record fine detail in order to be able to record scientific measurements.
I was making pictures, and it is a rare picture indeed where extremely fine resolution matters much.
 
grain elevator said:
Surprising? You only used the very centre of that lens, and probably at an aperture you wouldn't use much for large format.
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Yes, with the shorter lens like the 135mm I had to use a smaller image circle than I wanted to test because the geometry of the camera restricts the angle of view. However after hearing many remarks about how much better smaller format lenses are I was not expecting the f/5.6 and f/8 results to be so close, even in the center. Stopped down both lenses will be limited by diffraction on that sensor and on film. I think the primary resolution difference is you can shoot smaller formats at wider apertures rather than the quality of the lenses. That was the surprising part to me.
 
If you are testing lenses you will need an optical test bench to see which is the best. Photographing a piece of film is never going to give you the ultimate image. It simply isn't flat enough. It also should be in a draft free, temperature controlled room that is proof to external vibration.

There has been so much had wringing and resorting to proverbial worry beads concerning whether a lens that cost a fortune is actually the sharpest there is. Stop worrying and go out and take pictures that is what photography is all about, not testing lenses and film to see which is the best. I would rather watch wet concrete harden
 
BrianShaw said:
Fortunately you were not aghast; that's nearly impossible to take back!!!.
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You can only take back umbrage with film.
Film is very forgiving...!
 
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With my Leica MD 262, Zeiss 50mm f/2 Planar and a 2K Mac Pro, the photos are shown at 11”x16” and the renditions are lifelike and amazing.
With the low 2K resolution of the Mac Pro the images don’t have that excessive artificial crispness associated with digital…!
 
All my lenses are made in Japan. No German APO EGO in my kit…!
 
Nikon 2 said:
Is it true in order to get the full resolution of the highest grain film, one must have a lens capable of allowing this? So maybe a Leica 50mm f/2 APO ASPH should be the type of lens needed to get all the resolution from film…!
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What do you mean by highest grain film - least or most grainy?

I bought a a bagful of Pentax as my first vintage SLR acquisition off local CL listing for super cheap. As you can tell from the packaging - plastic grocery bags, the seller wasn't asking much as he didn't know if any of it worked. For $25 I took that chance and as it turned out everything worked perfectly fine.

Bagful of Pentax 1 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Bagful of Pentax 2 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Bagful of Pentax 3 by Les DMess, on Flickr

Having been using some Canon EOS L lens, I began to notice that one of those cheap used lenses - the SMC Pentax-M 50mm F4 macro, was providing some very sharp results. So I figure I would test it out to see just how good it is by setting up a resolution test using using Kodak Techpan @ ISO25 developed with Kodak Tehnidol at all apertures and scanned using DSLRs 14.6MP K20D, 36MP D800 and my Coolscan 4000dpi as well as optical magnification.

Target at bottom left and 100% crops from the DSLRs and Coolscan above it.

Resolution testing my SMC Pentax-M 50mm F4 macro lens by Les DMess, on Flickr

As you can see from the large optical magnification crop on the right, clearly this cheaply acquired manual focus lens can capture far more detail onto this film then can be resolved by the methods I used for scanning. Maybe a 10,000dpi Heidelberg Tango drum scanner can achieve all the detail?

There's no doubt in my mind a brand new red dot lens may actually be able to provide more detail onto that piece of film, but all the manual focus lenses I've acquired for cheap, have yet to be a disappointment.
 
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