Full resolution of film!

DREW WILEY · Aug 30, 2023

Not necessarily. My big compositions are designed to reward a viewer both from a distance and very close up. And in fact, it allows them to discover new things in the details and composition over the years, rewarding repeated viewings. That's just the opposite of advertising photography, which is based on one big "Gotcha" of the attention; and then afterwards, who cares.

Pop Photo was certainly not a scientific journal. Ctein I personally know. Pan X is extinct anyway; and even its results would have all been developer variable. Lens manufacturing and its quality control have changed. Lots of things. A lens which is exceptionally good for a certain variety of digital receptor might not be all that great with film, or visa versa.

faberryman · Aug 30, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Not necessarily. My big compositions are designed to reward a viewer both from a distance and very close up. And in fact, it allows them to discover new things in the details and composition over the years, rewarding repeated viewings.

What size are your “big compositions”?

BrianShaw · Aug 30, 2023

Forget repeated viewings… I’d like to see one just once.

Nikon 2 · Aug 30, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Al kinds of tangled jargon. Finer grained films do not necessarily have better resolution or edge effect. All this is affected by the degree of contrast in the developed film as well as printing paper; and it depends where along the tonal scale, and how long that scale actually is. That in turn can be lens related. But just looking a MTF specs doesn't tell the whole story. But go ahead and go insane trying to quantify all this. I don't use 35mm for high detail work anyway, which is equivalent to hunting a rhino with a BB gun.

Otherwise, I totally ignore all that "normal viewing distance" nonsense. That makes sense when you are reading a book, or driving past a thirty foot wide billboard at 70mph along the highway, when the normal viewing distance of the Marlboro Man commercial is a quarter mile away. But if you have serious detail in a print, people will get nose-up to it, reading glasses n'all.

Sure, I've got a few lovely 35mm prints on my own walls. And they are themselves relatively small. That's not any rule I intend to impose on others, but it sure works for me. For big prints, I prefer a much bigger film formats to begin with. And in fact, I often prefer a less critically sharp lens, and grainier film, when shooting 35mm, helpful to a more poetic effect.
I certainly know what tripods are; I routinely use heavy wooden Ries ones. But 35mm is an excellent tool for casual handheld snapshooting, and I don't worry about trying to convince a chihuahua it's a timber wolf instead.

Do very low ISO films, 25 or Fuji 50 need a better lens to show its resolution...?

chuckroast · Aug 30, 2023

Nikon 2 said:
Good to know...!

Here is a print scan from a negative shot hand held with a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 - hence the lack of DOF and perfect sharpness. It still manages to look pretty sharp to my eye....

DREW WILEY · Aug 30, 2023

All depends. For example, Velvia 50 resolution depends on where you mean on its repro scale. We ole Cibchrome printers skated on about a 3 stop range of it. But nowadays you've got scanners and digital manipulators who claim they can get way more juice out of the lesson by taking advantage of what lays deeper down in its density. One of he problems in that case, is that the graininess is bigger down in that pit, and the color balance is also skewed. Better to leave it alone and keep it black.

Few lenses can even resolve certain subtleties of Velvia hues anyway; and that is an independent question from lens resolution ability. But in the present day, all such distinctions might be lost to the relatively poor gamut qualities of inkjet reproduction anyway. But the reason I'm even mentioning this is that a lens regarded as superior in one respect, might be less superior in another manner.

For example, certain of the Zeiss-branded (Cosina) Nikon lenses took into account a certain look which might improve what we consider ideal color, yet at the expense of ideal resolution. With other lenses, even from the same company, it might be the opposite. They naturally try to cross-market these to both film and digital users, but you can't always ideally favor both. I'm mainly a large format shooter, and Nikon made the special M series of LF lenses for sake of higher color accuracy, using less air-glass interfaces, yet at the same time, that reduced certain other favorable characteristics like optimal image circle size.

There simply is no one shoe fits all answer. But it gets downright silly when I see people lugging around a $3000 lens on the latest 35mm digital camera, all for sake of nothing more than sharing their shots on the web! It wouldn't make any difference if they had spent 90% less.

chuckroast · Aug 30, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
Not necessarily. My big compositions are designed to reward a viewer both from a distance and very close up. And in fact, it allows them to discover new things in the details and composition over the years, rewarding repeated viewings. That's just the opposite of advertising photography, which is based on one big "Gotcha" of the attention; and then afterwards, who cares.

Pop Photo was certainly not a scientific journal. Ctein I personally know. Pan X is extinct anyway; and even its results would have all been developer variable. Lens manufacturing and its quality control have changed. Lots of things. A lens which is exceptionally good for a certain variety of digital receptor might not be all that great with film, or visa versa.

That's all well and good, but the topic at hand is whether lens X can fully exploit the resolving power of film Y. I would suggest it doesn't really matter except, perhaps, for scientific photography.

The human response to the final image is affected by way more than just absolute resolution. Obviously perspective, composition and light management matter. But things like viewing distance do factor in, the loss of fidelity in the the reproduction chain matters, the macro and local contrast matters, the light under which the artifact is displayed matter, and probably the frame of mind of the viewer matters.

When one wants the absolutely best tonal range and perceived sharpness, the single biggest variable that matters is square inches of negative. An 8x10 lens likely doesn't have the resolving power of an SLR lens, but an 8x10 contact print will blow away the very best 35mm material for sheer tonality, sharpness, and detail. It's always fun to show some Leica hipster what a $200 Mamiya TLR can deliver at 8x10-ish sized prints side by side with output from their 35mm camera.

bluechromis · Aug 30, 2023

koraks said:
I'm still waiting for that lens that will point itself at something meaningful and compose the frame in a complementary way.

Until that arrives, I try not to worry about sharpness too much, and focus more on trying to compensate the deficiencies of the optics as alluded to above as well as I can.

This is off-topic, but I was just thinking about this situation. Makers of digital cameras face tough competition from phones. In the early days, each upgrade in digital cams was quite significant. Now cameras have much higher resolution, dynamic range and other features, so photographers are less motivated to rush out and buy the latest model. I am not saying the shift to mirrorless was only a marketing ploy, but it does represent a new wrinkle that might nudge some people to buy new gear. Once the shift to mirrorless taps out, what could be the next new thing manufacturers could offer to entice sales? As with most everything else, it seems likely to entail a massive use of AI. I am not sure what form this could take, but it may be features that promise to help the photographer identify and compose images that are meaningful (or seem to be). Perhaps this will require a system of more than a camera. Perhaps there will be glasses with a heads-up display. The software could use the camera to scan for scenes that match the photographer's tastes. How does it know the photographer's tastes? Machine learning. The camera could guide the photographer in composing the scene.

koraks said:
I'm still waiting for that lens that will point itself at something meaningful and compose the frame in a complementary way.

Until that arrives, I try not to worry about sharpness too much, and focus more on trying to compensate the deficiencies of the optics as alluded to above as well as I can.

to cameras that "will point

DREW WILEY · Aug 30, 2023

8X10 gets a bum rap for several reasons, including lack of consistent film plane. The film can sag in the holders. But for critical use, I use dead flat adhesive holders. And then there are stereotypes about the lenses, Well, I have Apo Nikkor process lenses long enough for 8X10 usage, which are made to way more stringent standards than ordinary taking lenses, and will deliver higher resolution per focal length than even Nikon 35mm lenses. So there goes another myth. But they're overkill for regular usage. So let's just imagine a typical 8x10 lens has only half the MTF as a typical 35mm lens. But then 8X10 film has nearly 60 times the surface capture area of 3mm !!! Godzilla stomps Bambi every time.

Therefore, all other things being equal in terms of quality of enlargement, to equal the detail I get out of 8X10 film and put into a 30 X 40 inch print, you could only allow up to a 4X6 inch print from 35mm. So it's not just contact prints versus enlargements from smaller film. But there are all kinds of logistical distinctions, including depth of field management, so this really is an apples versus oranges comparison. I just wanted to de-mythologize it a bit.

But all too often, I read things phrased in terms of the worst of possible large format gear and sloppy habits pitted against the best of the best when it comes to 35mm. That was certainly the case back when Kodak introduced Tech Pan film to the public with the highly misleading ad, "4x5 Quality From 35mm Film".

Anyway, I don't know which Nikon 85/1.4 you use. My very favorite 35mm lens is the classic Nikon 85/1.4 A1s, one of their best ever. Yeah, now there are expensive Otus and Milvus whatevers, heavy and hard to handhold. If I set up a tripod, it's going to be for sake of a far more serious image than even those are capable of bagging. At equivalent perspective, a 240 Fuji A lens and 4x5 film will outright skunk what any 35mm lens can do. That's easy to do even with garden-variety medium format gear.

Steven Lee · Aug 30, 2023

chuckroast said:
That's all well and good, but the topic at hand is whether lens X can fully exploit the resolving power of film Y. I would suggest it doesn't really matter except, perhaps, for scientific photography.

Actually it doesn't even work this way. The combined resolution of an imaging system is not simply the resolution of its weakest link, but the product of all components (optical and materials). And since nothing is perfect, no lens can ever fully exploit the resolving power of any film, including Delta 3200

BrianShaw · Aug 30, 2023

The end?

bluechromis · Aug 30, 2023

chuckroast said:
Here is a print scan from a negative shot hand held with a Nikkor 85mm f/1.4 - hence the lack of DOF and perfect sharpness. It still manages to look pretty sharp to my eye....

You have hit on a crucial factor: how it, "looks ... to my eye." The original question was about achieving the full resolution of the film. We can discuss this in technical terms about what can be objectively measured and leave it at that. But for most photographers, what they ultimately care about is how the image is experienced by the viewer. This opens up an entirely different can of worms about the human perceptual system. If perceived sharpness is a goal, there are a number of things the mind uses to gauge sharpness, including contrast. These factors may not exactly align with objective measures of resolution like MTF charts. In comparison, the importance of psychoacoustics is well understood in audio recordings. Compressed audio formats rely upon the characteristics of human hearing processes. It is known that human perception is VERY context-sensitive. How a color is perceived depends on what other colors are nearby. This is true of sharpness as well. How sharp one area of the photo is, is influenced by how much sharper it is than other areas of the photo. For example, the in-focus area of Chuckroast's photo will appear sharper than it otherwise would because part of the scene is out of focus.

Nikon 2 · Aug 30, 2023

BrianShaw said:
The end?

You mean resolved...?

DREW WILEY · Aug 30, 2023

Or extinction, once we figure out how artificial intelligence, or artificial stupidity, factors into all of this. But bluechromis did hit upon a very important relevant factor, which is the psychological /physiological connotations. I would even extend that to certain native laws of color vision and color theory. That's all beyond this thread. But at least it's not silly far out like talking about the hypotheticals of how insects, aliens, and robots might perceive detail. There is such a thing as color contrast and not only grayscale contrast which affects how we perceive detail and resolution, or in film terms, acutance. There's a lot conventional instrumentation leaves out. But that doesn't mean its forgotten by optical engineers and lens designers, even in microscope applications.

MultiFormat Shooter · Aug 30, 2023

Nikon 2 said:
You mean resolved...?

I think @BrianShaw may have meant that this thread has long since run its course, and needs to be locked.

chuckroast · Aug 30, 2023

DREW WILEY said:
8X10 gets a bum rap for several reasons, including lack of consistent film plane. The film can sag in the holders. But for critical use, I use dead flat adhesive holders. And then there are stereotypes about the lenses, Well, I have Apo Nikkor process lenses long enough for 8X10 usage, which are made to way more stringent standards than ordinary taking lenses, and will deliver higher resolution per focal length than even Nikon 35mm lenses. So there goes another myth. But they're overkill for regular usage. So let's just imagine a typical 8x10 lens has only half the MTF as a typical 35mm lens. But then 8X10 film has nearly 60 times the surface capture area of 3mm !!! Godzilla stomps Bambi every time.

Therefore, all other things being equal in terms of quality of enlargement, to equal the detail I get out of 8X10 film and put into a 30 X 40 inch print, you could only allow up to a 4X6 inch print from 35mm. So it's not just contact prints versus enlargements from smaller film. But there are all kinds of logistical distinctions, including depth of field management, so this really is an apples versus oranges comparison. I just wanted to de-mythologize it a bit.

But all too often, I read things phrased in terms of the worst of possible large format gear and sloppy habits pitted against the best of the best when it comes to 35mm. That was certainly the case back when Kodak introduced Tech Pan film to the public with the highly misleading ad, "4x5 Quality From 35mm Film".

Anyway, I don't know which Nikon 85/1.4 you use. My very favorite 35mm lens is the classic Nikon 85/1.4 A1s, one of their best ever. Yeah, now there are expensive Otus and Milvus whatevers, heavy and hard to handhold. If I set up a tripod, it's going to be for sake of a far more serious image than even those are capable of bagging. At equivalent perspective, a 240 Fuji A lens and 4x5 film will outright skunk what any 35mm lens can do. That's easy to do even with garden-variety medium format gear.

That was shot with an 85mm f/1.4 Ai-S that I bought a while back in sort of minty condition. The old Nikon manual Ai and Ai-S primes still show up well against modern AF plastic lenses. More to the point, I can use them on my film bodies and the one Nikon digisnapper in my stable. More recently, I got a 35mm f/1.4 that, stopped down, is razor sharp as well - at least when the film is properly processed.

But as good as they are, they pale by comparison to the results I get on 2x3 with a 101mm f/4.5 Ektar or pretty much any lens I own in my 4x5 stable.

DREW WILEY · Aug 30, 2023

I have a trio of Nikkor M lenses that I use for 6x9 roll film backs : 100, 200, and 300. Or I can select from my Fuji A's. All of them are superb, and all will amply cover 4x5 too except the 100. They exceed the performance of my dedicated MF lenses, even my superb P67 300 EDIF.

The best tele photographer, technique-wise, I have ever known would use Apo Nikkor 4-element process lenses on a big heavy 8x10 Toyo View camera, and then attach smaller cameras at the rear film plane : film and digital Nikon bodies, or P67 bodies. He was also a dealer who specialized in Celestron telescopes, long Nikon lenses, and P67 gear. Nothing was optically superior to those f/9 Apo Nikkor barrel lenses. I use them mainly for enlarging. But long distance work is highly contingent on the weather and atmosphere. I'm waiting for an early snowstorm passing through the high country and clearing the air up, and briefly taming the convection heat waves.

Patrick Robert James · Aug 30, 2023

One of these is a scan of a print and one of these is a scan of a neg at 4000 dpi on my Nikon. All the theory stuff is crap. Use your eyeballs and decide.

This is the original image. You are looking at the area of the nose of the fish.

Nikon 2 · Aug 30, 2023

Do the new Nikkor lenses help resolve the limits of film better than the vintage lenses...?

Nikon 2 · Aug 30, 2023

MultiFormat Shooter said:
I think @BrianShaw may have meant that this thread has long since run its course, and needs to be locked.

Did we come to any resolution...?

Nikon 2 · Aug 30, 2023

The more time we spend on this forum, the less time we spend shooting film...!

Paul Howell · Aug 30, 2023

I would need to look at the charts, but my guess that as film improved from say Kodak Plus X at around 125 LPM (?) to Tmax 200 at 200 LPM the later version of Nikon lens, manual and AF were likely tweaked for improved resolution. Adding to modern designs, multicoating, better and flare control will also improve acutance. , The most improvement would seen in zooms, the new ED version are much better than the 60 and 70s versions. There are likely Nikon guys with hard data. Still I think most modern lens high end lens, Nikon ED, Canon L , Leitiz, Minolta G, Pentax, LE Sigam Arts in the wide to short tele range will resolve Tmax 200. The better lens will have less distortion wide open and stopped down to F16 to 22.

MultiFormat Shooter · Aug 30, 2023

Nikon 2 said:
Did we come to any resolution...?

I see what you did there. But, I suspect the answer is, and always will be, "No!" Hence the need give this thread a "mercy" lock, and be done with it.

BrianShaw · Aug 30, 2023

It was quite clever!

But all locking this thread would do is encourage another similar thread to be started…

Nikon 2 · Aug 31, 2023

Paul Howell said:
I would need to look at the charts, but my guess that as film improved from say Kodak Plus X at around 125 LPM (?) to Tmax 200 at 200 LPM the later version of Nikon lens, manual and AF were likely tweaked for improved resolution. Adding to modern designs, multicoating, better and flare control will also improve acutance. , The most improvement would seen in zooms, the new ED version are much better than the 60 and 70s versions. There are likely Nikon guys with hard data. Still I think most modern lens high end lens, Nikon ED, Canon L , Leitiz, Minolta G, Pentax, LE Sigam Arts in the wide to short tele range will resolve Tmax 200. The better lens will have less distortion wide open and stopped down to F16 to 22.

I was under the same impression that the newer lenses from Nikon and the others would outperform the vintage lenses in that way…!

Full resolution of film!

DREW WILEY

faberryman

BrianShaw

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Full resolution of film!

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