Full resolution of film!
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Sorry, finest grain film...!
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.
OP
OP
Two rolls of Kodak Ektar 100 costs more than all that equipment…!
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You exceed the resolution of film with a Minox. It’s worth trying because Minox pushes the limits.
For 35mm, with any lens, you lose resolution as soon as you take the camera off the tripod. May as well shoot Tri-X if you are going to handhold.
Basically any good lens is good enough, the very expensive lenses make beautiful negatives but so do the normal lenses you get with your cameras.
For 35mm, with any lens, you lose resolution as soon as you take the camera off the tripod. May as well shoot Tri-X if you are going to handhold.
Basically any good lens is good enough, the very expensive lenses make beautiful negatives but so do the normal lenses you get with your cameras.
OP
OP
You seem to have a more positive than negative twist on lenses and their affect on negatives…!
Me too, I agree entirely. I firmly believe that if your lenses are of reasonable quality it's much more important that what you point the lens at has some meaning than the absolute optical quality of the lens .
Same. I have yet to admire a photo for its sharpness or resolution. It doesn't even enter my list of esthetic criteria.
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OP
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If only…
My Nikkor Ai-s lenses are still in learning mode.
My Nikkor Ai-s lenses are still in learning mode.
That's the new AI lens, isn't?
pentaxuser
Well, "lens", in the sense that no optics let alone film need to be involved - just a couple of keywords!
OP
OP
That's the new AI lens, isn't?
pentaxuser
Don’t mess with AI-s…!
* resolution of the reproduction chain (enlarger/lens/paper or computer/display)
That's a bad assumption. I own plenty of older Nikkor lenses (AI and AI-S) and they are perfectly capable of delivering to the limits of the film when exposed properly and processed properly.
If you handhold at f/1.4 at a 1/30 sec you will not get optimal sharpness. If you tripod mount, mirror lockup, and process the film for maximal sharpness you will get stunning results even with these lenses.
Ctein wrote extensively on this. The number of line pairs per millimeter (lpm) required for perceived sharpness depends on print size and viewing distance. So sharpness/resolution is not some perfect number, it depends on the film, the lens, the reproduction chain, and the viewing distance.
For example, that's why the resolving power for lenses used on larger format can be less than for 35mm - these larger negatives require less magnification.
As someone already pointed out upthread, it's rare that anyone is shooting with enough care to fully exploit the ability of the lens.
Perhaps worth mentioning that there’s a lot more to a good lens than just resolution.
True but didn't Canon many years ago invent a lens that achieved focus via detecting the movement of the user's eye so I wonder how big a step it is to envisage something in a camera that "learns" from the user's compilation and "decisive moment" mistakes and within a short time produces better pics that the user could ever have done with his own brain
If it has produced a better pic that your brain can and in doing so, learns what you wanted to do, could not the then added attraction for you be that you are very happy because you actually but mistakenly think that it is you who has improved
I can see a day not very far away when we are no longer concerned about whether a scanned picture is an accurate replica of the "real" picture but instead question if it was the taker's brain or the AI that made the picture
Can we rely on Drew who by then may be a centenarian or more to insist that the taker of the superb pic demonstrates proof that it his own work by submitting the same pic on a Pentax Spotmatic
Apologies, Drew, if you are not the oldest and most experienced amongst us in order to undertake this new form of an " human authenticity moderator"
I use the words you and your(s) in the impersonal sense of the word where no person is named
pentaxuser
MattKing
Moderator
It isn't the lens that does that in the Canon equipped bodies, but rather the camera body.
It works very well - for me - but the story was that it didn't work for everybody, so it was a retailer's nightmare!
OP
OP
Good to know...!
Same with film.
OP
OP
How can you be sure that those vintage Nikkors are actually capable of resolving the limits of resolution of film...?
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Very true.
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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.
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.
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To follow up on Drew's comment. In the 70s a company called HC Control, sold respooled Kodak microfiche film with special low contest developer. In theory it should have 800 LPM. Most lens of that time did not resolve 800 LPM, if shooting with a Leitz or a Kern Swiss maybe. But it could not out resolve the same scene taken with a 6X9 or 4X5 and not even in the same universe as a 8X10 or larger negative using Plus X. For detail size matters.
I was replying about 'resolution' within the context of published lens tests from Modern Photography and Popular Photography magazines (tests using Panatomic X) and by digital era lens test such as DP Review ...what would be captured by film (or sensor), using test instrumentation.
Of course, Ctein was also correct, in the different context of what is delivered to the eyes of the viewer looking at a print or projected image. Yet, given the tendency for folks to walk up and stick their noses a few inches from even a gigantic print, one has to realize that the assumption of viewing distance vs. size of print is often ignored with ridiculously close viewing distances.
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