Hee hee hee. I remember that thread... 
Lens contrast: how much does it really matter?
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Well, here's my experience with the coating issues. In the mid 70's a friend and fellow photographer, was given his grandfathers mint condition Leica DS M3 with a 50mm f2 collapsible Summicron. I was using a Nikkormat Ft2 with the new multi-coated Nikkor 50mm f2. We decided to see what the differences were between the lenses by loading some Plus-X into our cameras, and shoot the same pictures using a stationary tripod. We really didn't know much about lens design or anything, we were just curious. Though I think the Nikkor was a 6 element design, I'm not sure about the Summicron, but I'm sure someone will know. The results (film dev together and printed 8x10 with the same enlarger) showed some differences on some pics, and none on others. Shooting into the sun or bright scenes showed less contrast with the Summicron, and better contrast with the Nikkor. No lens hoods or filters were used. Including the sun in the frame made these differences more severe. Otherwise, most pics looked the same, with the Summicron showing a little more contrast in a couple of pics. (just the nature of the lens?) So I guess that multi-coating can make a difference in some shots, while not in others. Might be interesting to see the difference between the non-multi-coated Nikkor and the multi-coated one now, though I imagine the differences would probably be about the same.
Just because a lens is coated, does not mean you can get away without a proper lenshood.
Your experience is just what I would expect, comparing a 1950s single coated lens to a new multicoated lens.
Your experience is just what I would expect, comparing a 1950s single coated lens to a new multicoated lens.
Lets put it in clear way.
MTF test is the small tip of the iceberg , there is thousand times more problem under it.
MTF test being done with the help of Optical Transfer Function. Think you have a Nakamichi amp and sending its input cable different sinus waves. Every amp make these different sinus waves at a different height at the end.
Optical transfer function OTF describes this phenomenon with the help of two variables.
First MTF , You all saw this graph and phase variable.
You can put MTF with single graph but you can not put phase variable less than 60 graphs. These are aberrations or the bump and the valleys of the distortion on the image.
If you are interested , you will start to not look to mtf graph when buying the lens but the companies photographers portfolio spread to the past and you will start to see the real thing.
Every company have a tradition to put these 60 errors in a combination to create their visual brand.
You can make two same MTF graph lens and they can be extremelly different .
Thats why if you want same character photographs like Ansel Adams , you have to own his lens. Otherwise you end up at another place.
Umut
MTF test is the small tip of the iceberg , there is thousand times more problem under it.
MTF test being done with the help of Optical Transfer Function. Think you have a Nakamichi amp and sending its input cable different sinus waves. Every amp make these different sinus waves at a different height at the end.
Optical transfer function OTF describes this phenomenon with the help of two variables.
First MTF , You all saw this graph and phase variable.
You can put MTF with single graph but you can not put phase variable less than 60 graphs. These are aberrations or the bump and the valleys of the distortion on the image.
If you are interested , you will start to not look to mtf graph when buying the lens but the companies photographers portfolio spread to the past and you will start to see the real thing.
Every company have a tradition to put these 60 errors in a combination to create their visual brand.
You can make two same MTF graph lens and they can be extremelly different .
Thats why if you want same character photographs like Ansel Adams , you have to own his lens. Otherwise you end up at another place.
Umut
Thank you.
Comparisons of a Leitz Summicron lens to a Nikkor adds yet another can of worms because the design criteria are so different and it's not down to the coatings. Leitz design for tonality and very high definition, Nikon design for a snappier more contrasty image that on a first glance appears sharper.
Back in the early 1990's I shot some colour images at a friends wedding, whan he saw the results he said oh you've bought a new camer these are superb, he was amazed when I told him it was an early 50's M3 and Summicron. It's subtleties that make the difference, sometimes they are less detectable.
Ian
Correct. I go a lot further, with multicoated (doublesided) filters, as required and a lens hood. I am not averse to spending $1,000 on a single filter. I don't take shortcuts.
Too many people put a $5.00 bottle end filter on a $4,000 lens and think all will be well and good. The truth is that a poor quality filter compromises the optical integrity of the lens, resulting in flare, loss of contrast and in the worst of cases, loss of clarity. Part of the problem is that cheap filters are promoted by dealers at POS, at the time of sale. They ought to be convincing the person on the other side of the counter that he/she is paying a lot of money for a lot of lens for a good reason: that of technical refinement that is far, far removed from the emotive, nostalgic "high quality" lenses of 30 to 50 years ago, and that the filter must be equal to the quality of the lens, but in no way compromise it. But in this digital, fast-sell age, it seems making the sale is more important than building quality on quality when accessorising, filters particularly.
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I owned 80s Summicron on Leicaflex and it was faraway colorful than Summitar and Elmar. It was good as all other Leitz glass under dim light or subdued light but when you take street shots , flat colors were exploding. And plastic colors were looking like fluorescent. But whatever the condition , skin colors were amazing. I think canadians have other Color MTF preference. Extremelly sharp and whatever you shoot , there is something calls you inside of composition , a window , marble wall etc. I always prefer Sum class lens to El class lens. I studied Leica since when I was 14 years old and reading Amateur Photographer and Photo Technic. Digital ruined everything.
I'll take this thread back a level or two.
When I began photography my first SLR's a Zenit E follewed by A Practikamat (the first SLR with TTL metering it beat the Spotmatic into production) the lenses were coated, no issues with contrast. I had no problems either with Meyer & Sloigor optics/
It was only when I went up market and bought Sigma and later Hoya lenses that I experiences lens flare and they were Multicoated. That meant I made sure subsequent lenses were well coated and flare resistant. At the same time I was using coated Schneider LF lens for work again no problems but as I bought newer lenses I only bought multicoated except for my Leica M£ & Summicron.
Years (as in 3 decades) later I acquired my fisrt uncoated lens (a 135mm Tessar) and was pleasantly surprised by the quality but it did lack the micro contrasts I was used to, subsequently I bought a pair of T coated 50's 150mm Tessar cells of this or the LF forum and began using them instead that made all the difference.
What I'm saying is you have to get to know your own lenses, I used an early uncoated Triotar on a Rolleicord for portraits and it gave wonderful results on colour films but it was never the best Zeiss lens.
There's so many variables and I've a 1913 165mm f6.3 Tessar that will out perform some Tessar & type designs made many decades later and are coated. Many older lenses with poor contrast have isssues, the difference in final images between a good un-coated lens and a coated or MC lens is discernible if comparing images shot alongside each other but not necessarily obvious otherwise, and the difference between a good coated lens and an MC lens is even harder to spot.
The bottom line is uncoated lenses are old, if the glass is mint or in good condition you stand a chance of getting great images, but they age differently, sme may be hazy, others scratched, and the design it self may help enormously.
Ian
When I began photography my first SLR's a Zenit E follewed by A Practikamat (the first SLR with TTL metering it beat the Spotmatic into production) the lenses were coated, no issues with contrast. I had no problems either with Meyer & Sloigor optics/
It was only when I went up market and bought Sigma and later Hoya lenses that I experiences lens flare and they were Multicoated. That meant I made sure subsequent lenses were well coated and flare resistant. At the same time I was using coated Schneider LF lens for work again no problems but as I bought newer lenses I only bought multicoated except for my Leica M£ & Summicron.
Years (as in 3 decades) later I acquired my fisrt uncoated lens (a 135mm Tessar) and was pleasantly surprised by the quality but it did lack the micro contrasts I was used to, subsequently I bought a pair of T coated 50's 150mm Tessar cells of this or the LF forum and began using them instead that made all the difference.
What I'm saying is you have to get to know your own lenses, I used an early uncoated Triotar on a Rolleicord for portraits and it gave wonderful results on colour films but it was never the best Zeiss lens.
There's so many variables and I've a 1913 165mm f6.3 Tessar that will out perform some Tessar & type designs made many decades later and are coated. Many older lenses with poor contrast have isssues, the difference in final images between a good un-coated lens and a coated or MC lens is discernible if comparing images shot alongside each other but not necessarily obvious otherwise, and the difference between a good coated lens and an MC lens is even harder to spot.
The bottom line is uncoated lenses are old, if the glass is mint or in good condition you stand a chance of getting great images, but they age differently, sme may be hazy, others scratched, and the design it self may help enormously.
Ian
Ian,
You are defining everything with contrast. Do you put this on to the table with MTF or Phase ? If we give wrong impression to the people , this goes wrong way. Phase contribution to the image is faraway greater , MTF is the one of the two variable at OTF. Real important one is the phase variable. If you use the highest possible MTF graphed , sharp lens , if the phase sucks , your image turn to an alien , like Japanese lenses. You can design a ultra high contrast lens - like my Fuji - but with a coma or vignetting , these are basic aberrations , it goes down.
MIT presented a research to input an image , extract its high frequency details , nonlinear analysis and than put the function work on an other image. This is some explanation.
Your novar must have a problem , Triotar is the real gentleman , never distracts the eye , lots of line detail and tones are legendary.
How we can define a legendary term , I am looking for a optics test lab at china and order few lens to be tested for phase.
Other interest area is to simulate the aberrations one by one and as a combinations derived from these tests on images and learn what is Leica and Zeiss were doing and how .
I think I will send the first lens after Christmas.
You are defining everything with contrast. Do you put this on to the table with MTF or Phase ? If we give wrong impression to the people , this goes wrong way. Phase contribution to the image is faraway greater , MTF is the one of the two variable at OTF. Real important one is the phase variable. If you use the highest possible MTF graphed , sharp lens , if the phase sucks , your image turn to an alien , like Japanese lenses. You can design a ultra high contrast lens - like my Fuji - but with a coma or vignetting , these are basic aberrations , it goes down.
MIT presented a research to input an image , extract its high frequency details , nonlinear analysis and than put the function work on an other image. This is some explanation.
Your novar must have a problem , Triotar is the real gentleman , never distracts the eye , lots of line detail and tones are legendary.
How we can define a legendary term , I am looking for a optics test lab at china and order few lens to be tested for phase.
Other interest area is to simulate the aberrations one by one and as a combinations derived from these tests on images and learn what is Leica and Zeiss were doing and how .
I think I will send the first lens after Christmas.
With chromes you cannot control black point. With prints you can. Besides, the overall contrast of a chrome is higher than that of a print, so differences show more. When printing the black point can be rendered as desired by the printer and up to a certain extent the "overall contrast" of a "low-contrast lens" can be recovered. For "overall contrast" I mean the absolute difference between black point and white point. The "low-contrast lens", at that point, will show an image with a deep black but not much detail in the shadows. The "high-contrast lens" will have the same black point, but more details in the shadow.
With slides, the low-contrast lens will not reach the level of "blackness of the blacks" of the other lens. That will immediately appear as a "less lively" image to the eye when the two are compared. Colours will appear less saturated. In my experience perception of colour saturation is well dependent from overall contrast. The distance between black and white point determines how "lively" an image is.
As said, the soft-contrast lens (or at least the non-coated lens) will probably also lack some acutance, or "micro-contrast", which is perceived as "sharpness".
The simple, real-life test mentioned in this thread could be made, perhaps, by taking pictures with the same camera, same light conditions, same exposure, different lenses and slide film, and then measuring the difference between higher density and lower density points, which gives the "overall contrast".
It is fun to know why something works but regardless of the numbers, tables, and the like; if a lens produces nice work in practical situations, that's all that really matters to me.
I just wanted to say: regarding this Summicron and Nikkor test, that I did have a lens hood for my Nikkor lens, but my friend did not have one for the Leica lens. So we felt it only fair to shoot the pics without the Nikon hood. I've always used lens hoods for my lenses, as it really does make a difference in the pics most of the time. I also try to use metal screw on hoods, as they have the added bonus of protecting the front of the lens from impact dings.
Push/pull, plus/minus development?
The contrast range of chromes is easily adjustable in development. The practice and principle here is classic zone system, simply developing for a specific final result. It is no stretch to factor the effects of the lens into this.
Exposure settings?
Where we place our subjects on the curve, including our black point, is a choice not a given.
Artificial lighting?
Popping in a bit of flash on a subject allows us to reduce exposure settings overall, darkening the background as much as we please.
Creative use of flare?
By protecting or exposing the lens to stray light.
My point is simply that it is rare in photography not to have options for controlling our results.
But with transparency film, you only get one go at it. You can make a print as many times as you like until you are happy with it.
Steve.
Sure, that's true for a given frame and even one of the reasons I prefer negatives myself.
It's not true systemically though.
The point I'm making is simply that shooting chromes requires that decisions and experimentation be made at different points in the process. Chrome shooting is more camera centric.
For example bracketing or shooting a second sheet/roll of film that can be developed differently is a normal part of the process chrome shooters use. With experience that can fully replace the print variation option that negative shooters have.
It's really just a choice about what work process we prefer, not about not being able to adjust.
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My apologies for not wading through every answer to see if I'm duplicating anyone.
In my experience, an image with low contrast requires a contrast boost after the scan. And whenever contrast is boosted, flaws and artifacts start to emerge. The most obvious will be increased grain, dust, and scratches. So an image may have great detail, such as a collapsible Summicron that I used to have, but I'd rather have a higher-contrast lens and high contrast film for scanning. That's why I miss Plus-X, which needed very little boost after scanning.
In my experience, an image with low contrast requires a contrast boost after the scan. And whenever contrast is boosted, flaws and artifacts start to emerge. The most obvious will be increased grain, dust, and scratches. So an image may have great detail, such as a collapsible Summicron that I used to have, but I'd rather have a higher-contrast lens and high contrast film for scanning. That's why I miss Plus-X, which needed very little boost after scanning.
Absolutely. Mark is right. Negative contrast is mostly in the hands of the person exposing and developing the negatives.
Some films have more inherent contrast than others, but this just means that a lower contrast film needs to be treated differently to yield similar final contrast to a higher contrast film.
It's a system that is connected, and every component matters to more or less extent. Technique is the most important component, in matching the qualities of the lens, the light, the film, the paper (and their developers). Everything has to fit together perfectly to make the most of it from a technical standpoint.
Yes but, again, that is really true only for black and white. With colour films, development time is not a variable. Changing development time can lead to colour casts. Not that I ever tried, that's the theory.
Color films can be adjusted too, same principles apply.
Color films are essentially 3-layer B&W films with each layer having sensitivity to different colors. The silver develops just like B&W and help develop the dye image. The bleach step reverses the silver development and the fix washes all the silver away leaving the dye image.
The wild card with color film is color balance can change a bit, but this is rarely a deal killer change in my experience.
The other thing I have found about color casts is that at least for me they normally come with too little exposure to say blue light, typical of shadows and home lighting or campfires or mixed lighting.
The question then pops up do we want the colors to look 1-normal/real, say holding the warm glow of the fire or the cold blue found in the shade or 2-normal/real as if lit by sunlight?
The question then pops up do we want the colors to look 1-normal/real, say holding the warm glow of the fire or the cold blue found in the shade or 2-normal/real as if lit by sunlight?
Some wonderful reading here...
I'm a member of the "high contrast" (minimized light pollution in the shadows) group. One of the side benefits of living in a rural area is much improved star gazing due to less light pollution. If the dark sky is polluted with city lights the..... stars..... just.... ain't ..... there..... and there ain't no fixin' that. If I want my sky (shadows) polluted I'll turn on the yard lights and face them upwards... that's a-kin ta' "prefogging" my view.
I'm a member of the "high contrast" (minimized light pollution in the shadows) group. One of the side benefits of living in a rural area is much improved star gazing due to less light pollution. If the dark sky is polluted with city lights the..... stars..... just.... ain't ..... there..... and there ain't no fixin' that. If I want my sky (shadows) polluted I'll turn on the yard lights and face them upwards... that's a-kin ta' "prefogging" my view.
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