'Technical Excellence' vs 'Mythical Look'

[benjiboy]

When I see the very pedestrian pictures with rudimentary errors in lighting, composition, and exposure that many owners of ultra expensive "mythical" equipment take with it, I often feel they would have been better buying ordinary run of the mill gear, and spending the balance on some books and studying the craft.

 

[blockend]

I certainly believe family snaps got worse over the years. In the box camera era people seemed more inventive and relaxed about their photographs. Maybe their meniscus lenses and basic viewfinders lent them a magic that was lost as equipment improved.

 

[darkosaric]

Don't know about the AI, I was talking about the AF versions, D and G when used wide open. The D in particular was junk. Maybe I had a dud but when I replaced it with a 50/1.4D it was like night and day with sub f/2.8 apertures. Once you got to f/4 or more stopped down it was pretty much the same.

I have a AF-D f1.8 version (very sharp and contrasty), and non Ai f2, and micro nikkor f3.5, had also Ai f1.8, E version f1.8, nikkor-s 1.4 ... they are all great lenses.
Most probably your sample was broken in some way.

 

[yorbard]

I mostly shoot Leica and the difference for me, is in superior shadow detail to almost any other camera/lens combo. I use a Leica V-Lux4 and even the old ( circa 1962) lenses on my Leica IIIf display ( using Ilfoird XP -2) produce great differentiation in shadow areas


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[removed account4]

I certainly believe family snaps got worse over the years. In the box camera era people seemed more inventive and relaxed about their photographs. Maybe their meniscus lenses and basic viewfinders lent them a magic that was lost as equipment improved.

i couldn't agree with you more !

 

[Kawaiithulhu]

I certainly believe family snaps got worse over the years. In the box camera era people seemed more inventive and relaxed about their photographs. Maybe their meniscus lenses and basic viewfinders lent them a magic that was lost as equipment improved.

Pretty sure that this is a side effect of people knowing too much as the forms became established and rules were outlined and obeyed. Or as one of my favorite creative quotes goes:

“Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

[Lamar]

After reading they were very sharp I bought a Hexanon AR 50mm f/1.7 several years ago dirt cheap, $40 or $50. I haven't used it much but I did all the shots in the album linked below with it last month and was very impressed. The last shot in the album, the olive oil bottle, was taken wide open.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/lamarlamb/sets/72157649648680516/

Konica AR 50 1.7 reputed to be the 50mm that the Japanese government used to measure other 50mm lens.
Konica AR 57 1.2 I lens I had and sold, still it 42 years later
Konica 38,, 1.9 on the S3, called one of the sharpest lens ever tested by Modern Photography.
Kowa 50mm 1.9 on the SE, very sharp
Canon 50mm F2 collapsible in 39mm
Konica AR 135 3.2
Pentax 50mm 1.4 in 42mm
Pentax 35mm 2.o0 in 42mm

 

[Black Dog]

I already 'ave one!

I don't worry about "mythical lenses", I have always bought marque lenses from the major manufacturers and always found them better lenses than I'm a photographer, people should worry more about if their work has any meaning, or says anything about the human condition than the line pairs per millimetre, or M.T.F. of their lenses, nobody ever want's to know what brushes or what pallet Rembrandt used.

Well said! However the Mamiya TLR lenses are fantastic and a real bargain IMO.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Hmmm ... About the only lens I use on a Nikon anymore is the 85/1.4 A1s, which combines technical excellence with mythic whatever; so
sometimes you can have your cake and eat it too!

 

[jpazzz]

Some favorite lenses

Hello Everybody,
I've always thought that mythic photos were made by photographers who had learned to see. About forty years ago, I thought that I could "see", at least when it came to sailboat photos and figure studies. Not so sure anymore. Hey we all get old, but not necessarily wise.

Anyway, I find that all of my best photos in both black and white and color were made with 2.8 Rolleiflexes with Schneider Kreuznach Xenotar lenses (I always preferred them to the Zeiss Planars, can't really say why) or, to a lesser extent, with a prewar Zeiss 50mm F2 Sonar (Contax I and IIa) that I had B&J coat for me.

As far as Bokeu (or however it's spelt) goes, I don't believe you'll ever see much in the way of out of focus in the work of my photographic heroes, Hans Saebens, Fritz Henle, or Ansel Adams (which is not to say that there is none). At the risk of sounding arrogant, it seems to me that people who are more than casually interested in how the out of focus parts of their photographs look are like so many of today's hunters who obsess over equipment because their opportunities to hunt are severely limited.

Finally, I believe that I have sympathy with the idea that family snapshots used to be more interesting. I wonder if it didn't have to do with a pre-disposable society mentality. One THOUGHT before exposing a frame of film.

Cheers,
John