article about modern lens design

<p>I found this article that is essentially a rant about modern lens design and found it interesting. However, one of the things I am noticing is there are no 'head to head' comparisons between the different lens designs the author is talking about and the images used to illustrate his points seem to vary significantly at least by the lighting that is involved. I'm wondering if there are any other discussions of legacy/contemporary lens designs that do a/b type comparisons - same subject, lighting, other conditions but with different lenses.<br>

http://petapixel.com/2016/03/14/problem-modern-lenses/</p>

<p>You can generally find a/b comparisons for popular lenses if you do a search. Ken Rockwell (www.kenrockwell.com) probably devotes more ink comparing lense than others, but mostly for Leica and compatible lenses like Voigtlander and Zeiss. Steve Huff (www.stevehuffphoto.com) has a few on his website, mainly for Leica and Sony cameras.</p>

<p>Christopher, you may want to go to Yannick Khong's blog to see more head to head comparisons that may mean more to you. He is a Montréal pro who has some fine images in his on-line gallery, better than most of those we see referred to on these sites. His diagram isa little bit difficult to appreciate but his explanations make pretty good sense. He is a bit unique among bloggers. The Quebec City and region photos in one of his blogs are cool, meant to be touristy rather than artlike, but with good depth and resolution it seems. In his portfolio, a mastery of lighting is evident, but the lens tests are scattered elsewhere. At least he shows what he is describing, which is somewhat rare amongst other bloggers.</p>

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<p>Great article but I fail to see the flat head and nose the author wants the readers to notice ? </p>

<p>Harry, is he referring to microcontrast that may increase appearance of depth in a two dimensional image. His Nikon versus SigmaArt comparisons are meant to show that, but I agree that it is not easy to see, at least on a monitor. I do think he is more solid in criticising the manufacturers who (seem to ) place resolution on the pedestal instead of overall qualities. Leica once recognised that (Mandler era) in the 1970s or 80s. While he says that a similar desire for perfect edge performance is not so important to many that is not my own thought, but then I do photography that includes landscapes (B's for detail across the image) and architectural subjects quite often and less portraits and zero product shots. </p>

<p>As the comments point out, it's babble.</p>

<p>I think this goes to contrasting (pun intended) low element count primes v. high element count zooms & modern lenses. Remember how the Nikon 105 2.5 is regarded as nearly 'magical'. There is a resurgence of older primes being snatched up on Ebay and elsewhere to get second lives on newer bodies and mirror-less cameras.</p>

<p>One active Youtube site, love it or hate it, the Angry Photographer has spent countless videos extolling/showing/ranting on this sort of thing. Rendering of an image even with some aberration is discussed as a better 'look' than modern, homogenized lenses produce ... blasphemy I know.</p>

<p>Jim</p>

<p>Article reminds me a bit of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokal_affair">Sokal hoax</a> manuscript. </p>

<p>I looked at his blog and found (oh! no!) that in some cases I preferred the images from the lenses he does not approve.<br>

The differences between the approved and disapproved lenses seem quite small and would surely disappear entirely beside the many other factors involved in making photographs - not least the human element of the photographer.<br>

So, all in all, we learn that some modern lenses are better than others. 'Twas ever thus. I would not particularly contest his remarks, but also I would not see them as especially significant.</p>

Line of realism? Seriously?

<p>I saw something about this before, and revisited the site referred to here. I must say I found it somewhat interesting without being very pertinent. It's clear that there are some differences at the very fine detail level, but how you label them seems subjective. As Colin Carron says, it's likely that the tiny differences would be outweighed by many other more important issues. I was not very impressed with the diagrams. I'm reminded of a comment long ago about mistakes made by calculator users, that it's easy to confuse precision and accuracy. </p>

<p>Arthur - thanks for pointing me at his blog - i hadn't got that far. I think a lot of this falls into the same category of arguments I see about Leica lenses that have a 'glow' that other optics don't, and that seems to all about contrast. I think there are some interesting, possibly even useful things here, but the approach seems psuedo-scientific with a lot of faith built in. Like Mike, I am skeptical about the line of realism thing. I'm not sure how that is established or how the author goes about placing lenses in his graph, its certainly not through any sort of measurement that I can see. Unless it is simply about counting number of elements. I'm not sure you can know how many is too many, and does it matter how they are grouped? I'm not going to run out and buy myself a lot of low-element count lenses or anything. One thing that occurs to me is that it is mostly among large and medium format photographer's where i hear discussions about lens designs (tessar, planar, distogon,etc.) - why does this not arise so much among 35mm photographers?</p>

<p>This article is worth it just for the comments.</p>

<p>Erwin P makes good points but no real photos other than test charts. Some of the personable and popular bloggers like Steve H show some nice images but few very critical technical details. A lot of reviews are very subjective. This chap seems to believe in his classification system, which at least shows some originality of thought, but the results are not evident. Yes, artists often discuss material and tools like brushes, but they are usually quite practical and demonstrative of the pros and cons. Photography equipment may be too commercial to expect any great level of objectivity or fact. It doesn't matter much in most cases as we can always find equipment better than our intentions or needs. Better to think about subject and perception than freedom from aberrations and pixel counts.</p>

<p>He has an idea and he is making his data fit it. Complete pseudoscience despite having included "scientific looking" pyramids. Sometimes I wish these people could actually meet an optical engineer, or even get a simple textbook, before putting all this junk up to confuse people still further.</p>

<p>Might be even better if he met a real photographer, assuming that one can be found these days. His meticulous test procedures discovered that wide angle lenses distort faces and noses, and a Nikon PC lens allows selective focus. Wow, who would have thought?</p>

<p>ALL the lenses he featured have terrible bokeh, no matter how modern they are. I've always thought that lens designers reached their zenith back in the 30's to 50's, and it's been pretty much downhill ever since. Yeah, some of the new lenses have micro contrast galore....who cares? How about the ability to make pleasing images? That has gotten lost somewhere down the line, and if I want a good image I'll use a Heliar (uncoated if possible), or an old Summar, Summicron, or Nikkor 50 2.0. Haven't seen anything that makes nicer photos than those, although I am also partial to "inferior" 3 element lenses.</p>

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<p>As the comments point out, it's babble.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yeah, but why does it take 464 comments to point that out?</p>

<p>And not one shout out for "plastic fantastic"?!</p>

<p>Any of those diagrammed in that article? I couldn't tell.</p>