NikonGear'23
Gear Talk => Lens Talk => Topic started by: Dr Klaus Schmitt on October 02, 2017, 00:46:17
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Found this by coincidence: http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/10/4/the-flattening-of-modern-lenses-or-the-death-of-3d-pop (http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/10/4/the-flattening-of-modern-lenses-or-the-death-of-3d-pop)
Basically the author states that a lens giving 3D pop should not have more than 9 lens elements
He gives plenty of examples ... especially here: http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/11/12/depth-vs-flat-lens-quick-comparison (http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/11/12/depth-vs-flat-lens-quick-comparison)
Statements guys?
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IMO:
Some people have too much time on their hands.
Not seeing what he's seeing.
While there are some rendering differences between the Nikkor 50 and the 50 Art, this is to be expected.
The background of the Art 50 is for sure a little different that the Nikkor 50 does, but I'm not really understanding what subject intertonality is supposed to mean.
I'm sure that if the two images were presented without info as to which lens shot which statue image, you'd get a 50/50 mix of opinions as to which one rendered more nicely.
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I have beent thinking about the validity of his claims before, came to no clear conclusion, said: "possibly irrelevant" and chose my lenses by what I like and what is emotionally appealing to me.
What I like? I like a little or a little more confusing magic, I like to shoot wide open and I get some of that magic from "low counters" and some from "high counters", so do not count me in when it gets to this theory...
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guy is probably thinking too much :o :o :o
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As big admirer of simplicity, I'm attracted to the lenses with simpler designs consisting of fewer elements. No scientific reason. It's rather spiritual. 8)
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It is true that perceptual clues such as blur and reduction of contrast in objects further away do have an impact on how “real” an image seems to us. These things are often added to CGI to increase the sense of reality. So, if a lens does not exhibit those characteristics in a way that mimics our own imperfect eyesight, it may seem more or less real as a result.
However, the relationship between number of elements is somewhat spurious. In his example, a single element lens would be best - something which we don’t find true. His examples pit prime lenses against zooms, which is unfair to the zooms as they are optimized over a wider range of focal lengths.
I also find his statements to be not based in science, for example “Glass is a capacitor” and “light spirals into the lens”.
Use what you like and what helps you best tell your story. Don’t worry about element count.
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I also find his statements to be not based in science, for example “Glass is a capacitor” and “light spirals into the lens”.
he got that from the angry photographer :o :o :o
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he got that from the angry photographer :o :o :o
Who is that? Sounds more like the stupid photographer.
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This guy's "theories" were discussed here, some time ago. The conclusion then was about the same as you see now. To me: Just another internet crackpot looking for attention/clicks.
Second thought: the whole "3D Pop" thing is a meme that skilled but unscrupulous photographic marketers use to amaze and exploit the less-knowledgable into buying equipment that will do the creating for them.
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The visual clues surely very a bit from one lens to the next but: It's up to the photographer to give or take a sense of 3D in a photograph.
Dave Hartman
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Ken Wheeler? Isn't he the guy with all the tattoos who greats on the nerves even more than Ken Rockwell?
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And as one might expect from someone who admires Ken Wheeler, his account of the optics and the human visual system is gibberish.
It is also gibberish from a photographic point of view. A photograph is inherently and inescapably different from what we see because it is two dimensional, and because it is still, and has borders and depth of field (etc). Being different from what we see is the whole point of photography, and being two-dimensional is part of the point.
Of course, there is light reflection at every air-glass interface, producing flare and so reducing contrast and shifting colours. However, modern coatings reduce that effect quite sharply, so it is flat wrong to claim that an older lens with few but uncoated elements will always have better transmission than a modern lens with twice or three times as many elements, some of which are coated.
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As big admirer of simplicity, I'm attracted to the lenses with simpler designs consisting of fewer elements. No scientific reason. It's rather spiritual. 8)
I'm with you on that Akira, me too and admittedly I have a faible for older, exotic and neglected lenses! ;-)
But to you all guys: happy to read your statements, as I was thinking I'm missing something, as I could no follow his claims at all based on his examples.
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This chap undermines his thesis that microsaturation is inversely proportional to # elements and (relatively) simple lens design.
No less than 2 of the Zeiss Distagons have 15-16 elements (15 f2.8, 21 f2.8 ). The 25 f2 has 11, but uses an aspherical and 2 Special (ED equivalent?) elements. The 135 f2 APO has 11.... but then, he attributes the distinction of these lenses to the lead content of their elements (!)
And "Many Zeiss ZF/ZE Classic lenses have world leading micro-contrast and are perhaps the most premium lenses for dSLRs. The Zeiss OTUS and Milvus lenses have reduced micro-contrast in favor of resolution."
http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2016/2/8/micro-contrast-the-biggest-optical-luxury-of-the-world
But I understand the Distagons and Milvus differ only in the weather-proofing of the latter. Still the same optical designs and standards.
And a positive is this has brought more affordable (sort of!) Distagons in excellent condition into the Used market ;D
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Something to muse: if a lens is too "perfect" does it lack character?
Dave Hartman
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Something to muse: if a lens is too "perfect" does it lack character?
Dave Hartman
I guess my follow up to that is, "does a lens in and of itself have character or just a different way of rendering?" I never really place "character" on a lens, but I do on an image and the emotion or feel it evokes.
I've taken more to using manual focus lenses lately because I appreciate the rendering qualities of them. Modern lenses are great, but I realized a while ago that I tend to post process those images to look more like what one gets from the old Nikon AI and first get AF and AF/D lenses. I'm a firm believer in not only shooting in camera, but post processing before I call an image final.
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Did I miss or missread something ? Where does he give information about aperture used for his examples ? Of course a 1,8/85 is probably at his best aperture at f:4 or f:5,6, whereas a 3,5-4,5/ 24-85 at 5,6 is only closed a 1/2 EV ...
And what about his examples of "clarity" ? It seems more like underexposure of 1/2-1 EV (for the more complex lenses) ? Something seems wrong in this conclusions...
But me too, I like fixed focal lenghts better than zooms and great apertures better than higher Iso values...because of the weight, the way you must move and select point of view...
And sometimes zooms are better than fixed focal lenses, but other times it's the opposite way...
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May we add "micro-contrast" to "3D pop" on a list of empty terms, for which there is no actual definition in the design or engineering of optics? Maybe Dr. Brian Caldwell can comment?
Andrew, it has been long known that the flaws, defects, and deviations from perfect create the charm that some of us find in the images created by older optics that were designed before massive computing power was cheaply available.
As an audio engineer once put it(paraphrasing): It's not that those ancient 1947 Telefunken microphones have any less distortion than the modern units, it's that the distortion they do produce is more pleasant to listen to.
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May we add "micro-contrast" to "3D pop" on a list of empty terms, for which there is no actual definition in the design or engineering of optics?
Isn't "micro-contrast" just another way of saying acutance?
Dave
In photography, the term "acutance" describes a subjective perception of sharpness that is related to the edge contrast of an image. --Wikipedia
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I guess my follow up to that is, "does a lens in and of itself have character or just a different way of rendering?"
Isn't rendering just another was of saying character?
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May we add "micro-contrast" to "3D pop" on a list of empty terms, for which there is no actual definition in the design or engineering of optics? Maybe Dr. Brian Caldwell can comment?
Andrew, it has been long known that the flaws, defects, and deviations from perfect create the charm that some of us find in the images created by older optics that were designed before massive computing power was cheaply available.
As an audio engineer once put it(paraphrasing): It's not that those ancient 1947 Telefunken microphones have any less distortion than the modern units, it's that the distortion they do produce is more pleasant to listen to.
+1
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Isn't rendering just another was of saying character?
The way I'm using the terms is that rendering is the qualities a lens gives to an image like contrast, color, sharpness.
Character is the distinctive nature of Something, The feel or essence of a scene.
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Isn't "micro-contrast" just another way of saying acutance?
Dave
In photography, the term "acutance" describes a subjective perception of sharpness that is related to the edge contrast of an image. --Wikipedia
That's the problem: No one knows if it's another name for acutance...itself(according to the quoted resource) a term denoting subjective perception. 'Micro contrast' reads to me as "very small contrast.'
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Isn't rendering just another was of saying character?
In this discussion, I think yes. It's 'What It Looks Like'. Sometimes it matters a lot, sometimes not so much.
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In this discussion, I think yes. It's 'What It Looks Like'. Sometimes it matters a lot, sometimes not so much.
I think lenses have character outside the images they produce. I know that when I pick up an ancient 400mm p.c. Auto that I will be twisting my wrist all day, or that my 35mm will have me looking for images in the near to middle distance, or that a heligon will put me on my knees or hunched over. They have a character of use and of function which goes beyond their rendering prowess. Not to mention a physical character.
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That's the problem: No one knows if it's another name for acutance...itself(according to the quoted resource) a term denoting subjective perception. 'Micro contrast' reads to me as "very small contrast.'
What this guy means is anyone's guess, but there is a difference. Acutance is, in digital terms, how many pixels a shift from light to dark occupies - fewer pixels = greater acutance. Contrast is how much difference there is between the light and dark. You can have high contrast but low acutance and vice versa - here is an example (from Allen & Triantaphillidou, Manual of Photography, ed 10). If you look at the larger sets of bars the contrast is the same but the acutance is different (and the MTF50 is the same in both cases).
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Perhaps the guy is trying to describe in a technical or scientific way what is an esthetic preference? If so he's looking pretty stupid doing it. It would make more sense to me if he had said I like emotional feeling I get in images taken with older lenses with simpler optical design. A few examples couldn't hurt though once JPG(ed) near death the difference might be difficult to see in a web article.
Dave
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I keep trying to say what I mean and then deleting it, partly because a few others have said it better, but I think that even if a dedicated pixel peeper can see a tiny difference here, it's of almost no importance if you're taking a picture - and that would apply for the most part whether the picture itself is interesting of the subject is of interest. The examples shown on the web site appear all to be comparisons between primes and zooms, and I'd suspect that of being the issue rather than some arbitrary number of glass elements. Who would normally expect the zoom to win? I'd say the zooms in this case came off very well indeed, if it takes that much effort to distinguish them. I have always suspected lens design of being a black art, and no doubt there's always going to be a difference between one lens and another, but the kind of distinction being found here would be a pretty poor reason to worry in the real world about which lens you're using.
I agree with Jack Dahlgren, though, that what lens you put on a camera will often by itself steer you toward a certain kind of image. I have a few favorite old lenses, which I just like to use. I'm not entirely sure it matters why, whether it's the aberrations or the perfections or the weight of the metal in them. I just figure that they are full of good old fashioned Nikon pixies, and enjoy them. I tend to choose a lens in part on the basis of the sort of thing I intend to do with it. Sometimes I will choose a prime of a certain sort, in part to limit what I'm doing to what I set out to do, and avoid the distraction of choice. But I'm not entirely convinced that one could not use other lenses to come up with substantially the same shots.
Someone up thread recalled similar issues with audio, and I'm reminded of the old era of all tube equipment. The premise was, essentially, that all amplifiers will clip and distort, so the goal is not necessarily to try to avoid it, but to make the inevitable distortion pleasant. Or, as Duke Ellington observed, "if it sounds good, it is good."
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Interestingly.. Thom Hogan has posted a review of the Nikkor 28/1.4E http://www.dslrbodies.com/lenses/nikon-lens-reviews/nikkor-prime-lens-reviews/nikon-28mm-f14e-ed-af-s.html (http://www.dslrbodies.com/lenses/nikon-lens-reviews/nikkor-prime-lens-reviews/nikon-28mm-f14e-ed-af-s.html)
14 lens elements in 11 groups .. so most obviously in this group of lenses that shouldn't produce a 3d look.
Near the end of that review Thom claims:
The right image shot with this lens just doesn't look two-dimensional, nor does it look faked in the depth dimension. Wedding photographers probably will fall hard for this lens.
That's near enough to the same claim that it has a 3d rendering ability.
Either that, or it has a 1d look or more than 3d look(both alternatives, highly unlikely :D)
So on one hand we have one commenter claiming these high element count lenses aren't producing a natural 3d rendered images according to their particular point of view ..
On the other hand we have another reviewer proclaiming a lens of that design and construction producing exactly that type of rendering!
I think the more important point here is subjectivity(or objectivity) in what constitutes a 3d rendering.
It's highly unlikely that a human can produce an objective observation as they will be tainted by prejudices of some kind.
I think this chap just doesn't like lens design types that contain more than 4 or 6 lens elements and was simply looking for different ways to describe why he doesn't.
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I think the more important point here is subjectivity(or objectivity) in what constitutes a 3d rendering.
It's highly unlikely that a human can produce an objective observation as they will be tainted by prejudices of some kind.
Each photographer can decide if it matters at all.
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Each photographer can decide if it matters at all.
Connot more than agree!! ;-)
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Something to muse: if a lens is too "perfect" does it lack character?
To me it does, "boring" is another term I would use ;D
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Isn't rendering just another was of saying character?
We're getting into a very vague and highly subjective territory here but for me rendering is about how an image is drawn on the digital canvas as in how the lens handles things which are in focus, the transition from sharp to OOF, the quality of the boke, brightness of the colours, colour cast, (micro) contrast, etc.
Besides rendering charisterics the entire character of a lens is imho also defined by the presence (or lack) of things like mechanical vignetting, handling of starbursts and flare, coma, internal reflections, aberrations that might change the rendering under certain circumstances, performance up close vs longer focus ranges, sharpness curve, etc.
So understanding the character of a lens is necessary to make the lens render the images as envisioned.
But as mentioned this is highly personal, just sharing my thoughts on the matter ;D
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I like your summary Jan Anne.
We're getting into a very vague and highly subjective territory here but for me rendering is about how an image is drawn on the digital canvas as in how the lens handles things which are in focus, the transition from sharp to OOF, the quality of the boke, brightness of the colours, colour cast, (micro) contrast, etc.
Besides rendering charisterics the entire character of a lens is imho also defined by the presence (or lack) of things like mechanical vignetting, handling of starbursts and flare, coma, internal reflections, aberrations that might change the rendering under certain circumstances, performance up close vs longer focus ranges, sharpness curve, etc.
So understanding the character of a lens is necessary to make the lens render the images as envisioned.
But as mentioned this is highly personal, just sharing my thoughts on the matter ;D
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I read again the interviews with experienced designers of leading Nikkor lenses with the photographer Ichigo Sugawara. Namely Hauri Sato [notably 35 f1.4G, 58 f1.4G]and Koichi Oshita [notably 85 f1.4D]. Sato states explicitly their design aim with selected lenses is to balance correction of aberrations (that strives for focus sharpness) against the defocus zones of the scene (bokeh). Thus these primes are designed to produce a gradation of progressively blurred circles of confusion at the margins of the plane of focus. He emphasizes these designs went beyond just MTF performance and sought to render the 3-dimensional aspects of the scene.
This interview is in the well known book - Eyes of Nikon
Over the past 2+ years, I have invested in top glass, including 135 f2 DC, 85 f1.4D and the Zeiss 135 f2APO with ultra-wides (15 f2.8, 21 f2.8, 25 f2). The differences in the respective IQ of these lenses are there to see in the resulting images. The Zeiss wides exhibit more saturated colour rendition compared against both the 24 PCE and older Nikkor primes (20 f4, 20 f3.5). This distinction is widely recognised, eg how the 15 Distagon renders the pale blues of the sky at sunset. Yet the latter two classic Nikkor Twenties still have their distinct niches on modern DSLRs. [And there's no lack of examples of many of these primes posted and discussed in this Forum]
Besides the obvious mechanisms (eg Defocus Control, lens elements to reduce CA in the case of TLs) i'm not that well read to articulate why they differ - couched in the language of optical physics, but this stable of Nikkors and Nikon-fits is each superlative. I would venture to state each lens has its "character". And there are the medium range zooms that perform in their versatile roles when called upon. And I am more than content with this investment and see few unfilled niches to spend yet more to populate :-)
kind regards
woody
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I did not watch the video, or follow th elink provided in the first post, because I do not wish to feed these monkeys that sprout their emotions or opinions on the internet trying to make them sound scientifical. Thanks to all your replies, I gathered what the contents of his message were about, and I have a very clear opinion on that.
To put some substance to this opinion, I would liek to state that I have used quite a few lenses in the past 25 years. Most of those within the last 5 years though, where I have really grown in my own photography.
I bought and sold many lense sin these years. And only after a while, I found out that I was looking for something that was there all along. 25 years ago a photographer told me that even if focus is not spot-on, an image cn be good, because the message of a photographic image is hardly ever related to MTF charts and graphs. It is related to how individual humans percieve what you isolated/framed from the fabric of everyday reality.
And the tools used to do this can be modern tools or old tools. They can contain 3 glass elements, just one or 15 or more. What it comes down to, is that you tell your story using tools you are confident with. My girlfriend tells her stories with state of the art AF lenses, while I do so with lenses manufactured in the 1970's and 1980's. Now the thing is, we can tell our stories even when I pick up her camera, or she picks up mine.
The death of 3D poop is a guy yelling for attention, and that is all there is to it in my opinion
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Basically the author states that a lens giving 3D pop should not have more than 9 lens elements
Statements guys?
When this discussion starts, I find it's time to break out the popcorn and watch the fireworks: