Nikon; Analyzing NIKKOR lens characteristics
Really interesting article on optical design from Nikon:
https://www.nikon.com/about/technology/stories/1909_optia/?fbclid=IwAR27FEIm9DtlN-XIQiQC98LYDpp-7Zh8jmV8sFsw3aQehfzRIJnryEu6S4I
Give insights into the Nikkor lens development since 2013 
Enjoy!
Note that whoever wrote that didn't even bother explaining what the "Nikon meaning" of the word 'bokeh' is, a word that's as much misused as misunderstood.
Nice article though, but a bit too much "Bokeh" to my taste. "Bokeh" is the magic buzzword again, it's as popular in marketing now as the word "hifi" was in the late fifties (you could even buy "Hifi" lipstick from Max Factor!). Earlier this month Mike Johnston ("The Online Photographer"), the man responsible for adding the "h" to the Japanese word "Boke" that was severely mispronounced by Mike's barbaric compatriots, wrote a nice post explaining "what is bokeh":
https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2019/11/what-is-bokeh-and-the-dogs-nose.htmlI had to laugh when I read his response on one of the comments where an article of Zeiss (check it out
https://lenspire.zeiss.com/photo/app/uploads/2018/04/Article-Bokeh-2010-EN.pdfif you're not afraid of reading about optics, it's really nice!) was mentioned:
quote:
"
marcin wuu: "There's a great read about bokeh and depth of field on Zeiss's website. Easy to understand yet scientifically sound, the best kind of article you can imagine. Funny thing about what's good and what isn't in the context of animal photography—as a cat person and shallow d-o-f fanatic, I suffer greatly because it's so much harder to put cat's nose out of focus with modern tiny sensor cameras—a cat's muzzle is way shorter than a dog's."
Mike replies: An excellent paper...I assume, as much of it is well beyond my own expertise! I particularly liked the sentence, on page 26, "The most important and clearest attribute of blurring is simply the amount of it." True dat.
The paper is a bit ironic for me however. In 1997 I had access to Zeiss's spokesperson. I can't come up with his name just now (my aging brain!) but he was quite an enthusiast (a resolution fanatic) and very intelligent, and perhaps a bit imperious as well. When I asked about Zeiss's position on the issue of "bokeh" (explaining what it meant), he reported back that he had inquired of Zeiss's lens designers but was met with perplexity. Apparently no one then at Zeiss had the habit of considering how the out-of-focus areas were visually rendered in pictures. I was told some version of the same thing we heard all over: you are supposed to look at the stuff that's in focus, not the stuff that's out of focus. Which is fair enough.
By the way, since then, I think Zeiss is one of the companies that has used the word "bokeh" in its advertising, if I'm not mistaken."
So apparently in 1997
nobody at Zeiss paid attention to what happened in the out of focus area? Hilarious! But it explains a lot, especially my own experience with Zeiss lenses. I used and use Zeiss lenses on my Hasselblad (V) and I've also used Zeiss on Contax. Even my old Rolleiflex 2.8 had a Zeiss Planar lens. With the medium format Zeiss lenses I was quite happy (beautiful and smooth
gradation and tonal scale (which is of course normal for medium format lenses, they are not tuned for maximum contrast and acuity like 35mm lenses!), beautiful textures and micro contrast). But with the Contax 50mm f/1.4 AE I was not too happy though, it showed too much imbalance in character which turned it into an almost "psychopatic"
lens. Simply too much difference between the center and edges in sharpness (but beautiful microcontrast in the center from f/4 onwards), which is typical for Zeiss on Contax (fortunately Nikon and also Leica pay a lot of attention to the edges too!), but, worst of all, I really didn't like the way some of the Contax lenses painted the background: too restless
to my taste, even ugly
! Here I preferred the Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 Ais, not to mention the current 50mm AF-S that paints very beautifully, much better than the other two. But I dislike the axial chromatic aberration in all of these lenses. These days I prefer Sigma ART lenses like the 135mm f/1.8 and 50mm f/1.4 to anything Nikon produced in that focal length, if you've used these lenses on a D800E/D810/D850 you can only be amazed, almost looks like medium format Zeiss, impressive sharpness and microcontrast, even wide open, but better background smoothness.
Please note that Nikon in the above mentioned article seems to admit or suggest implicitly that they didn't pay much attention
to 3D expression before:
quote:
"
Recently, Nikon has been pursuing natural three-dimensional expression. Putting an emphasis on a perfectly smooth transition of bokeh from the focused area, Nikon is developing lenses that bring a sense of three-dimensionality to the two-dimensional world of photography."
"
That changed when Nikon developed lens evaluation methods that can measure various characteristics, including aberrations. Since these were introduced in 2013, it has become possible to develop lenses that fulfill the designers' intentions over a much shorter period of time."
Sorry, but that's too much marketing BS.
Of course they paid attention to this before, read the Thousand And One Nights stories on the Nikon website, many excellent lens designs are proof of that. My favourite portrait classic (yes, that one!) immediately comes to mind, and some of the pro zoom lenses (but not the first 24-70 version, after trying that one I was very happy to stick with my (1999) AF-S 28-70 f/2.8!). The only thing they are trying to say is that they put more focus on beautiful backgrounds now and perhaps smooth textures. Well, I completely agree with that. The lenses they mention in the story are in many ways really nice! If only they paid as much attention to the axial (and lateral) chromatic aberration...
