"The flattening of modern lenses or the death of 3D pop"

[F2F3F6]

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...

[pluton]

 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. 
 

[David H. Hartman]

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

[charlie]

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?

[jhinkey]

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

[gryphon1911]

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. 

[pluton]

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.'

[pluton]

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. 

[Jack Dahlgren]

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.

[Les Olson]

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).   

[David H. Hartman]

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

[Matthew Currie]

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."

[arthurking83]

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
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 )

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.

[pluton]

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.

[Dr Klaus Schmitt]

Each photographer can decide if it matters at all.

Connot more than agree!! ;-)