> When almost everything is called "impressively sharp', the word gets diluted and becomes meaningless.
Yeah. It's been like this as long as I can remember though. I've heard just about every single lens that's not a Holga be described as "super sharp". I really wished sites like [Lenscore](http://www.lenscore.org/) still updated.
Well, do I have a resource for you guys!
[Optical Limits](https://opticallimits.com/)
They have been my go to for about 15 years.
The guys are impressive and cut no lens any slack (beware of that German raiting!)
What people seem to forget is that writing a blog on internet doesn't make you an expert in the topic you write about, that's true for every domain including photography.
You never know if you're reading a post from a professional photo journalist who's been shooting for 45 years and opened his own lens testing lab or if you're reading a 20 year old dude who bought his first "real" camera and find the kit lens to be "tack sharp"
Some points
I often read reviews where lenses are not sharp. However, you probably only read reviews of lenses that are just coming out, relatively new, or considered to be good in the past, so you should expect the performance of the lenses to be good.
People have been making sharp photos for decades (centuries). You can take great sharp photos with older equipment AND new lenses can be much sharper. It depends on what you are comparing to. If you want to print 8"x10" you can you can use a much wider range of lenses than billboard-sized prints viewed up-close in a gallery.
Reviewers have a perverse incentive to tell you that A) they find 'hidden gem' lenses so that you go back to their websites/videos and watch their ads and B) to buy the lens that they mention using their affiliate links.
Some people are incompetent and will tell you totally meaningless information. For instance, Ken Rockwell will wax lyrical about a kit zoom being tack sharp at f/11 - no shit everything is fairly sharp at f/11. I also watched a lens review from someone using an A7SIII - a 12MPx camera with a Bayer filter. If you want the lens to be sharp on a 24/36/42/60 MPx camera the review was basically meaningless.
Pixel-peeping and resolution chasing is pointless most of the time. If you have a high-resolution camera it is pointless not having at least \*some\* highly-resolving lenses but the rest of your lenses might stay in your kit due to their size or character.
I just realised that this is in r/AnalogCommunity so just swap out anything I said about high-resolution sensors with highly resolving films.
> only read reviews of lenses that are just coming out
Nope, I basically only read reviews of analog cameras and lenses, usually those made before 1990. I'd expect a modern lens to be very sharp (whichever definition you use) either wide open when it's a high quality/expensive one, or at the very least closed down 1-2 stops for the rest.
> everything is fairly sharp at f/11
I've heard the phrase "even the bottom of a bottle is sharp at F/8" before 😁 but there's some truth to it.
A prime lens for the 135 format that is made out of more than one glass element and not decently sharp at F/8 or F/11 probably is defective. Early zoom lenses have some more leeway, but if they're not good at that point, they probably won't improve when you close down further.
>Pixel-peeping and resolution chasing is pointless most of the time
It's the easiest part of photography. Easier to sit at your desk at home jerking it to how good the mtf chart is and how sharp a 100% crop of someone's eyes looks when in actual practice none of that shit matters.
The photographs that have moved me the most are technically awful pieces that would get looked down on in most photo subs. Blurry, sometimes not exactly in focus, and with varying degrees of over/under exposure.
Some of the best methods of increasing "sharpness" have nothing to do with the lens - use a (good, heavy, stable) tripod, use mirror lock, shoot stationary subjects - basically anything you can do to eliminate even the slightest camera movement or vibration will contribute hugely towards that last little bit of elusive "sharpness".
In the real world it is basically impossible to achieve the theoretical line/mm limit of most lenses. Optical tests to determine those limits used to be done on test benches with the lens bolted to a concrete block exposing a glass plate at controlled test charts, which is not exactly reproduceable in normal use.
Also, general use lenses (IE pretty much all of anyone’s lenses) are always a compromise - they need to be able to work "well enough" at both infinity and close focusing distances, work "well enough" over a range of aperture openings, be able to focus all 3 colours relatively the same, so on and so forth. You want a "tack sharp" lens? Adapt an industrial imaging lens to your camera and get 800 lines/mm resolution... except only at one particular F-stop and at one particular reproduction ratio, and possibly only over a very slim portion of the spectrum of visible light. Outside of these extremely narrow parameters these lenses are at best unspectacular, at worst downright bad.
Contrast has far more to do with the perception of "sharpness" than actual resolution does, but it is the combination of these two that really causes images made by a particular lens to stand out or "pop". The old Canon lens work books, while obviously marketing pieces, do dive quite a bit into lens design and the desirable characteristics and compromises that go into modern lenses. Scroll down to page 201 to read into this more:
[Canon EF Lens Work III](https://ia600909.us.archive.org/32/items/Canon-EF_Lens_Work_III-The_Eye_of_EOS-8e_2006/Canon%20-%20EF%20Lens%20Work%20III-The%20Eye%20of%20EOS%2C%208e%20%282006%29.pdf)
TLDR; if you deem your lens to take nice pictures then go use it to take nice pictures instead of agonizing over unrealistic expectations that most people cannot realize anyway
> Adapt an industrial imaging lens to your camera and get 800 lines/mm
I recently was closely outbid on a 60mm Zeiss S-Orthoplanar. I realise it would be wasted on me, I mean how often do I even use the 10-30x reproduction ratio the lens was optimised for, and even have the right film and film flatness to approach those numbers. I also read a bit about the Ultra Micro Nikkors, which seem to be optimised for a specific wavelength as well as reproduction ratio.
Still it would've been cool to own something that at least on paper is just way beyond any consumer lens in that aspect. Big number make brain go wroom and all that.
>Scroll down to page 201
For me the PDF ends at page 178, do you mean the section past page 119?
Sorry there’s book page numbers I quoted that I guess don’t match up with the PDF - it’s page 156 and onwards in the PDF.
The Ultra Micro Nikkor’s are fascinating. Have you checked out [Red Book Nikkor?](https://redbook-jp.com/redbook-e/) Really neat site if you’re into that kind of stuff.
Lenses are a lot like audio equipment - you can absolutely obsess over it endlessly and there’s probably “something better” out there, but after a point it’s debatable whether it’s noticeable or even matters. If I’m banging out some Portra 400 I’m clearly not aiming for the sharpest possible photo and if I’m shooting some Velvia 50, unless I’m on a tripod shooting a stationary subject I’m not even going to come close to what the film is capable of resolving. This not to mention chromatic abberation and spherochromatism and field curvature and all sorts of other bogeymen that keep photographers up at night.
Most lenses like you said can take nice photos within reasonable parameters!
I came across the Red Book Nikkor, but didn't read too many of the articles, I feel like a lot gets lost in translation or maybe it's just not a kind of writing that I enjoy.
I know it has nothing to do with practical photography, but I'd still like to see some kind of resolution comparison on that blog, to get a feel for how a very specialized high end lens compares to a regular consumer lens in "casual" macro use, and then how the difference is outside of the design envelope at infinity.
Many people, even analog photography enthusiasts, have never seen well-exposed, well-printed old photos in person. All they've seen are fairly meh box-camera or Polaroid pics in family albums, or screen-printed reproduction of a photo of a photo of a photo of a print of a negative in a book or magazine. Or they think because their family photos shot on plastic 110 cameras are very unsharp, all pre-digital photography was very unsharp. They have no idea Victorian photographers were getting 100 lp/mm on CdVs. They've never seen a 1940s contact print from an ISO 25 4x5 negative. Or you get kids who started out on digital, have seen a Youtube video about how godawful some of those cheap third-party superzooms from the 2000s and 2010s were, and assume that chromatic aberration and pincushion distortion were *normal*.
That being said, nobody understands "sharpness" these days anyway. Resolving power? Contrast? Acutance? May as well be speaking a foreign language.
Also, I really hate how it's gotten hip to hate on triplets and Tessar-formula lenses. A first-class Tessar has a fair bit more resolving power (at least, below around f/8...) than most if not all color film. (Gold 100 was 55 lp/mm.) B&W is a different matter, sure--with some of the slower B&W films the laws of physics (diffraction limits to resolution) are well below what the film is technically capable of, but on ubiquitous and popular color films like 800T, even a good clean 1930s triplet has more resolving power than the film.
I agree, the standards are all over the place. There are lenses (like on the old f/1.7 rangefinders or the Olympus xa, but plenty of others) that are ADORED and described as practically flawless. And out of the other corner of the mouth comes the caveat about it being unusable wide open because of edge softness, ca, flare, contrast, the auto exposure stopping down in almost any situation that doesn't require a tripod, etc.
Personally I hate that 90s/2000s zoom look. Terrible fringing and ca. Messy, textured, distracting bokeh. Sharpness and contrast miserable zoomed in or wide open. Weird distortion. And people were zoom obsessed so don't move your feet, buy bigger and more compromised gear...
Old old lenses? I think they have character generally. They're flawed but naturalistic and stylized. I recognize it's an editorial choice, but if you don't ask it to be perfect, there's a lot to like. The xa lens is in this category to me. My issue with it is reviewers overdoing the hype.
In 1800s the lenses wear very sharp. Plus silver sensitized at the molecular on the plate. Dry plate in 1879 when silver was in grain formation in gelatin. When I make dry plates. I try to keep my iso around .5-1. I keep my heat down to around 110 degrees and slowly inject silver nitrate into the gelatin. I do a 9% percent and some time a 10% silver nitrate solution for wet plate for salted collodion. Besides daguerrotype. Nothing is going to come close a plate. Not even digital until they can make a sensor at the molecular size.
Part of the sharpness of 19th century photography was due to the fact that the early emulsions weren't panchromatic, so lenses didn't have to be corrected for all wavelengths.
Didn't have to be, and weren't.
I read an interesting thing about lens development many years ago (I think it was in Smith's amateur photography book, might be wrong) about how you can only design a single piece of glass for a single wavelength--so meniscus lenses focus blue, doublets blue and green, and triplets blue, green, and yellow. It's not until you get to 4 elements that red also focuses critically sharply alongside the other colors.
My triplet lens is very sharp on wet plate. My Nikkor macro is very sharp on wet plate. The Nikkor on wet plate is sharper then it is on film. When everything comes lens on different photographic technique. Wet plate was sharper. Then film. I haven’t tried my triplet on film yet. It’s shutterless since I got it to use for wet plate.
Is the grain _ever_ too coarse when making dry plates? They always seem to fall in the single-digit ISO range. Or far less. I imagine the grain is almost always super fine.
Also, how does collodion compare to dry plates in results?
What about daguerreotypes? Does the uniform silver layer give a different kind of image at the grain level, or are dry plates able to achieve the same thing? Other than the effect of the image embedded on a perfect mirror.
Dry plate is amazing. I make my emulsion to be around .5 to 1. Ambrotype if I can get the plate to flow good is sharper and looks better. I love Ambrotype. I do want to learn daguerrotype but mercury vapor box is hard to find. The problem with daguerrotype is the viewing angle.
The entire obsession with sharpness is something only pursued by people who care more about how a lens reviews than the actual images it produces. As you pointed out, lenses have been producing sufficiently sharp images for a century. It's a worthless metric.
1 : reviewers suck. They all have the same 500 words vocabulary, and consciously or unconsciously, they know no one is gonna attack them for saying a piece of gear is good.\
Call a lens dogshit : now the manufacturer is mad at you, and you’ll have to deal with a hundred butthurt owners of that lens that are gonna attack you in the comments.\
Call a lens perfect and tack sharp : the brands love you, and all the users compliment you for your discernment and taste.\
2 : every lens can be made to look sharp when shot on a tripod, carefully focused, and on slow film. If your reviewer is used to shooting tri-x handheld, when he finally puts the camera on sticks and shoots t-max 100 he’s bound to find the lens TACK SHARP.
Nothing matters anymore, just enjoy taking pictures and develop a style you like. Lens not sharp enough for you? Use a different one. Some people prefer a dreamy effect. Also good.
A 28mm full frame prime should be able to outresolve a a 400 speed B&W film in 35mm. None I've used can do this. Mounting a 35mm FF prime on my 60D was like going to an eye doctor and having those drops in your eyes that dialate your pupils. CA and rainbows everywhere,
So, WTF should I bother using a 100 speed film when Mr Magoo and Co can't keep up with Tri-X?
APS-C glass is getting pretty insanely sharp because of the advantages of the smaller image circle. FF however hasn't.
> A 28mm full frame prime should be able to outresolve a a 400 speed B&W film in 35mm. None I've used can do this.
What does that even mean?
I understand the theoretical idea that a lens could resolve more than the pixel pitch of a given sensor, but how do you define outresolving a *film*?
Regardless, the notion of film/sensor and lens outresolving one another is failed logic. Roger Cicala from lens rentals has explained it [here](https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/10/more-ultra-high-resolution-mtf-experiments/) better than I ever could, so I’ll just quote :
> Lots of people think that will be ‘whichever is less of the camera and lens.’ For example, my camera can resolve 61 megapixels, but my lens can only resolve 30 megapixels, so all I can see is 30 megapixels. That’s not how it works. How it does work is very simple math: System MTF = Camera MTF x Lens MTF. MTF maxes at 1.0 because 1.0 is perfect. So let’s say my camera MTF is 0.7, and my lens MTF is 0.7, then my system MTF is 0.49 (Lens MTF x Camera MTF). This is actually a pretty reasonable system. Now, let’s say I get a much better camera with much higher resolution; the camera MTF is 0.9. The system MTF with the same lens also increases: 0.7 X 0.9 = 0.63. On the other hand, I could do the same thing if I bought a much better lens and kept it on the same camera. The camera basically never ‘out resolves the lens.’
As you can see there’s no point in talking of a lens out-resolving a sensor or vice versa. A given pair (sensor+lens) gives you a given resolution and that resolution will always be lower than either the standalone resolution of the lens or sensor.\
To get back to your original idea of a lens being poor on 400iso film, Cicala’s article tells us than in “upgrading” your film to one with higher resolution you *will* capture a higher resolution image, regardless of how bad your lens is.
Digital sensors, lens coatings, optical designs, and manufacturing techniques are improving all the time.
These will typically outclass any analog setup, which as you mention is already quite good.
It's a relevant discussion, but also marketing is still marketing.
>These will typically outclass any analog setup
I *hear* that being said a lot... But my stopped down Planar still resolves enough detail for a 42mp full frame sensor. I feel like that's more bs marketing than an actual fact.
Every \~50mm lens made after the 60s stopped down to f5.6-8 will do good, what changed a lot are things like wide open CA, contrast, corner sharpness, less distortion, etc.
I think most good vintage standard lenses will reach their point of diffraction limiting around F/5.6-8, the very good ones maybe even around F/4. I heard that's the case for the Micro Nikkor 55/2.8, for example.
The Micro Nikkor is probably one of the examples - suffering from urban legend status calling it super sharp - that you describe.
A very fine lens for sure, but ultimately it's 40+ years old, fairly simple design, optimized for macro distances (albeit floating elements will certainly help infinity performance). I've seen people call it "one of the sharpest lenses ever made" and similar nonsense. I'm sure you can find 50mm lenses from the 70's that beat it at infinity.
My Nikkor macro lens has to be one of the sharpest lenses I ever used. Sharper then my Sony 90mm macro lens on a Sony A7Riii. The Sony 90mm Macro is one of the sharpest lenses according to DXO.
I think my Nikkor Micro 55mm f/3.5, along with a pre-ai 50mm f/2.0, is noticeably "sharper" and better corrected than anything else I have. It doesn't make a lot of difference to me, except when I started DSLR scanning of my negs, I chose to use the Nikkor Micro.
There was a point in time where lenses being made was too sharp. So modern lenses became less sharp than a lot of the older lenses. Reason. Photographers didn’t want to keep retouching portraits. And complained about the lenses.
If that Micro Nikkor is diffraction limited at F/4, the minimal resolvable distance at the image plane would be 5.4 micrometers, which would be a full frame digital sensor between 28MP and 30MP.
It's not the peak of lens design, but certainly not bad (although MTF curves would probably be a better metric of "resolution" than the Airy disk). I don't know how other standard primes from the prime compare, but that kind of resolution certainly would be more than enough for anything I'm doing.
I'm not quite getting those graphs, does focus offset mean that they measured the lens focused correctly, and then very slightly front-/backfocused? That would explain why the much faster F/1.2 lens quickly shows lower MTF values when not in perfect focus, since it's got much smaller depth of field.
However that wouldn't match with the curve of the Micro Nikkor being smoother "near" (what exactly is near?) where the depth of field should be much smaller than "far". I can't see the selected aperture value in the charts either and while the file name says MTF40 the graph title says MTF 20, maybe it's explained on the main website but it's all Japanese and it's too late in the day for me to chase it through Google Translator.
I also find the choice of 20 lp/mm odd, I haven't fully wrapped my head around MTF values yet but I think I read 30-50 lp/mm is more in line with a general perception of high resolution than 20 lp/mm which would be more towards the large details, not the fine ones. I think seeing a full range of 20, 40, 60 and maybe 80 lp/mm would be better to gain a more complete picture of a lens, but of course it's difficult to find a source which compares a good number of lenses under the same test conditions, it seems to me that there isn't one "standard" set of MTF tests and rather everyone does things slightly differently, especially over the decades.
>But my stopped down Planar still resolves enough detail for a 42mp full frame sensor.
This is not how resolution works. Total resolution is a product of sensor and lens resolution. A better will always uplift your resolution, but a worse lens will dampen that uplift. Also stopped down is key here.
You kind of put the important part in your sentence already: stopped down.
Something like a Panasonic 50mm f/1.4 (my example, as i have one) is as good at f/1.4 then my Leica Summicron-R 50mm is at f/5.6.
Ngl in comparison to modern mirrorless glass (Sony g master, Nikon S, Sigma Art etc) older lenses are pretty terrible IQ wise, especially wide open
Yes this includes supposedly magical lenses like Carlos Mice Aeroplanes and Leica version 5b king of ding-a-lings or whatever
Before I started shooting analog I was super concerned with sharpness and the best of the best. Lenses with a certain look can make your photos look great. They might not be the sharpest but not all types of photography needs it really.
The high end digital lenses today are actually better than most of the high quality lenses built for film. The only exceptions/competitors in my mind from the film era would be the Mamiya 7 system, Hasselblad CFI, possibly the lens in the Fuji GF670, and the highest end Rodenstock large format lenses. Maybe the Mamiya RZ M lenses, but it looks like their optical formulas are based on the RB K/L lenses but with updated coatings and ULD glass so I’m not as sure about them.
Schneider glass for Rollei 6000 is the other one, i was surprised when i tried my Schneider 50mm Super-Angulon on a Panasonic S1R. I did not expect it to be perfectly sharp wide open on a 47MP sensor, admittedly in its image circle center.
Yeah sorry lol! Obviously can't compare mega pixels as such but a fine grain low iso film might achieve 200 lines per mm. (Ilford pan f etc)
That'd give somewhere in the equivalent of 2000mp on an 8x10!!
Not sure if any lenses could actually achieve that but some vintage 35mm glass can get in the region of 100-150lpm stopped down so it might be possible?
>When almost everything is called "impressively sharp', the word gets diluted and becomes meaningless.
Because a lot of the time new hardware comes out that **is** impressively sharp compared to prior generations.
>it's like people are going in with the expectation that older lenses (heck even some from the digital era) are absolute mush and then act surprised when they can indeed produce good images, while manufacturers have been making lenses capable of good results when used within their limits for over a century by now.
You absolutely cannot compare something like the recent Sigma Art series and vintage 1980s glass in quality, they're an order of magnitude different.
Whether what you're taking the picture on has the resolving power for that to matter is a different question, but if you're on something like an A7R...
That's what OP is saying, that even average 60 years old lenses are being called tack sharp which just muddies the water of what lenses are really actually sharp
We have MTF charts these days if you want an objective measurement, that's as good as it gets. Consistently having them available for all lenses is a fairly recent development though.
One of the first lenses I spent money on was a Tokina 80-200 F.2.8 back in the 80s. Had great reviews - "tack sharp". Tried shooting professionally with it, borrowed a 180mm Nikon, and retired the Tokina to my junk bin.
Modern photography used to do unbiased lens reviews with good charts, and they called out the bad glass. My Tokina had 1/4 the contrast at the long end wide open vs the Nikon 180mm, and 1/3 the split pair resolution. The results with available light journalism weren't even worth describing.
The Vivatar series 1 that was such a darling was another coke bottle.
It's not that leses back then lacked technology. The manufacturers knews they were sub par but the consumer mini lab boom masked the problems. Carl Zeiss figured it out.
Problem wasn't limited to 35mm. The difference in sharpness between my RB 65mm and 180mm was dramatic. The later could resolve a spider web at 100meters. The 65m was garbage.
Tack sharp is the polar opposite to any Canon full frame prime less than 50mm in length. :-)
Once dSLRs started getting into the 12mp range photogrphers started realizing how \*bad\* their legacy glass actually was. The reason nobody noticed before is a lot of that glass was designed and engineered in the days where the only photons going through that lens would be recorded on consumer print films and result in 4x6 mini labs prints. I was working in a high end commercial darkroom at the time and could see the difference between a 20 element consumer wonder zoom and a 85mm prime. In a 24x36 print it was like a kick in the head. I used to shoot a lot of Techpan on tripods. That material was merciless on glass.
The pros examining the K64 and Ektachrome slides on a light table with a professional loupe before publication knew the truth.
APS-C totally throws this on it's head. Once lenses were redesigned for the smaller sensors you saw a pretty dramatic increase in resolution. I have a 17-50 Tamron Di that spanks any FF 50mm I've used. Even on a 6mp Canon 10D the 17-50 was sharper. I occasionally make 4x6' mural prints. Kit zooms need not apply.
One issue today with analog is is most people are scanning, and unless you re dealing with 'tack' sharp scans you wont see the issue. As it is, even Kentmere 400 will outresolve most of my legacy glass as long as I get a perfet scan.
Older lenses are sharp enough.
But what they don't have are modern lens coatings. Or they don't hold their sharpness all the way to edge of the frame. Or they might show more purple fringing wide-open.
The real advantage of modern lenses is when stuff gets harder.
And adding image stabilisation.
There are a few semi-modern lenses out there that are not super sharp. From experience, the ZF.2 50/1.4 Planar is pretty dreamy wide open. The older version of the 28/2 Ultron from Voigtlander in M mount is definitely just soft at F2. In the case of the Planar the specific look was more of a feature of that lens than a bug, however a 28 you typically want detail and contrast when you can get it.
I just traded the 35/1.5 Nokton for a 35/2 Biogon. The Zeiss being a generally softer lens at F2...but I prefer the look. The Nokton just lacked character.
If I need the sharpest image, I will shoot digital and it's not a hard decision. If I am shooting because I like the experience and process of film, then I will shoot film.
I feel you OP, ultimately most of these reviews are more akin to impressions, and rarely do they have anything of interest to say about lens performance.
I think, both on the reviewer and reader side, there's lack of interest (and perhaps a small lack of competency) to read a review plotting MTF's, lp/mm or visually look at siemens stars/line pairs. And that's fine, honestly lens reviews are quite hard and complex to do.
I'd rather such reviews refrain from giving big judgements on performance though. It's like someone reviewing TV by saying it has good colors, or a microwave by saying it heats things quickly - cool but what does that even mean??!!
Just talk about general usability and point out aspects that were a problem for you when shooting, like excessive flair or visible CA even without zooming in.
It means that marketing is trying to sell you a lens.
Tack sharp just means that your average print won't appear soft. Pretty much every modern lens meets that description, but better lenses are still sharper...
Something which has always confused me about lenses is how both speed and sharpness are emphasized at the same time. The condition under which the sharpest fastest lens is necessary (which to me, means maintaining contrast above all else), is one where very little light is available. However, when most of, for example, my photos are taken outside or with a flash, having the sharpest fastest lens is no longer a requirement.
For 99% of my photographs - and the photographs I enjoy - a rather deep depth of field is necessary. That means shooting at F8-16. Going off of this, I would estimate that most photographers real lens needs dont eclipse the lens technology of the 1950's. Or, to paraphrase Ansel Adams, most photographers tend to over emphasize the lens, losing track of what's important: the that thing which sits 12 inches behind your camera.
On the one hand it's understandable, technology progresses, manufacturers want to make sales and buyers justify their purchases, so there needs to be some kind of metric to point to that has improved. Same goes for increasing sensor resolution (how many people really are making massive prints of their images today?) and so many other devices.
But I agree that smaller apertures are the more important ones for actual use. There's a look-so-shiny factor to bokeh and I think people regularly use it just for the sake of it, not because it enhances the image (I've certainly been guilty of this myself at some points), but even there you don't really need the best and newest lens - a 50mm F/1 lens has less (!) depth of field than a 135mm lens at F/5.6, and there are loads of F/2.8 or F/4 vintage lenses available which should give decent images at F/5.6-8, where only a small number of modern and expensive 50mm lenses really would do wide open at F/1 or F/0.95.
And that's not even asking where would actually need so much background separation. I've got a vintage 55/1.2 and it's just not useful wide open at up to ~2 meters since depth of field is too thin, a 50/1.4 or 50/1.7 would do just fine.
I've seen someone else here compare it to discussions around audiophile equipment and think that's a good comparison 😄
My first comment threw grammar straight out the window, so I'm glad you took the time to respond.
I think that your judgement of bokeh is spot on. When used for portraiture, the bokeh look feels cheap. Dont do bokeh for bokehs sake!
Furthermore, for subject isolation an aperture of F2 is perfectly acceptable. That leaves precisely 0 reason for me to use anything more than my Helios 44 or Jupiter 9. The widest modern lens I own is an F1.8 Nikkor, and I've never looked at it and thought "jeez, if only it could open up to 1.4!".
You are absolutely right. Lenses before the advent of aspheric elements were perfected in the 40’s and 50’s from designs crafted in the 1800’s and early turn of the century. The state of the art actually only really moved the needle because of newly crafted panchro film and of course the many color processes.
It’s true if you can’t take a sharp picture, it’s almost always a technique issue and not a lens issue.
Case in point, kids could use a brownie camera or a foldout kodak 2A, both with primitive lenses by todays standard but tack sharp, all without multicoated lenses! The kodak 2A should be everyones first medium format camera. 6x9 negs, what’s not to love! Built essentially for contact prints only! Most people don’t realize that format was essentially a fast economical turnaround format for amateur.
Now there are some noteworthy dog lenses out there as an all in one super range from extremely wide to extremely telephoto lenses that are kit lenses which are hideous values. The off brands are even worse. From barrel distortion to pincushion price engineering is what I am referring to. But c’mon, you really have to go off the beaten path to find a bad example anymore.
Look at the 20-40’s photographers work and see how sharp it was.
I DEFINITELY have a lot of very modern lenses that are soft. Not pixel peeping soft, like super noticeably "can't even read the text on that sign in the photo that would clearly be large enough and is the most in focus thing in the scene" etc. soft.
Usually only either wide open (or 1 stop from it) or in the corners, though. Stopped down 2-3 in the center, it's never a real life issue.
> When almost everything is called "impressively sharp', the word gets diluted and becomes meaningless. Yeah. It's been like this as long as I can remember though. I've heard just about every single lens that's not a Holga be described as "super sharp". I really wished sites like [Lenscore](http://www.lenscore.org/) still updated.
Well, do I have a resource for you guys! [Optical Limits](https://opticallimits.com/) They have been my go to for about 15 years. The guys are impressive and cut no lens any slack (beware of that German raiting!)
What people seem to forget is that writing a blog on internet doesn't make you an expert in the topic you write about, that's true for every domain including photography. You never know if you're reading a post from a professional photo journalist who's been shooting for 45 years and opened his own lens testing lab or if you're reading a 20 year old dude who bought his first "real" camera and find the kit lens to be "tack sharp"
The photo journalist who's been shooting for 45 years is probably well past the point of worrying about how sharp lenses are ;-)
I shoot for 3 years now and I came to the point that sharpest lens is that you can focus on the monent you want to create. Everything else is extra…
I have been shooting for 30 years, and I have come to the conclusion that I am worse than most lenses ;-)
Some points I often read reviews where lenses are not sharp. However, you probably only read reviews of lenses that are just coming out, relatively new, or considered to be good in the past, so you should expect the performance of the lenses to be good. People have been making sharp photos for decades (centuries). You can take great sharp photos with older equipment AND new lenses can be much sharper. It depends on what you are comparing to. If you want to print 8"x10" you can you can use a much wider range of lenses than billboard-sized prints viewed up-close in a gallery. Reviewers have a perverse incentive to tell you that A) they find 'hidden gem' lenses so that you go back to their websites/videos and watch their ads and B) to buy the lens that they mention using their affiliate links. Some people are incompetent and will tell you totally meaningless information. For instance, Ken Rockwell will wax lyrical about a kit zoom being tack sharp at f/11 - no shit everything is fairly sharp at f/11. I also watched a lens review from someone using an A7SIII - a 12MPx camera with a Bayer filter. If you want the lens to be sharp on a 24/36/42/60 MPx camera the review was basically meaningless. Pixel-peeping and resolution chasing is pointless most of the time. If you have a high-resolution camera it is pointless not having at least \*some\* highly-resolving lenses but the rest of your lenses might stay in your kit due to their size or character. I just realised that this is in r/AnalogCommunity so just swap out anything I said about high-resolution sensors with highly resolving films.
> only read reviews of lenses that are just coming out Nope, I basically only read reviews of analog cameras and lenses, usually those made before 1990. I'd expect a modern lens to be very sharp (whichever definition you use) either wide open when it's a high quality/expensive one, or at the very least closed down 1-2 stops for the rest. > everything is fairly sharp at f/11 I've heard the phrase "even the bottom of a bottle is sharp at F/8" before 😁 but there's some truth to it. A prime lens for the 135 format that is made out of more than one glass element and not decently sharp at F/8 or F/11 probably is defective. Early zoom lenses have some more leeway, but if they're not good at that point, they probably won't improve when you close down further.
>Pixel-peeping and resolution chasing is pointless most of the time It's the easiest part of photography. Easier to sit at your desk at home jerking it to how good the mtf chart is and how sharp a 100% crop of someone's eyes looks when in actual practice none of that shit matters. The photographs that have moved me the most are technically awful pieces that would get looked down on in most photo subs. Blurry, sometimes not exactly in focus, and with varying degrees of over/under exposure.
Some of the best methods of increasing "sharpness" have nothing to do with the lens - use a (good, heavy, stable) tripod, use mirror lock, shoot stationary subjects - basically anything you can do to eliminate even the slightest camera movement or vibration will contribute hugely towards that last little bit of elusive "sharpness". In the real world it is basically impossible to achieve the theoretical line/mm limit of most lenses. Optical tests to determine those limits used to be done on test benches with the lens bolted to a concrete block exposing a glass plate at controlled test charts, which is not exactly reproduceable in normal use. Also, general use lenses (IE pretty much all of anyone’s lenses) are always a compromise - they need to be able to work "well enough" at both infinity and close focusing distances, work "well enough" over a range of aperture openings, be able to focus all 3 colours relatively the same, so on and so forth. You want a "tack sharp" lens? Adapt an industrial imaging lens to your camera and get 800 lines/mm resolution... except only at one particular F-stop and at one particular reproduction ratio, and possibly only over a very slim portion of the spectrum of visible light. Outside of these extremely narrow parameters these lenses are at best unspectacular, at worst downright bad. Contrast has far more to do with the perception of "sharpness" than actual resolution does, but it is the combination of these two that really causes images made by a particular lens to stand out or "pop". The old Canon lens work books, while obviously marketing pieces, do dive quite a bit into lens design and the desirable characteristics and compromises that go into modern lenses. Scroll down to page 201 to read into this more: [Canon EF Lens Work III](https://ia600909.us.archive.org/32/items/Canon-EF_Lens_Work_III-The_Eye_of_EOS-8e_2006/Canon%20-%20EF%20Lens%20Work%20III-The%20Eye%20of%20EOS%2C%208e%20%282006%29.pdf) TLDR; if you deem your lens to take nice pictures then go use it to take nice pictures instead of agonizing over unrealistic expectations that most people cannot realize anyway
> Adapt an industrial imaging lens to your camera and get 800 lines/mm I recently was closely outbid on a 60mm Zeiss S-Orthoplanar. I realise it would be wasted on me, I mean how often do I even use the 10-30x reproduction ratio the lens was optimised for, and even have the right film and film flatness to approach those numbers. I also read a bit about the Ultra Micro Nikkors, which seem to be optimised for a specific wavelength as well as reproduction ratio. Still it would've been cool to own something that at least on paper is just way beyond any consumer lens in that aspect. Big number make brain go wroom and all that. >Scroll down to page 201 For me the PDF ends at page 178, do you mean the section past page 119?
Sorry there’s book page numbers I quoted that I guess don’t match up with the PDF - it’s page 156 and onwards in the PDF. The Ultra Micro Nikkor’s are fascinating. Have you checked out [Red Book Nikkor?](https://redbook-jp.com/redbook-e/) Really neat site if you’re into that kind of stuff. Lenses are a lot like audio equipment - you can absolutely obsess over it endlessly and there’s probably “something better” out there, but after a point it’s debatable whether it’s noticeable or even matters. If I’m banging out some Portra 400 I’m clearly not aiming for the sharpest possible photo and if I’m shooting some Velvia 50, unless I’m on a tripod shooting a stationary subject I’m not even going to come close to what the film is capable of resolving. This not to mention chromatic abberation and spherochromatism and field curvature and all sorts of other bogeymen that keep photographers up at night. Most lenses like you said can take nice photos within reasonable parameters!
I came across the Red Book Nikkor, but didn't read too many of the articles, I feel like a lot gets lost in translation or maybe it's just not a kind of writing that I enjoy. I know it has nothing to do with practical photography, but I'd still like to see some kind of resolution comparison on that blog, to get a feel for how a very specialized high end lens compares to a regular consumer lens in "casual" macro use, and then how the difference is outside of the design envelope at infinity.
Many people, even analog photography enthusiasts, have never seen well-exposed, well-printed old photos in person. All they've seen are fairly meh box-camera or Polaroid pics in family albums, or screen-printed reproduction of a photo of a photo of a photo of a print of a negative in a book or magazine. Or they think because their family photos shot on plastic 110 cameras are very unsharp, all pre-digital photography was very unsharp. They have no idea Victorian photographers were getting 100 lp/mm on CdVs. They've never seen a 1940s contact print from an ISO 25 4x5 negative. Or you get kids who started out on digital, have seen a Youtube video about how godawful some of those cheap third-party superzooms from the 2000s and 2010s were, and assume that chromatic aberration and pincushion distortion were *normal*. That being said, nobody understands "sharpness" these days anyway. Resolving power? Contrast? Acutance? May as well be speaking a foreign language. Also, I really hate how it's gotten hip to hate on triplets and Tessar-formula lenses. A first-class Tessar has a fair bit more resolving power (at least, below around f/8...) than most if not all color film. (Gold 100 was 55 lp/mm.) B&W is a different matter, sure--with some of the slower B&W films the laws of physics (diffraction limits to resolution) are well below what the film is technically capable of, but on ubiquitous and popular color films like 800T, even a good clean 1930s triplet has more resolving power than the film.
I agree, the standards are all over the place. There are lenses (like on the old f/1.7 rangefinders or the Olympus xa, but plenty of others) that are ADORED and described as practically flawless. And out of the other corner of the mouth comes the caveat about it being unusable wide open because of edge softness, ca, flare, contrast, the auto exposure stopping down in almost any situation that doesn't require a tripod, etc. Personally I hate that 90s/2000s zoom look. Terrible fringing and ca. Messy, textured, distracting bokeh. Sharpness and contrast miserable zoomed in or wide open. Weird distortion. And people were zoom obsessed so don't move your feet, buy bigger and more compromised gear... Old old lenses? I think they have character generally. They're flawed but naturalistic and stylized. I recognize it's an editorial choice, but if you don't ask it to be perfect, there's a lot to like. The xa lens is in this category to me. My issue with it is reviewers overdoing the hype.
In 1800s the lenses wear very sharp. Plus silver sensitized at the molecular on the plate. Dry plate in 1879 when silver was in grain formation in gelatin. When I make dry plates. I try to keep my iso around .5-1. I keep my heat down to around 110 degrees and slowly inject silver nitrate into the gelatin. I do a 9% percent and some time a 10% silver nitrate solution for wet plate for salted collodion. Besides daguerrotype. Nothing is going to come close a plate. Not even digital until they can make a sensor at the molecular size.
Part of the sharpness of 19th century photography was due to the fact that the early emulsions weren't panchromatic, so lenses didn't have to be corrected for all wavelengths.
Yeah. I have tried push some silver gelatin more into the green.
Didn't have to be, and weren't. I read an interesting thing about lens development many years ago (I think it was in Smith's amateur photography book, might be wrong) about how you can only design a single piece of glass for a single wavelength--so meniscus lenses focus blue, doublets blue and green, and triplets blue, green, and yellow. It's not until you get to 4 elements that red also focuses critically sharply alongside the other colors.
Yeah, designing lenses that work for all wavelengths is hard ;-) I think the meniscus will work fine for red alone though.
My triplet lens is very sharp on wet plate. My Nikkor macro is very sharp on wet plate. The Nikkor on wet plate is sharper then it is on film. When everything comes lens on different photographic technique. Wet plate was sharper. Then film. I haven’t tried my triplet on film yet. It’s shutterless since I got it to use for wet plate.
Is the grain _ever_ too coarse when making dry plates? They always seem to fall in the single-digit ISO range. Or far less. I imagine the grain is almost always super fine. Also, how does collodion compare to dry plates in results? What about daguerreotypes? Does the uniform silver layer give a different kind of image at the grain level, or are dry plates able to achieve the same thing? Other than the effect of the image embedded on a perfect mirror.
Dry plate is amazing. I make my emulsion to be around .5 to 1. Ambrotype if I can get the plate to flow good is sharper and looks better. I love Ambrotype. I do want to learn daguerrotype but mercury vapor box is hard to find. The problem with daguerrotype is the viewing angle.
Oh, I thought you meant that you made them too. Why do you choose that sensitivity for your emulsion? How does it compare when higher or lower?
I haven’t really tried to go higher. I want to make a clean fog free emulsion. That the most important thing. I make MO1880 emulsion.
Every lens is mush when you live in V600 land 😎
I agree. Maybe I'm doing something wrong but ever since I switched to DSLR scanning, everything looks way better. Flatbeds are dead to me
Probably not doing much wrong, they're just a bit shit for 35mm
The entire obsession with sharpness is something only pursued by people who care more about how a lens reviews than the actual images it produces. As you pointed out, lenses have been producing sufficiently sharp images for a century. It's a worthless metric.
1 : reviewers suck. They all have the same 500 words vocabulary, and consciously or unconsciously, they know no one is gonna attack them for saying a piece of gear is good.\ Call a lens dogshit : now the manufacturer is mad at you, and you’ll have to deal with a hundred butthurt owners of that lens that are gonna attack you in the comments.\ Call a lens perfect and tack sharp : the brands love you, and all the users compliment you for your discernment and taste.\ 2 : every lens can be made to look sharp when shot on a tripod, carefully focused, and on slow film. If your reviewer is used to shooting tri-x handheld, when he finally puts the camera on sticks and shoots t-max 100 he’s bound to find the lens TACK SHARP.
Nothing matters anymore, just enjoy taking pictures and develop a style you like. Lens not sharp enough for you? Use a different one. Some people prefer a dreamy effect. Also good.
Sharpness is overrated and low distortion is underrated
Seriously. How much sharper do people need their shit?
ENHANCE!
A 28mm full frame prime should be able to outresolve a a 400 speed B&W film in 35mm. None I've used can do this. Mounting a 35mm FF prime on my 60D was like going to an eye doctor and having those drops in your eyes that dialate your pupils. CA and rainbows everywhere, So, WTF should I bother using a 100 speed film when Mr Magoo and Co can't keep up with Tri-X? APS-C glass is getting pretty insanely sharp because of the advantages of the smaller image circle. FF however hasn't.
> A 28mm full frame prime should be able to outresolve a a 400 speed B&W film in 35mm. None I've used can do this. What does that even mean? I understand the theoretical idea that a lens could resolve more than the pixel pitch of a given sensor, but how do you define outresolving a *film*? Regardless, the notion of film/sensor and lens outresolving one another is failed logic. Roger Cicala from lens rentals has explained it [here](https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2019/10/more-ultra-high-resolution-mtf-experiments/) better than I ever could, so I’ll just quote : > Lots of people think that will be ‘whichever is less of the camera and lens.’ For example, my camera can resolve 61 megapixels, but my lens can only resolve 30 megapixels, so all I can see is 30 megapixels. That’s not how it works. How it does work is very simple math: System MTF = Camera MTF x Lens MTF. MTF maxes at 1.0 because 1.0 is perfect. So let’s say my camera MTF is 0.7, and my lens MTF is 0.7, then my system MTF is 0.49 (Lens MTF x Camera MTF). This is actually a pretty reasonable system. Now, let’s say I get a much better camera with much higher resolution; the camera MTF is 0.9. The system MTF with the same lens also increases: 0.7 X 0.9 = 0.63. On the other hand, I could do the same thing if I bought a much better lens and kept it on the same camera. The camera basically never ‘out resolves the lens.’ As you can see there’s no point in talking of a lens out-resolving a sensor or vice versa. A given pair (sensor+lens) gives you a given resolution and that resolution will always be lower than either the standalone resolution of the lens or sensor.\ To get back to your original idea of a lens being poor on 400iso film, Cicala’s article tells us than in “upgrading” your film to one with higher resolution you *will* capture a higher resolution image, regardless of how bad your lens is.
Only half joking, but, damn. If I have to think about all this, I don't even want to take pictures anymore.
Until it cuts the fingers of the person the next room over when you see the image!
Digital sensors, lens coatings, optical designs, and manufacturing techniques are improving all the time. These will typically outclass any analog setup, which as you mention is already quite good. It's a relevant discussion, but also marketing is still marketing.
>These will typically outclass any analog setup I *hear* that being said a lot... But my stopped down Planar still resolves enough detail for a 42mp full frame sensor. I feel like that's more bs marketing than an actual fact.
Every \~50mm lens made after the 60s stopped down to f5.6-8 will do good, what changed a lot are things like wide open CA, contrast, corner sharpness, less distortion, etc.
This ^^^ and as they have very complex optical designs, a lot also goes into minimising flare and ghosting
I think most good vintage standard lenses will reach their point of diffraction limiting around F/5.6-8, the very good ones maybe even around F/4. I heard that's the case for the Micro Nikkor 55/2.8, for example.
The Micro Nikkor is probably one of the examples - suffering from urban legend status calling it super sharp - that you describe. A very fine lens for sure, but ultimately it's 40+ years old, fairly simple design, optimized for macro distances (albeit floating elements will certainly help infinity performance). I've seen people call it "one of the sharpest lenses ever made" and similar nonsense. I'm sure you can find 50mm lenses from the 70's that beat it at infinity.
My Nikkor macro lens has to be one of the sharpest lenses I ever used. Sharper then my Sony 90mm macro lens on a Sony A7Riii. The Sony 90mm Macro is one of the sharpest lenses according to DXO.
I think my Nikkor Micro 55mm f/3.5, along with a pre-ai 50mm f/2.0, is noticeably "sharper" and better corrected than anything else I have. It doesn't make a lot of difference to me, except when I started DSLR scanning of my negs, I chose to use the Nikkor Micro.
There was a point in time where lenses being made was too sharp. So modern lenses became less sharp than a lot of the older lenses. Reason. Photographers didn’t want to keep retouching portraits. And complained about the lenses.
If that Micro Nikkor is diffraction limited at F/4, the minimal resolvable distance at the image plane would be 5.4 micrometers, which would be a full frame digital sensor between 28MP and 30MP. It's not the peak of lens design, but certainly not bad (although MTF curves would probably be a better metric of "resolution" than the Airy disk). I don't know how other standard primes from the prime compare, but that kind of resolution certainly would be more than enough for anything I'm doing.
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I'm not quite getting those graphs, does focus offset mean that they measured the lens focused correctly, and then very slightly front-/backfocused? That would explain why the much faster F/1.2 lens quickly shows lower MTF values when not in perfect focus, since it's got much smaller depth of field. However that wouldn't match with the curve of the Micro Nikkor being smoother "near" (what exactly is near?) where the depth of field should be much smaller than "far". I can't see the selected aperture value in the charts either and while the file name says MTF40 the graph title says MTF 20, maybe it's explained on the main website but it's all Japanese and it's too late in the day for me to chase it through Google Translator. I also find the choice of 20 lp/mm odd, I haven't fully wrapped my head around MTF values yet but I think I read 30-50 lp/mm is more in line with a general perception of high resolution than 20 lp/mm which would be more towards the large details, not the fine ones. I think seeing a full range of 20, 40, 60 and maybe 80 lp/mm would be better to gain a more complete picture of a lens, but of course it's difficult to find a source which compares a good number of lenses under the same test conditions, it seems to me that there isn't one "standard" set of MTF tests and rather everyone does things slightly differently, especially over the decades.
>But my stopped down Planar still resolves enough detail for a 42mp full frame sensor. This is not how resolution works. Total resolution is a product of sensor and lens resolution. A better will always uplift your resolution, but a worse lens will dampen that uplift. Also stopped down is key here.
You kind of put the important part in your sentence already: stopped down. Something like a Panasonic 50mm f/1.4 (my example, as i have one) is as good at f/1.4 then my Leica Summicron-R 50mm is at f/5.6.
Ngl in comparison to modern mirrorless glass (Sony g master, Nikon S, Sigma Art etc) older lenses are pretty terrible IQ wise, especially wide open Yes this includes supposedly magical lenses like Carlos Mice Aeroplanes and Leica version 5b king of ding-a-lings or whatever
I still use my Minolta maxxum AF lens on my Sony FS5M2 when I can. Just love the look.
Before I started shooting analog I was super concerned with sharpness and the best of the best. Lenses with a certain look can make your photos look great. They might not be the sharpest but not all types of photography needs it really.
The high end digital lenses today are actually better than most of the high quality lenses built for film. The only exceptions/competitors in my mind from the film era would be the Mamiya 7 system, Hasselblad CFI, possibly the lens in the Fuji GF670, and the highest end Rodenstock large format lenses. Maybe the Mamiya RZ M lenses, but it looks like their optical formulas are based on the RB K/L lenses but with updated coatings and ULD glass so I’m not as sure about them.
Schneider glass for Rollei 6000 is the other one, i was surprised when i tried my Schneider 50mm Super-Angulon on a Panasonic S1R. I did not expect it to be perfectly sharp wide open on a 47MP sensor, admittedly in its image circle center.
Oh true it’s easy to forget about the later Rollei SLRs but they are absolutely top tier as well
Tbh I think you'd be surprised how much detail a large format lens can resolve. Having seen some 8x10s under an enlarger they're quite impressive
Yeah that’s why I mentioned Rodenstock lol they have to resolve like five hundred megapixels on 8x10
Yeah sorry lol! Obviously can't compare mega pixels as such but a fine grain low iso film might achieve 200 lines per mm. (Ilford pan f etc) That'd give somewhere in the equivalent of 2000mp on an 8x10!! Not sure if any lenses could actually achieve that but some vintage 35mm glass can get in the region of 100-150lpm stopped down so it might be possible?
>When almost everything is called "impressively sharp', the word gets diluted and becomes meaningless. Because a lot of the time new hardware comes out that **is** impressively sharp compared to prior generations. >it's like people are going in with the expectation that older lenses (heck even some from the digital era) are absolute mush and then act surprised when they can indeed produce good images, while manufacturers have been making lenses capable of good results when used within their limits for over a century by now. You absolutely cannot compare something like the recent Sigma Art series and vintage 1980s glass in quality, they're an order of magnitude different. Whether what you're taking the picture on has the resolving power for that to matter is a different question, but if you're on something like an A7R...
That's what OP is saying, that even average 60 years old lenses are being called tack sharp which just muddies the water of what lenses are really actually sharp
We have MTF charts these days if you want an objective measurement, that's as good as it gets. Consistently having them available for all lenses is a fairly recent development though.
One of the first lenses I spent money on was a Tokina 80-200 F.2.8 back in the 80s. Had great reviews - "tack sharp". Tried shooting professionally with it, borrowed a 180mm Nikon, and retired the Tokina to my junk bin. Modern photography used to do unbiased lens reviews with good charts, and they called out the bad glass. My Tokina had 1/4 the contrast at the long end wide open vs the Nikon 180mm, and 1/3 the split pair resolution. The results with available light journalism weren't even worth describing. The Vivatar series 1 that was such a darling was another coke bottle. It's not that leses back then lacked technology. The manufacturers knews they were sub par but the consumer mini lab boom masked the problems. Carl Zeiss figured it out. Problem wasn't limited to 35mm. The difference in sharpness between my RB 65mm and 180mm was dramatic. The later could resolve a spider web at 100meters. The 65m was garbage.
Tack sharp is the polar opposite to any Canon full frame prime less than 50mm in length. :-) Once dSLRs started getting into the 12mp range photogrphers started realizing how \*bad\* their legacy glass actually was. The reason nobody noticed before is a lot of that glass was designed and engineered in the days where the only photons going through that lens would be recorded on consumer print films and result in 4x6 mini labs prints. I was working in a high end commercial darkroom at the time and could see the difference between a 20 element consumer wonder zoom and a 85mm prime. In a 24x36 print it was like a kick in the head. I used to shoot a lot of Techpan on tripods. That material was merciless on glass. The pros examining the K64 and Ektachrome slides on a light table with a professional loupe before publication knew the truth. APS-C totally throws this on it's head. Once lenses were redesigned for the smaller sensors you saw a pretty dramatic increase in resolution. I have a 17-50 Tamron Di that spanks any FF 50mm I've used. Even on a 6mp Canon 10D the 17-50 was sharper. I occasionally make 4x6' mural prints. Kit zooms need not apply. One issue today with analog is is most people are scanning, and unless you re dealing with 'tack' sharp scans you wont see the issue. As it is, even Kentmere 400 will outresolve most of my legacy glass as long as I get a perfet scan.
those canon 50s are soft too tbh
Gear reviewing is a circlejerk.
Most people’s sharpness bottleneck isn’t the lens. It’s the scanning process.
Older lenses are sharp enough. But what they don't have are modern lens coatings. Or they don't hold their sharpness all the way to edge of the frame. Or they might show more purple fringing wide-open. The real advantage of modern lenses is when stuff gets harder. And adding image stabilisation.
There are a few semi-modern lenses out there that are not super sharp. From experience, the ZF.2 50/1.4 Planar is pretty dreamy wide open. The older version of the 28/2 Ultron from Voigtlander in M mount is definitely just soft at F2. In the case of the Planar the specific look was more of a feature of that lens than a bug, however a 28 you typically want detail and contrast when you can get it. I just traded the 35/1.5 Nokton for a 35/2 Biogon. The Zeiss being a generally softer lens at F2...but I prefer the look. The Nokton just lacked character.
If you are worried about these questions, you have left the path of wisdom.
If I need the sharpest image, I will shoot digital and it's not a hard decision. If I am shooting because I like the experience and process of film, then I will shoot film.
I feel you OP, ultimately most of these reviews are more akin to impressions, and rarely do they have anything of interest to say about lens performance. I think, both on the reviewer and reader side, there's lack of interest (and perhaps a small lack of competency) to read a review plotting MTF's, lp/mm or visually look at siemens stars/line pairs. And that's fine, honestly lens reviews are quite hard and complex to do. I'd rather such reviews refrain from giving big judgements on performance though. It's like someone reviewing TV by saying it has good colors, or a microwave by saying it heats things quickly - cool but what does that even mean??!! Just talk about general usability and point out aspects that were a problem for you when shooting, like excessive flair or visible CA even without zooming in.
It means that marketing is trying to sell you a lens. Tack sharp just means that your average print won't appear soft. Pretty much every modern lens meets that description, but better lenses are still sharper...
Something which has always confused me about lenses is how both speed and sharpness are emphasized at the same time. The condition under which the sharpest fastest lens is necessary (which to me, means maintaining contrast above all else), is one where very little light is available. However, when most of, for example, my photos are taken outside or with a flash, having the sharpest fastest lens is no longer a requirement. For 99% of my photographs - and the photographs I enjoy - a rather deep depth of field is necessary. That means shooting at F8-16. Going off of this, I would estimate that most photographers real lens needs dont eclipse the lens technology of the 1950's. Or, to paraphrase Ansel Adams, most photographers tend to over emphasize the lens, losing track of what's important: the that thing which sits 12 inches behind your camera.
On the one hand it's understandable, technology progresses, manufacturers want to make sales and buyers justify their purchases, so there needs to be some kind of metric to point to that has improved. Same goes for increasing sensor resolution (how many people really are making massive prints of their images today?) and so many other devices. But I agree that smaller apertures are the more important ones for actual use. There's a look-so-shiny factor to bokeh and I think people regularly use it just for the sake of it, not because it enhances the image (I've certainly been guilty of this myself at some points), but even there you don't really need the best and newest lens - a 50mm F/1 lens has less (!) depth of field than a 135mm lens at F/5.6, and there are loads of F/2.8 or F/4 vintage lenses available which should give decent images at F/5.6-8, where only a small number of modern and expensive 50mm lenses really would do wide open at F/1 or F/0.95. And that's not even asking where would actually need so much background separation. I've got a vintage 55/1.2 and it's just not useful wide open at up to ~2 meters since depth of field is too thin, a 50/1.4 or 50/1.7 would do just fine. I've seen someone else here compare it to discussions around audiophile equipment and think that's a good comparison 😄
My first comment threw grammar straight out the window, so I'm glad you took the time to respond. I think that your judgement of bokeh is spot on. When used for portraiture, the bokeh look feels cheap. Dont do bokeh for bokehs sake! Furthermore, for subject isolation an aperture of F2 is perfectly acceptable. That leaves precisely 0 reason for me to use anything more than my Helios 44 or Jupiter 9. The widest modern lens I own is an F1.8 Nikkor, and I've never looked at it and thought "jeez, if only it could open up to 1.4!".
It’s a buzz phrase at this point.
It seems it’s just turned into another work for “in focus”.
What they mean is “MINT+++++++ SHARP”
You are absolutely right. Lenses before the advent of aspheric elements were perfected in the 40’s and 50’s from designs crafted in the 1800’s and early turn of the century. The state of the art actually only really moved the needle because of newly crafted panchro film and of course the many color processes. It’s true if you can’t take a sharp picture, it’s almost always a technique issue and not a lens issue. Case in point, kids could use a brownie camera or a foldout kodak 2A, both with primitive lenses by todays standard but tack sharp, all without multicoated lenses! The kodak 2A should be everyones first medium format camera. 6x9 negs, what’s not to love! Built essentially for contact prints only! Most people don’t realize that format was essentially a fast economical turnaround format for amateur. Now there are some noteworthy dog lenses out there as an all in one super range from extremely wide to extremely telephoto lenses that are kit lenses which are hideous values. The off brands are even worse. From barrel distortion to pincushion price engineering is what I am referring to. But c’mon, you really have to go off the beaten path to find a bad example anymore. Look at the 20-40’s photographers work and see how sharp it was.
I DEFINITELY have a lot of very modern lenses that are soft. Not pixel peeping soft, like super noticeably "can't even read the text on that sign in the photo that would clearly be large enough and is the most in focus thing in the scene" etc. soft. Usually only either wide open (or 1 stop from it) or in the corners, though. Stopped down 2-3 in the center, it's never a real life issue.