Medium format lens on high-pixel-depth EOS 400D?

Cobalt60 · Joined: 01 Mar 2007 Posts: 544 Location: Central Europe

Every now and then one is reading comments that the above combination doesn't really make sense because MF lenses won't have high enough resolution because of the bigger film size because ... blah blah blah

Here's a quick shot (of course f4, so wide open) with a Pentacon 300/4 via M42 connector on the 400D.
And again: please judge by yourself ...

(In case someone is interested in acquiring exactly this lens this shot was made: as it's scheduled to "depart" anyhow I am sure we will find a decent price for both Smile

)

Now for the picture ... again a cat (sorry *g*) ... slightly sharpened plus 2 unsharpened 100% crops - enjoy!

LucisPictor · Expire: 2013-12-03

Well, you give some evidence that this prejudice is just nonsense - just like any prejudice, really! Wink

The thing is that good medium format lenses do not produce a lower resolution than good small format lenses.
The reason why a medium format picture seems to have a better resolution is that for a print of the same size the small medium negative has to be enlarged more times than the medium format negative.

Of course the quality is higher if you enlarge tenfold than if you enlarge 20fold.

The resolution capabilty of a good medium format lens is about the same as of a good small format lens. That's why you won't profit from using a medium format lens, but you also won't lose anything. But...

There is the point that medium format lenses are mostly really good lenses because they were produced for professionals more or less, whereas sf-lenses also came in "customer" quality.

And with a medium format lens you use a smaller part of the projected image, in a way just the centre which crops off the traditionally worse edges when used at small film cams. The same thing happens when you use a full format lens at a crop DSLR, but this is, of course, no news.

Orio · Expire: 2012-12-04

I also find this untrue by my experience.
But we also should not forget about one thing: on a 24x36 format, you only use the central part of a medium format lens. And on an APS 1.6 crop format, you only use the central part of the central part!
In other words, you are using only the best of the best of this lens. It's notorious that lenses offer the best of their resolution power in the center. Depending on the quality of the lens build, the resolution at the edges can be even much lower.
But having that said, I still agree, that there is nothing that good medium format lenses should be ashamed of.
Of course, like in the 135 format, there will surely be good MF lenses and bad MF lenses...