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wuxiekeji
Joined: 15 Aug 2012 Posts: 213
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 3:05 pm Post subject: Cheap but good medium format lenses on digital? |
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wuxiekeji wrote:
I'm wondering if anyone has a suggestion for a cheap but good ~50mm, medium format (4x5) lens which is tack sharp on an APS-C sensor. Sharp when stopped down and sharp only at infinity is fine. I don't care about bokeh. I'm thinking about fixing the lens, throwing my camera body onto a motorized XY stage, build a dark housing for it and stitch together some gigapixel shots of landscapes. How is the Hasselblad 50/4 Distagon, and/or are there cheaper ones to be looking for?
(I ask here because I imagine there are people who are using these lenses as DIY tilt-shift lenses ...) _________________ Canon EOS 6D | Canon EOS 60D | Canon EOS-M | Voigtlander Nokton 1.4/35 | Zeiss Distagon C-Y 4/18 | Zeiss Distagon ZF 2/28 | Samyang 1.4/35 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/50 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/85 | Zeiss Makro-Planar C-Y 2.8/100 | Zeiss Sonnar C-Y 2.8/135 | Nikkor ED Ai-S 2.8/180 | Canon FD SSC Fluorite 2.8/300 | Tair-3S 4.5/300 |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 3:44 pm Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
All medium format lenses by Nikon, Komura, Bronica, Mamiya, Zeiss, Schneider etc are pro level items and are all good. However, they are usually not so great on digital as 35mm lenses are.
I don't see the point in doing what you describe, all you need to make huge images is a tripod and a camera, no other equipment needed. Stitch using Photoshop, Gigapano or Microsoft ICE or whatever you prefer.
Here's a 168mp shot of a railway viaduct I did with my NEX-3 and Fujinon-TV 1.8/75:
This one is 149mp, I used my Konica Zoom-Hexanon UC 4/80-200 at the 80mm setting:
_________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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wuxiekeji
Joined: 15 Aug 2012 Posts: 213
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 3:53 pm Post subject: |
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wuxiekeji wrote:
iangreenhalgh1 wrote: |
I don't see the point in doing what you describe, all you need to make huge images is a tripod and a camera, no other equipment needed. Stitch using Photoshop, Gigapano or Microsoft ICE or whatever you prefer. |
Yeah, I've done this plenty before although you get some distortion from rotating the camera. This almost always results in some artefacts in the image. The artefacts are especially bad if you try to do a panorama in 2 dimensions and especially bad if you're trying to shoot architecture. Translating the sensor while keeping the lens fixed (with a medium format lens) would result in no artefacts except from moving objects. Also I'm looking at stitching together perhaps 10x10 15x15 images and that would be a pain to shoot by hand. With some hacked DIY electronics I can automate the entire shooting process, and automate the stitching process as well with some Matlab/Octave code. As long as I can find a cheap medium format lens that can outresolve my APS-C sensor stopped down and have an image circle around 5"x5" I'd be in business.
Nice shots, by the way!! _________________ Canon EOS 6D | Canon EOS 60D | Canon EOS-M | Voigtlander Nokton 1.4/35 | Zeiss Distagon C-Y 4/18 | Zeiss Distagon ZF 2/28 | Samyang 1.4/35 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/50 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/85 | Zeiss Makro-Planar C-Y 2.8/100 | Zeiss Sonnar C-Y 2.8/135 | Nikkor ED Ai-S 2.8/180 | Canon FD SSC Fluorite 2.8/300 | Tair-3S 4.5/300 |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
I don't find big shots that much of a problem to do manually, and I just used Photoshop's Warp function to correct distortion. I usually don't get much distortion, even with extreme stitches because I don't use wide angle lenses. I mostly use 50mm lenses of symmetrical design for stitching because they have very little distortion, and the less distortion the lens has, the less you get in your finished pano. Even a 28mm lens on APS-C can give you big distortion problems.
Also, you will get much better quality using a 35mm lens on APS-C as you're using just the sweet spot of the lens and overlapping the images anyways, so if you get it right, you should have the same sharpness and quality throughout the frame. With a MF lens where you are making use of the full image circle by moving the sensor around, you are going to get less quality, as even the best MF lenses aren't the same quality throughout their image circle.
If you want to automate the process, look at a motorised head like the Autopano one, one of those and something like a Planar 1.7/50 would be close to the perfect setup imho.
Here's a 4 x 12 stitch I did the other day with my Konica Zoom-Hexanon 4/70-150 at the 70mm setting. I corrected the distortion (which wasn't severe at all) with the Warp function in CS5:
There's been something bugging me about this shot, something looks slightly off to me and I just realised what it is - I corrected the distortion and perspective so that everything is ruler-straight and I have overdone it, the top of the buildings seem to loom at you - there should be a slight conversion of the verticals and by making them straight, it has made it look like the top of the building is bigger than the bottom, because the eye expects the verticals to converge slightly.
Thanks for the kind words. _________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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wuxiekeji
Joined: 15 Aug 2012 Posts: 213
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:14 pm Post subject: |
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wuxiekeji wrote:
iangreenhalgh1 wrote: |
I don't find big shots that much of a problem to do manually, and I just used Photoshop's Warp function to correct distortion. I usually don't get much distortion, even with extreme stitches because I don't use wide angle lenses. I mostly use 50mm lenses of symmetrical design for stitching because they have very little distortion, and the less distortion the lens has, the less you get in your finished pano. Even a 28mm lens on APS-C can give you big distortion problems. |
Good point, my 50mms and up are all pretty low distortion and blindingly sharp stopped down. I'll have to give this a shot again. Maybe what I really need is to build a 2-axis rotating jig to do my 10x10 and 15x15 stitches. Shove my 135mm Sonnar on it and I might be able to get my gigapixel. _________________ Canon EOS 6D | Canon EOS 60D | Canon EOS-M | Voigtlander Nokton 1.4/35 | Zeiss Distagon C-Y 4/18 | Zeiss Distagon ZF 2/28 | Samyang 1.4/35 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/50 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/85 | Zeiss Makro-Planar C-Y 2.8/100 | Zeiss Sonnar C-Y 2.8/135 | Nikkor ED Ai-S 2.8/180 | Canon FD SSC Fluorite 2.8/300 | Tair-3S 4.5/300
Last edited by wuxiekeji on Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:25 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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dan_
Joined: 05 Dec 2012 Posts: 1056 Location: Romania
Expire: 2016-12-19
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:22 pm Post subject: |
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dan_ wrote:
"Cheap", "50mm MF lens" & " outresolve my APS-C sensor" are hardly going together in the same sentence.
A cheap & good lens is the Pentax-A 645 55mm f2.8. I have it, did some tests with it some time before and stooped down to f/5.6-f/11 it is sharp but not stellar. The Distagon is probably better. I've tested the Pentax-A 645 35mm too and and it behaves a little better.
The 35mm FA version is one of the best WA for medium format but isn't cheap.
Another MF lens I tested on APS-C is the Mamiya RB 65mm f/4.5. It may be your best choice as it proved to be very sharp, sharper then the Pentax lenses, and is cheap too. But is very heavy and bulky and adapting it to anything is really very difficult. |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:27 pm Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
wuxiekeji wrote: |
iangreenhalgh1 wrote: |
I don't find big shots that much of a problem to do manually, and I just used Photoshop's Warp function to correct distortion. I usually don't get much distortion, even with extreme stitches because I don't use wide angle lenses. I mostly use 50mm lenses of symmetrical design for stitching because they have very little distortion, and the less distortion the lens has, the less you get in your finished pano. Even a 28mm lens on APS-C can give you big distortion problems. |
Good point, my 50mms and up are all pretty low distortion. I'll have to give this a shot again. Maybe what I really need is to build a 2-axis rotating jig to do my 10x10 and 15x15 stitches. Shove my 135mm Sonnar on it and I might be able to get my gigapixel. |
Biggest I did was 450mp, that became a right PITA to put together.
It's all about programmable control electronics. You need to know the field of view of your lens (let's say 45 degrees) for a 50mm. With overlapping, let's drop that to 30. So you need to program your motorised thingie to rotate 30 degrees between each shot. If you change the lens, you need to change the degree of rotation, obviously. I suspect you'll need a 200mm lens to get that gigapixel.
I'm a bit of a masochist, so I'll have a go at a 10x10 stitch and see how big the resultant file is, might give you an idea of if it's worth it. a 4x4 is likely to be over 100mp and sufficient for printing huge.
Hiya Dan.
I have the Distagon 4/50 in Rollei mount. Not used it much but a quick trial on my NEX suggests it's sharp but less so that a top 35mm lens, even a humble 2.8/50 Tessar is liable to outperform it on digital I think.
I agree about the difficulty of adapting those huge Mamiya RZ lenses, i have the superb 140mm macro and still haven't got around to adapting it onto a digital camera as it's so damn big and heavy. _________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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kiruajon
Joined: 01 May 2013 Posts: 50 Location: France
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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kiruajon wrote:
iangreenhalgh1 wrote: |
All medium format lenses by Nikon, Komura, Bronica, Mamiya, Zeiss, Schneider etc are pro level items and are all good. However, they are usually not so great on digital as 35mm lenses are.
I don't see the point in doing what you describe, all you need to make huge images is a tripod and a camera, no other equipment needed. Stitch using Photoshop, Gigapano or Microsoft ICE or whatever you prefer.
Here's a 168mp shot of a railway viaduct I did with my NEX-3 and Fujinon-TV 1.8/75:
This one is 149mp, I used my Konica Zoom-Hexanon UC 4/80-200 at the 80mm setting:
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How do proceed to do 149mp shot ? _________________ NEX 5R
Hexanons 2.8/24, 2.8/35, 1.7/50, 4/70-150 AR
Vivitar 2.8/55 macro (komine)
Looking for 100mm or 90mm macro manual lens |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 8:04 pm Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
I hope this helps. I just stuck my camera on a tripod outside my back door and made a pano, it's 6x9 shots, should be 54 total but I missed a couple and had 52.
I used my Hexanon 1.4/50 at f11, seven then, dof was not sufficient, with a scene like this where you want everything from foreground to background in focus. You can stop down more, but will lose a little sharpness, or use focus stacking, which I have yet to try as it multiplies the number of shots and amount of data to process. Even with 8gigs in my PC, I had to put this thing together in 3 pieces.
#1
#2
#3
#4 After putting the three pieces together, I then joined them, all using Photoshop CS5. The resultant image is 22200x9884, which is a little over 209mp.
#5 As you can see, there is almost no distortion, but the camera was slightly off level by 4 degrees, so I had to rotate the picture.
#6 Crop it to remove the excess:
#7 Now a little warping to fix some minor issues.
#8 A final crop to remove the dull left hand side and a little excess sky, and a little tweaking of brightness and contrast and the end result is this image, 16827 x 6715, which is 108mp.
So, to get a gigapxel image, you're going to have to use a long lens, say 200mm, and you're going to have to resort to focus stacking to get everything in focus with a lens that long. This is going to mean you will need one hell of a lot of horsepower in your PC, I'd say 32 or 64 gigs of RAM and a dual socket motherboard with a pair of 8 core processors. I have a 4 core processor with 8 gigs of RAM and it is only feasible to create images in the few hundreds of mp, gigapixel work would be out of the question. _________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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Attila
Joined: 24 Feb 2007 Posts: 57865 Location: Hungary
Expire: 2025-11-18
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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Attila wrote:
Thank you Ian , very useful! _________________ -------------------------------
Items on sale on Ebay
Sony NEX-7 Carl Zeiss Planar 85mm f1.4, Minolta MD 35mm f1.8, Konica 135mm f2.5, Minolta MD 50mm f1.2, Minolta MD 250mm f5.6, Carl Zeiss Sonnar 180mm f2.8
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kiruajon
Joined: 01 May 2013 Posts: 50 Location: France
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 9:37 pm Post subject: |
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kiruajon wrote:
Thank you ! _________________ NEX 5R
Hexanons 2.8/24, 2.8/35, 1.7/50, 4/70-150 AR
Vivitar 2.8/55 macro (komine)
Looking for 100mm or 90mm macro manual lens |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Sun Jul 28, 2013 10:03 pm Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
You're very welcome, mon amis!
_________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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wuxiekeji
Joined: 15 Aug 2012 Posts: 213
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 5:19 am Post subject: |
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wuxiekeji wrote:
Attila wrote: |
Thank you Ian , very useful! |
Yep very useful to know!! Thanks so much for giving this a test! I'll have to experiment more with this later. _________________ Canon EOS 6D | Canon EOS 60D | Canon EOS-M | Voigtlander Nokton 1.4/35 | Zeiss Distagon C-Y 4/18 | Zeiss Distagon ZF 2/28 | Samyang 1.4/35 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/50 | Zeiss Planar C-Y 1.4/85 | Zeiss Makro-Planar C-Y 2.8/100 | Zeiss Sonnar C-Y 2.8/135 | Nikkor ED Ai-S 2.8/180 | Canon FD SSC Fluorite 2.8/300 | Tair-3S 4.5/300 |
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bernhardas
Joined: 01 Jan 2013 Posts: 1432
Expire: 2017-05-23
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 7:36 am Post subject: |
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bernhardas wrote:
edited
Last edited by bernhardas on Mon Apr 18, 2016 8:07 am; edited 1 time in total |
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iangreenhalgh1
Joined: 18 Mar 2011 Posts: 15679
Expire: 2014-01-07
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Posted: Mon Jul 29, 2013 10:35 am Post subject: |
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iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
Thanks for the kind words guys, much appreciated. _________________ I don't care who designed it, who made it or what country it comes from - I just enjoy using it! |
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