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What is your sharpest/softest lens?
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PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:16 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Learn to adjust colours in photoshop then save yourself a lot of money. Rolling Eyes


PostPosted: Wed Apr 02, 2014 2:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
iangreenhalgh1 wrote:
Learn to adjust colours in photoshop then save yourself a lot of money. Rolling Eyes

I know it sounds (or actually is Wink) snobby but of course you can edit white balance, saturate, desaturate, reduce or push contrast, you can tone your image, add clarity, you can improve a lot, but to achieve a perfectly natural colored picture with a lens which does falsify colors and tones due uneven transmission is almost impossible or at least very hard.
That's like shooting through a light colored filter and then trying to fix colors afterwards, you will never reach original.

Zeiss for example dosen't care very much about colors, their coatings are made to produce very high contrast, best transmission and minum flare. Depending on target, light and lens I like their modern trendy/poppy T* colors anyway but I would prefer more balanced colors like from current Leitz lenses, even if it would cost some flare-resitance etc.

Most sovjet lenses have rather crappy coatings/colors imho, producing neither good flare control nor well balanced colors. With many sovjet lenses I had it was like always shooting through a light brownish-yellowish-something color filter, often paired with lower contrast than competitors and worse flare control. Not only lenses have these type of coating, also other kinds of optics. The most falsified colors I've ever seen was from an (in all other aspects very good) LOMO microscope eyepiece, it had very high contrast but it's MC visually made look clean white paper highly visible dirty-brown-yellow.

I also don't like many other lenses for their colors, for example many Canon lenses or classic CZJ Tessars and many derivates are looking slighty coldish; even with perfect white balance tones do never look fully as they should to look natural.


PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 4:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Softest wide open: Triopan 100/2.8, OM Zuiko 55/1.2 (i like it's dreamy look wide open however)

Sharpest wide open: pick a Zeiss.. 135/2 sonnar, 100/2 makro-planar, 55/1.8 Sonnar, 45/2 planar contax G, 35/2 distagon, 21/2.8 distagon .. all really sharp!


PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:27 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
re. colours, as someone who intentionally adds an unnatural colour tint to almost every photo in post-processing, I think it's even more important to get good colours from the lens to begin with if you're photoshopping. It's a lot harder to get a good-looking result if you're fighting against the lens, trying to fix “bias” in the colours first. Fortunately there are many relatively inexpensive lenses that produce colours† that I like, so no need to buy Leitz… =)


† EBC Fujinons, Minolta AF lenses (some made in collaboration with Leitz, which might explain it), etc.


PostPosted: Thu Apr 03, 2014 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Edited

Last edited by bernhardas on Tue May 10, 2016 7:18 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 2:12 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
bernhardas wrote:
Is transmission really independent from "real world" light intensity? What about flare and ghosts when we get a lot of light?

Yes, the transmission is a relative measure; consequently it is independent of the light intensity. Flare and ghosting appear when shooting scenes with extreme contrast, or when the light from a source outside the photographed scene reaches the sensor (or film) due to spurious reflections inside the lens. Flare and ghosting may occur in night scenes, and even in scenes illuminated by moonlight!
http://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/6752/why-did-my-nighttime-shots-of-the-moon-create-trailing-spheres

Moon's ghost below Jupiter:
http://pauljwillett.files.wordpress.com/2014/01/img_6928-small.jpg

Ghosting and flare in night shots:
http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/images/50mm-f1/sample-images/5D3_7155-athen.jpg
http://www.mcpactions.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/++_DSC01602.jpg

bernhardas wrote:
Also how do coatings impact very low levels of light? And more important is the light itself changingout of the mid day sun quality for which the coating was crated in the first place?

The action of the lens coating is also independent of light intensity. The idea of coating a lens is to eliminate the reflection of light by the lens surfaces. Unfortunately, in practice a residual reflection always remains. The intensity of the residual reflection is dependent on the wavelength, what explains why the coating appears to be colored. An ideal coating would be colorless, or better said, would be totally invisible!

The apparent color of a real coating depends on the material used and the thickness of the film. If the lens manufacturer tunes the coating to minimize the reflection of green, and therefore maximizes the transmission of green, the coating will appear magenta. On the other hand, if the manufacturer tunes the coating to blue, the coating appears yellow. By manipulating the coating of the various surfaces of a photographic lens, the manufacturer can to some extent modify the chromatic characteristics a lens, for example, causing it to be warmer, colder, or neutral.

bernhardas wrote:
Unfortunately my main processing computer gave up

Sorry to hear that. I hope the problem with your computer has been solved by now.


PostPosted: Fri Apr 04, 2014 11:49 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote
In other words:
If transmission is T=0.9 than it stays T=0.9 no matter how bright it as - as you said it's relative from what enters the lens and what leaves the lens and so does NOT depend on effective brightness.

Only changing colors can change transmission, means that the transmission can be T=0.8 for 420nm (blue light) and T=0.98 for red light etc. and 0.9x in average (white light), that's why different lenses and different coatings produce different colors, as explained above.

bernhardas wrote:
Also how do coatings impact very low levels of light? And more important is the light itself changingout of the mid day sun quality for which the coating was crated in the first place?

Photographic lenses and their coatings should be (imho) calibrated for transmitting perfectly white light, so that they are as close as possible to reality.
But in fact most coatings are far from beeing colorless, many are even very colorful.

Astro lenses for example are often made to have a slightly lower transmission in short wavelengths, which does reduce haze, boost contrast and even slightly reduce CAs. When used as photographic lens with daylight this could lead to false colored pictures.

Quote:
The idea of coating a lens is to eliminate the reflection of light by the lens surfaces.

It's not only to elimniate reflection, main reason is also used to get higher transmission.
An single unocated glass surface reflects about 8% of the light in average (depending on refraction index of the glas)... now imagine how much light would come trough an zoom lens with 21 elements with modern ultra high refraction glas without any coatings... singlet T=0.92, doublet T=0.85, triplet T=.... Very Happy

That's why maximum transmission coatings are often more important than to have perfectly neutral colors.


PostPosted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Softest lens I ever had:
Soligor C/D 135 f/2.0 (wide open)

Softest of my current lenses:
Kiron 28mm f/2 (wide open)

Sharpest lens:
Vivitar Series 1 90mm f/2.5 Macro (the "Bokina")

My Minolta 58/1.2 and Pentax DA 70/2.4 are very close though, it's hard to tell on 16MP

Once I've found a buyer for the Kiron, the 58 may well be my softest and sharpest lens all in one...


regards
Jan

Last edited by Boris_Akunin on Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:48 am; edited 1 time in total


PostPosted: Sat Apr 05, 2014 1:31 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
ForenSeil wrote:
It's not only to elimniate reflection, main reason is also used to get higher transmission.


Same thing, light is lost to scattering reflection so reducing this reflection increases transmission.


PostPosted: Sun Apr 06, 2014 4:22 am    Post subject: Reply with quote
Sharpest:
Leica R 100 Makro Elmarit
Voigtländer 2,5/125 APO Makro

Softest:
Nikkor 75-150/3.5 AIS (might be a bad copy, just not impressed)
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