Highest Sharpness & Resolution

[paulr]

Have you asked the lenses? I have. It turned out that many of my lenses for formats larger than 35 mm are much better than crappy on 35 mm.

For example, my 210/9 Konica Hexanon GRII is sharper and contrastier at f/9, f/11, f/16, and f/22 at 1:2 and at ~ 30' than my 200/4 MicroNikkor AIS.

you'll find isolated examples of severely bad 35mm lenses, but for the most part there's no comparison. if you look at MTF charts, you'll see that the manufactureres measure 35mm optics at 10, 20, and 40 lp/mm (vs. 5, 10, and 20 for LF) and that the modulation is as high or higher in the small format optics as the LF optics are at half the resolution.

it's a simple fact of lens design ... if you need five times the image circle size, you're going to have to compromise elsewhere.

[Dan Fromm]

Paul, its an empirical question. Please give concrete examples.

[paulr]

There are lots of MTF curves for 35mm lenses on photodo.com. they've reorganized the site so i don't have a specific page to link to.

schneider-kreuznach.com has mtf curves for all their current lenses.

a telling comparison is between schneider's LF optics, their digital optics, and their medium format optics for rollei. the smaller the format size, the greater the performance.

as an extreem example, a schneider engineer showed me examples of pictures made with a specialized lens that resolves 200 lp/mm at MTF-50. the catch is that the image circle is about 10mm!

[andrew vincent]

good lenses for medium format are only marginally better than good LF lenses in terms of lp/mm, whatever difference there is is usually not going to be recorded because of diffraction limits, film plane flatness, and all the other variables that keep real world resolution FAR below theoretical specs. All of these factors work in favor of 4x5 over medium format in terms of resolution because of film size. 35mm lenses cannot even come close to resolving whatever their theoretical limits are, so it's a bit of a red herring to even bother with them. Certainly no more than 100 lp/mm, and even if were to be a bit more, the difference in film size would squash it in any direct comparison. The only thing better is the new digital medium/large format lenses like Schneider's Digital Series, because then you're working with a whole different set of variables that are MATCHED to the vastly increased lp/mm (up to 200). So there, yes, I'd say you're seeing a lot more data.

[Ole Tjugen]

Time for another comparison shoot I think - I can try a Tessar, an Eurynar, a Hektor (Leitz) and an old Aplanat. I have them all in 135mm...

[paulr]

good lenses for medium format are only marginally better than good LF lenses in terms of lp/mm

well, those traditional lp/mm numbers are fairly useless because they don't tell you anything about actual image quality. Saying a lens resolves 100 lp/mm means little if you don't know the contrast it produces at that resolution. MTF measurements are based on how the eye actually sees sharpness, and they show lenses for smaller formats to be dramatically better than LF lenses. All of this takes into account diffraction limits, etc..

I'm not trying to imply that image quality of the whole system is better. the difference in film size more than makes up for the difference in lens sharpness. if it didn't, we'd all be using small format. My point was that it would be very strange if a large format lens design got repurposed for 35mm.

[Dan Fromm]

Paul, I've done tests on film.

I sometimes shoot flowers on 35 mm with the 210/9 GRII mentioned above. If I hadn't sold them -- I bought them as speculations, not as users -- I'd be happy using any one of the three dagor type 240/9 G-Clarons I've owned in the same application.

In fact, when it is practical I use a Nikon to do acceptance testing on lenses much longer than 100 mm that I intend to use on my 2x3 Graphics. On those cameras, all that matters for a lens made to cover a format larger than 2x3 is is the lens' performance near the center of the field. Testing on 35 mm gets the answer I need at a lower cost than testing on 2x3.

I've tried out a lot of lenses -- I don't own/move as many as Jim Galli, don't own quite as many as Ole Tjugen -- and I've got a number of good Nikkors for 35 mm. My best long lens for 35 mm is a Questar 700. On the emulsions I use at the apertures I shoot my keepers (these are the ones in my travel kit, plus a few others that for one reason or another usually stay home) do very well on 35 mm. I use few of them on 35 mm not because they're not good enough but because they lack modern conveniences like auto diaphragm. Also, since they aren't in Nikon F mount and don't have focusing helicals, using them in the field requires carrying a bellows, adapters, ...

All that said, one of my projects is making an adapter to let me hang a Nikon on a 2x3 Graflok back. This will let me use, e.g., my 480 Apo Nikkor on 35 mm.

Theorizing is fun, but it can't replace testing. If you haven't shot lenses for larger formats on 35 mm against lenses for 35 mm, you have nothing useful to say. Go test, and when you report back name names and report numbers.

[paulr]

If you haven't shot lenses for larger formats on 35 mm against lenses for 35 mm, you have nothing useful to say. Go test, and when you report back name names and report numbers.

uhhhh ... you're saying that your subjective results, with no stated methodology, are useful, while tests done with scientific riggor by optical engineers are not?

i think all you can reasonably report on is what things look like to you, under the specific conditions you tested for. but the OP is about what lens has the highest sharpness and resolution, which is a question that can often only be resolved in a laboratory setting. and my response was to a post suggesting that a large format design was repurposed by leitz for 35mm, which is not (in the opinions of the engineers at companies like schneider at least) a good idea.

[Ole Tjugen]

Nevertheless the Leitz Hektor 135mm f:4 was designed for 9x12cm, and adapted for 35mm by the addition of a spacer tube with helical focus and a Leica thread on the end.

[Dan Fromm]

uhhhh ... you're saying that your subjective results, with no stated methodology, are useful, while tests done with scientific riggor by optical engineers are not?

i think all you can reasonably report on is what things look like to you, under the specific conditions you tested for. but the OP is about what lens has the highest sharpness and resolution, which is a question that can often only be resolved in a laboratory setting. and my response was to a post suggesting that a large format design was repurposed by leitz for 35mm, which is not (in the opinions of the engineers at companies like schneider at least) a good idea.

Friend, I can tell the difference between excrement and shoe polish. Can you?

The OP's question seems pretty naive, perhaps even idiotic. If I'd thought the moderators would let me say this, I'd have said it near the start of this thread.

Your reliance on low frequency MTFs to estimate how well fine detail can be captured on film seems about as intelligent as the original question. As I read published MTF curves, they're good for little but deciding how crazy coverage claims are. Look, for example, at Schneider's MTF curves for Xenars and G-Clarons. They show minimal contrast at low spatial frequencies at the limit of claimed coverage. Giggle-making.

You have to remember that although more aerial resolution at good contrast is preferable to less, what matters is resolution on film or as captured by the sensor. That's why the best way to find out what a lens will do in use is to use it.

As for my test procedures, they may seem informal to you but the rankings they produce are consistent and repeatable. I use the same emulsion, same shutter (to eliminate the effects of variations between shutters), and same targets for my testing. My targets have features with variable spacing, so I can do better than simple go/no go testing based on "resolves some level of fine detail." Different targets at different distances.