The Lens Education of the Noob

[Dan Fromm]

Jim, life is good under my bridge and I have some great goat recipes. If you ever come east to visit your daughter, drop by at Under The Bridge, 08034 and I'll fed you some goat. You'll like it, I promise.

Funny, I thought it was Leica that improved hokum at the expense of sharpness. Until proven otherwise, its all marketing fluff.

Cheers,

Dan

[Oren Grad]

Somewhere I remember reading that Zeiss at some point in history made the conscious decision that their lenses would have more pleasing out of focus and somewhat less over-all sharpness than their Japanese cousins which is why all the people in Asia are paying stupid money for Zeiss lenses 80 years later.

Jim, if the intended reference is to postwar glass, it is to laugh. Apparently there are some good ones among their most recent designs, but for me, growing up with small and medium format, Zeiss always meant "harsh" until proven otherwise. More's the pity that Rolleiflexes and V-Hasselblads were saddled with all those nasty Planars. (Note to Dan: I don't mean necessarily that they consciously traded off refined bokeh - probably not - just that the results most certainly weren't favoring it. I.e., consistent with your view of optical design history.)

[Jim Galli]

Wish I could remember what I read and where. Was it in William's Image Clarity?

[John Kasaian]

There are still plenty of opportunites to scarf up old glass on the cheap! Of course it is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you're going to get (well, not really with a box of chocolates the ingredients are usually printed somewhere on the bottom.) Lenses off old folders, magic lanterns, and projection lenses are all fair game---you pays your money and takes your chances.

[carverlux]

Carver, thanks for the reply.

Manufacturers' names are not design types. Knowing which makes US portrait studios used in 1947 is interesting even though the names you listed account for only 78% of the total. Where's Kodak? Where's Ilex? What was the response rate? Which Wollensak, which Voigtlaender, ... , lenses the studios used is of more interest for this discussion than which makers lenses' they used.

Celebrity endorsements? These days they're purchased. Hasn't it always been thus?

About Schneider's and Rodenstock's absence from the 1947 survey. Y'know, between the wars they were not the first rate manufacturers we now love. They were distinctly bottom drawer. Similarly for the Japanese makers.

Portraiture is one application. There were others. I really wish we had production data. Given the mix of old lenses offered for sale now, its hard to believe that portrait studios were much of the market for lenses. All those tessar types on eBay ...

Impossible to deny the existence of soft focus lenses aimed, possibly primarily, at portrait photographers. Hard to know how much of total production they made up.

I stand by my statement that from the beginning of history lens' designers have tried for faster, covers more, costs less to make. Artistic considerations have always been secondary.

After WWII objective measurement of some aspects of image quality (resolution across the field first, then contrast too, then MTF at a variety of spatial frequencies) came in. Easy to understand how this silenced discussion of the more subjective aspects of image quality that are important to you. Teaching to the test isn't new.

At the moment there are fads for soft focus and bokeh, whatever the proponents mean by the term. It isn't clear that devotees of either have ever been more than a small minority. I'm all for their doing whatever makes them happy, do wish they wouldn't try to convince me that history is on their side or that the fad is not a new development.

Not directly relevant, but I also have trouble grasping why there's a micro 4/3 fad involving using fast lenses. As the LF types insist, there's no substitute for receptor acreage.

Cheers,

Dan

Mr. Fromm,

Please accept that I submit my replies in complete humility as a newcomer to this community where you and others have been so generously raising the collective awareness of all who came. I wish only to add a more inclusive point of view.

To answer your question regarding Chas Abel's book, the total number of lens admissions were 98, as not all 120+ photographers surveyed listed what they used. Wollensaks were all the normal suspects like Vitax, Varium, Verito and Voigtländers were almost always Heliars. Kodak was not listed, but Eastman was mentioned only ONCE, Ilex TWICE.

Regarding your stance on optical engineers, I believe we are in complete agreement. Most of the ones I know are fanatical about making the next breakthrough and achieving perfect balance of all available variables to master the task at hand. But we all know that the discipline of optical engineering is one of optimization as Jim Galli so aptly described in his water balloon analogy, not one-dimensional perfection. Therefore, I know optical engineering as a profession offers great job security as a result.

However, we also know that engineering and business are two entirely different animals and depending on who leads whom, the results can be castastrophic from both ends of the same spectrum. This one needs careful balancing too. One only needs to see how many prominent optical engineering firms failed as a result of lax business discipline and perhaps even more frightening, how many crappy lenses have been built by opportunistic businesses who know very little about how to make a lens that learned customers will die to own.

To your point about bokeh being a fad: I made an observation long ago how the most expensive Zeiss lenses available to civilians, the Master Primes at $20,000+ EACH, are NOT only sold on their objective performance but also their subjective quality including "out of focus picture" and "breathing" as key differentiators from lesser rivals, including their own lines of less expensive alternatives. How optical engineering contributed to these qualities must be well understood in Oberkochen or it would be difficult to demonstrate it to their well-heeled DoP customers' satisfaction why they want 5x the price for a Master Prime over their own Compact Prime. You can see this on the Zeiss site under the Cine lens section, at FAQ - Compact Primes.

Is the world going Cine and thus need Cine lenses? Perhaps not those on LFF but every single DSLR announced in the last 18 months can do video, most can do HD video, and some even HD Video at 60 fps. Lenses used for video must really "behave" in-focus as well as out-of-focus because to "post" it out is beyond the sanity or budget of most people. Those who do not observe these visual quality cues will only suffer at the hands of their competitors in the market place.

In reality, we all know that distraction of any type is not good and the goal of good optical engineering is always to reduce these to a minimum without compromising something else. Simply because these defects cannot be fixed after the lens is designed: disturbing bokeh must be eliminated when the layout was first conceived, just like linear distortion at the edge of the image circle, or coma, or field curvature.

All in all, I really enjoy reading everyone's musings, and I hope that by my replies I am adding to this enjoyment for everyone, and not making it less fun.

All the best,
Carver

[Dan Fromm]

Carver,

The gnomes of Oberkochen, successors to the gnomes of Aarau, have more computing power, and better software too, than the ancients. Their customers, directors of photography, have many quaint beliefs about the importance for story-telling of consistency of lighting, imaging, ... They may be right. Actually, the customers are mainly rental houses. DPs can't all afford to own the latest most best gear.

The DPs' beliefs weren't shared by many of the bozos who hosed camcorders around and I doubt they're shared by the bozos who shoot video with their cell phones or even digital SLRs. But then, the DPs have been brought up to tell stories properly and the bozos haven't.

The evidence from press photography and movie theaters suggests that the DPs are badly mistaken. No one but me complained when the news services gave their reporters digital cameras and acoustic couplers in the early '80s. We got the images fast, we got them bad. Have you gone to the movies recently? The damned projectionists have better things to do than focus the projectors and the audience doesn't seem to care.

For that matter, have you ever seen any decent S8? HD ain't there yet. You know something? I've retired my Beaulieus (plural). If I ever feel the need to make another movie I'll grit my teeth, get a digital something-or-other, and shoot HD.

Cheers,

Dan

Side point. "Hollywood" has long been receptive to lenses that still photographers scorned. When TTH was selling uncoated f/2 6/4 double Gauss lenses to the studios, 35 mm still photographers, who had twice the film acreage, wouldn't go near them. Six glass air surfaces seems to have been their limit. Tessar, sonnar, that's it. No Ser. VIIbs for them either.

Another side point. Merchant lens makers have had it very hard for quite a while. Even the gnomes of Aarau failed.

[lilmsmaggie]

All in all, I really enjoy reading everyone's musings, and I hope that by my replies I am adding to this enjoyment for everyone, and not making it less fun.

All the best,
Carver

Well, I can't speak for anybody else but I'm enjoying

[lilmsmaggie]

Ok - let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. Depending on how a lens is constructed will generally determine the name given to the lens?

Probably didn't say that right. Or for example, I have a Rodenstock 90mm 6.8 lens. It is constructed of 6 elements in 4 groups. Even though Rodenstock call this lens a grandagon-n, its of the Planar design type, yes, or am I all wet?

So where does the grandagon come from???

[Oren Grad]

Ok - let me see if I'm understanding this correctly. Depending on how a lens is constructed will generally determine the name given to the lens?

Occasionally, but usually not. Sometimes it starts that way but ends up otherwise - it's been many generations since the Schneider Symmar was symmetrical, strictly speaking.

Or for example, I have a Rodenstock 90mm 6.8 lens. It is constructed of 6 elements in 4 groups. Even though Rodenstock call this lens a grandagon-n, its of the Planar design type, yes, or am I all wet?

Ummm, there is perhaps excessive moisture. No, 6/4 does not make a Planar.

So where does the grandagon come from???

It's just a hokey name invented by a marketer for a lens with a really wide field of view. Schneider's "Angulon" sounds perhaps a shade more diginified.

[Oren Grad]

Occasionally, but usually not.

Actually, I should qualify that. I'm more of a user of modern lenses. Older lenses often (but not always) are named for their generic optical design - e.g. Tessars, Dagors. The classic lens experts here will know lots more than I do about the rules and the exceptions.