Film and lens test

[Bernice Loui]

There will be a time when I'll have a proper camera set up on my Leitz, SM LUX HL microscope and be able to share some what is found on those old sheets of transparency film from those crazy lens testing days.

At higher magnifications, the differences in developer effects on B & W film grains becomes apparent.

The other "vintage lens" to consider with a similar personality is the Xenar (not tele-xenar) and Heliar. For some reason, Tessar designs tend to be less regarded by some.


Bernice

Bernice,

I'm not nearly scientific enough to examine at 40x but I know that I do really like the "look" that I often see with Ektar's. I have the 8 1/2, the 10" and the 12" to play with. Now I really hope to find a 14 to round out the focal lengths. I have yet to shoot colour but I look forward to it!

[Dan Fromm]

Bernice, thanks for the description of what you did back when. It raises a couple of small questions.

I cried when K14 processing went away, but hasn't LF Kodachrome been gone for nearly half a century?

Who processed your E6 films? I ask because I sometimes get inconsistent results (not within a roll, but from roll to roll) that I find easier to explain by the film's age (shift to magenta), slight underexposure (same), and the lab using unfresh chemicals. These seem much worse than variations between lenses within the same roll (I'm sure that not of my shutters run exactly on time), variations due to large changes in the light's color (cloud in front of sun, green foliage between sun and subject, nothing but air between subject and sun, time of day, ...).

This is not at all to disagree with what you found, rather to question how significant lens-to-lens variations in color rendition are in practice. I know that from "Hollywood's" perspective they're exremely important, whether real or not, but I'm not a DoP.

[Bernice Loui]

Sheet film Kodachrome is LONG gone. But 120 roll continued on for a while longer until the only thing widely available was 35mm.

The New Lab which once processed Kodachrome in house and E6 is also LONG gone. They were one of the better E6 labs around. At one point their volume was high enough that they had a Chemist on site to monitor and control the processing chemistry. They would do gray card test, be post process color consistent and your dropped off film can be ready in two hours.. Those were the days.

Speaking of cine optics, have a friend who once was a camera man who owned his own Arri & matched Zeiss lenses. We talked optics from time to time. What may be a shock to still photography folks is the cost of good cine optics. His set of color matched Zeiss lenses cost $25,000 in 1980's USD. They also use T- stops instead of F-stops. Asked why cine stuff cost what it does, when one considers the production cost per minute the cost of the hardware is a small percentage of the overall production cost and there is zero reason to nothing by the very best. When edit time comes, the look must match.


Bernice

Bernice, thanks for the description of what you did back when. It raises a couple of small questions.

I cried when K14 processing went away, but hasn't LF Kodachrome been gone for nearly half a century?

Who processed your E6 films? I ask because I sometimes get inconsistent results (not within a roll, but from roll to roll) that I find easier to explain by the film's age (shift to magenta), slight underexposure (same), and the lab using unfresh chemicals. These seem much worse than variations between lenses within the same roll (I'm sure that not of my shutters run exactly on time), variations due to large changes in the light's color (cloud in front of sun, green foliage between sun and subject, nothing but air between subject and sun, time of day, ...).

This is not at all to disagree with what you found, rather to question how significant lens-to-lens variations in color rendition are in practice. I know that from "Hollywood's" perspective they're exremely important, whether real or not, but I'm not a DoP.