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Thread: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

  1. #31
    Kirk Gittings's Avatar
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Of course. Go for it.
    Thanks,
    Kirk

    at age 73:
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    And miles to go before I sleep,
    And miles to go before I sleep"

  2. #32

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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Thanks, Tuan, for pointing out this article.
    I hope it doesn't jack the price of the Apo-Lanthar up to even more absurd levels than it already is.
    It would have been nice to see his opinion of the results of a DAGOR.
    Wilhelm (Sarasota)

  3. #33

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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Quote Originally Posted by Mark Sawyer View Post
    Is it not allowable if I post them here in the thread on the article so people can have two (or more) views?
    I don't know why not.

    What I was suggesting was that you could probably get your views onto the reference page as a primary source rather than as a comment.
    You can't depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. ~ Mark Twain

  4. #34

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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    What is specially valuable about this article is that it is based on a number of years of first hand experience, rather that collective third and second hand knowledge learned by constant mindless repetition on forums such as this. Its conclusions are also supported elsewhere, such as on Ken Lee's site and others. Leave the stupid nitpcking and self-agrandisement to the stupid nitpickers and self-agrandisers.

  5. #35
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    My apologies, it seemed more like an "if you don't like it, go write your own article" response. When one does write a opinionn article for a reference page, I'm afraid one must expect a few opinionated responses. For that, the author has my sympathies!

    There have been several generations of lenses produced expressly for large format portraiture. The first generation was the Petzval portrait lenses, of which the fastest were designated "portrait lenses" because they were fast, and could minimize long exposure times.

    The second generation began with the Dallmeyer Patent Portrait, a fast Petzval that had an adjustment for inducing spherical aberration to spread the very shallow depth of field. The extra depth of field didn't really make much difference, but people liked the soft look of the spherical aberration, and many new designs added more and more aberration for softness' sake.

    The third generation, (which would run through modern lenses) is back to fast, sharp lenses, the speed being to minimize depth of field rather than for speed of exposure, (not so much an issue with modern film).

    The article was about using general-use and special-use (other than portrait) lenses as portrait lenses. Such use is fine, and excellent portraiture can be done with such lenses, but in an article specifically about "Large Format Lenses for Portraits", this should be mentioned. Just opinion, disagreements are respected.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  6. #36
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay DeFehr View Post
    his careless and baseless comment about ink printing.
    It's possible that the sentence was not worded in the best way. The author has corrected it in a revised version (so that this detail doesn't distract). However I don't think it is "baseless" to assert that a digital print doesn't look good compared side-by-side to a contract print of the same size. In fact I am curious how many would even disagree. This is not a comment on the craft of digital printers, just on the limits of a pixel-based medium.

  7. #37
    jp's Avatar
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    It's an informative article that covers one aspect of a hugely vast and historic topic of large format portrait lens options. It's sort of the post-modern options rather than a historical review.

    Many of the photos are very nice, but the ones with the black backgrounds do little to show bokeh or contrast because of that black background. A future revision might show images with a natural background if they want to be for maximum subjective comparison.

    I'd contend that sharpness isn't as important as the author seeks with large format because the degree of enlargement is much smaller than with small film or digital, but I recognize photographers' preference for sharpness is all over the scale, especially when lenses do double duty for general purposes uses. Thus if it's important to him, it's probably important to many other people.

    The mention of the heliar as an option (and a good option!) is that there's a whole world of wonderful old triplets that are great for portraits. He may not have written about this, as it's probably as big a topic as tessars are, but triplets and their often make nice nice portrait lenses. If he didn't write more about this, it's probably just reflective of the individuals experience. I've used some triplets, but haven't used lanthars and ronars for example. Getting into the galli, soft, and peztval stuff is surely biting off more than one can chew for a simple webpage, so skipping it is probably wise on the author's part, and will help keep prices in check.

  8. #38

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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Quote Originally Posted by QT Luong View Post
    It's possible that the sentence was not worded in the best way. The author has corrected it in a revised version (so that this detail doesn't distract). However I don't think it is "baseless" to assert that a digital print doesn't look good compared side-by-side to a contract print of the same size. In fact I am curious how many would even disagree. This is not a comment on the craft of digital printers, just on the limits of a pixel-based medium.
    It's baseless because he doesn't bother to qualify what he means by "doesn't look good", if he'd been careful enough to use even that loaded wording. The idea that such wholesale judgments can be made is the carelessness I referred to. If he'd just posted two lists of lenses, one headed "These lenses are good for portraits" and another headed "These lenses are crap for portraits", we'd probably want to know more about how he came to his conclusions, whether or not we agreed with him. By establishing in his opening paragraph that he's prone to wholesale judgments about subjective distinctions, he damaged his credibility regarding what followed. I'm not suggesting we throw the baby out with the bathwater and assume everything he wrote is of no value, but I'm glad he revised his opening paragraph. And I don't mean anything personal in my critique, I'm sure the author is a fine fellow.

  9. #39
    Mark Sawyer's Avatar
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Quote Originally Posted by jp498 View Post
    The mention of the heliar as an option (and a good option!) is that there's a whole world of wonderful old triplets that are great for portraits. He may not have written about this, as it's probably as big a topic as tessars are, but triplets and their often make nice nice portrait lenses.
    Heliars have five elements, (they're not triplets), but yes, they give a lovely rendition.
    Last edited by Mark Sawyer; 11-Apr-2012 at 19:38.
    "I love my Verito lens, but I always have to sharpen everything in Photoshop..."

  10. #40
    Dave Karp
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    Re: New article: Large format lenses for portraits

    Jeroen,

    Thanks for the article. Seems like it has been a long time since someone prepared a new article on the LF Home Page.

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