How does one start to recognize the differences among lenses?

[Bernice Loui]

There was a time in LF past, about one or maybe two generations ago when it was possible to work with a LF dealer to try out lenses before purchase. This was not too difficult as color transparency sheet film was readily available and processing at the local "Pro" lab took about two hours. These labs offered specialty services from gray card test with color densitometer readings, push-pull as needed. This made lens evaluations and calibration of lens-lighting-film-processing not too difficult. Once the system was calibrated and set up the resulting images were mostly predictable.

Personal experience and opportunity offered by friendly dealers back then allowed testing a huge number of LF lenses then selecting only the ones of preference. This is what has resulted in the lens set of today. This was also the history and experience of how modern Plasmats became excluded from the lens set and essentially Kodak Ektars, Xenar, Dagor, APO Artars ended up as the lenses of choice for normal to long focal lengths. Wide angle lenses ended up with Rodenstock Grandagon and Schneider XL series due to the improved performance of modern LF wide angles. Their trade off is size and bulk.


Only way to really know the personality of any given lens is to use it in real world image-making. Testing is OK, but it is simply not enough and will not reveal the personality of any given lens until enough prints have been made using it.

Numerous times posted here is the inherent problem of lens in shutter. For most this is one of the deciding factors for lens choices. IMO, lenses in shutter is too severe a limitation. This is how the Sinar shutter and the Sinar system in general became the overwhelming preference with the exception of LF wide angles lenses due to their inherent design they are better in shutter than not.

Lenses DO have a visual personality and is completely dependent on the needs of the image-maker. For those who are into high contrast images with an etch image result, modern Plasmats could be the choice with the trade off being loss of contrast subtlety and out of focus rendition. If the image maker is of the, "Everything in the image to appear SHARP" and using f22 or smaller is the typical practice, again, the modern Plasmat could be the proper choice.

Then we have the obsession with image circle or coverage. Realistically, lenses for 8x10 and larger is inherently problematic due to the image circle required. This often results in hefty lenses and hefty shutters. Compounding this problem is the current interest in taking that 8x10 camera out in the field and hiking which results in the want-need of lenses that are small-lightweight-compact with HUGE image circles and enough full aperture to easily focus. These are conflicting design trade offs which drives a lens design in very specific ways.

Simply put, the broadest, modest cost, easily available lenses made over the long history of LF is for 4x5 and 5x7. Once stepping up to 8x10 and larger the problems become quite visible.


There have been many emotionally charged threads over the course of LFF history. IMO, most have NOT been constructive. Fact is, majority of LF lenses produce after WW-II are pointed towards the working and serious photographer. This intrinsic lens design goal results in majority of excellent and few lesser. What can happen is over the course of a lens life, stuff can and does happen to them. From adhesive failure (separation) glass or mechanical damage, lens taken apart by the unqualified and put back together in weird ways, shutters swapped with no regard for the original shutter spacing set during production to achieve specified optical results. These problems are compounded by older lenses due to them being.... older.

Question becomes how does one develop their points of visual reference and preferences for optics-film-print? Honestly I'm not convinced there is an absolute point of reference, there are only what the image maker needs to produce expressive creative work. Suggestion here would be visit the local museums with a GOOD photography collection and a GOOD photographic gallery or local show to look study and many prints as possible. From there it is possible to develop a sense for what image style agrees or does not agree.



Bernice

Hi,

perhaps it makes sense to differenciate your question. It doesn't seem to be answered quickly, as Dan Fromm wrote. And there are really useful attempts to cope with this question in this thread.

1. To see differences between lenses you have to get those lenses and shoot with them. This is costly. In real life it is impossible. Fortunately you will never stop learning and experiencing. This is one aspect of the process. Some love it. - OK: some lenses are for digital, some lenses are depreciated because they're too old to be modern, uncoated, single coated, some lenses are for 4x5 others for 8x10. You make an initial choice, corresponding to brochures and to your workflow.

2. Even if you have all lenses of a product line (eg the Symmars from 1960 to today) or a given focal length (eg. 150mm) you will have to photograph with them, always the same subject, and you will have to enlarge the photographs to see the differences. With 6 different kinds of Symmars or 150mm standard lenses you will have to pay a lot of money to take and enlarge 6 fine prints in tenfold enlargements - I query that we see differences in a 8x10 print.

3. In 1. and 2. I talked about black and white prints. Now imagine you want to compare colour prints ... This is even more costly. And you have to control the whole color management. This is something that Schneider can perfom in it's factory in Bad Kreuznach. But the results will remain quite abstract because:

4. it's easy to shoot brick walls or test images or look through collimators and microscopes etc. How do you compare bokeh, aberrations, coma, vignetting ... in real world conditions? - You will have to go further and make more prints. This is even more expensive.

5. You will have to be trained to compare these prints. Like the great and admired Edmund Husserl said ("Logische Untersuchungen"): there aren't only sensual but also categorical assumptions, and you have to know your categories, your questions, to ask the subject what it reveals to you.

- This, nr. 5., is how I understood your initial questions. IMHO this is a quite subversive question. Perhaps this is why you got some hash answers. It shows that most of the kaisers are naked in their clothes (a German fairy tale) because very few people test their lenses like mentioned above and few people developed categories to understand the performance of their gear.

I think it's significant that Ansel Adams in "The Camera" concentrated on the depth effect of a lens, as the penetration of real space in constitution of pictorial space, realized with different focal lengths, given an intended reproduction scale of a main subject, instead of an abstract sharpness in the corners. This shows that it is more important to know how a focal length should be employed to get a specific spatial effect, than coping with accidential data of a given lens in relation to sharpness at twentyfold enlargement etc.

Regards

[Daniel Casper Lohenstein]

There was a time in LF past ... Question becomes how does one develop their points of visual reference and preferences for optics-film-print? Honestly I'm not convinced there is an absolute point of reference, there are only what the image maker needs to produce expressive creative work. Suggestion here would be visit the local museums with a GOOD photography collection and a GOOD photographic gallery or local show to look study and many prints as possible. From there it is possible to develop a sense for what image style agrees or does not agree.

Wise words.

[John Kasaian]

So what was the OP's question again?
Recognizing a lens from a print? Or recognizing a lens from focusing on the GG?
I'm confused!

No sheet of film ever knew the name engraved on the barrel of the lens the camera wore.

Some lenses can be identified by unique qualities like the swirlies associated with Petzvals, or the sharpness associated with APO designs, or the 3-D "feel" associated with Heliars. But sometimes not, depending on how the lens is used.

Probably the easy route is to shoot and print with a single lens for several years, like say a Commercial Ektar.
Then, at least you'll be able to identify how a photograph taken with a Commercial Ektar looks.
Maybe.

OTOH as the OP has already observed. most all LF lenses in good condition do a pretty good job of taking photographs.
Aside from stuff like the qualities mentioned ^^^above ^^^I doubt if many people can go to a gallery and say this was
shot with a Nikon or that was shot with a Rodenstock or here is a photo taken with a Wollensak.

YMMV and I've got cataracts anyway.
Yesterday driving down I-15 in Utah I saw a highway sign with an arrow pointing in the direction of the town of Hurricane and it looked like a ? inside a beehive (highway signs in Utah look like beehives) and only when I was right on top of the turnoff did I notice that it wasn't a ? but a 7
For a brief few seconds I thought the Utah Highway Department had quite a sense of humor, LOL!

[LabRat]

So to summarize, all undamaged/unaltered
/unadultered lenses will shoot an image, but for one's taste they have slightly different renderings, but as mentioned, most viewers won't know by looking, and depending on the style and process of the shooter, YMMV...

Reminds me of photo students who come back with some old, cheap camera from somewhere and am sure the images will have some unique magic to them, but usually some lens that was made to give the best performance for that price point back when, in other words, the lens was made the best it could be by them, but not an attempt to make a bad lens (even if it ended up being not-so-great)...

Pick any lens and work with it... If you hit problems that prevent the image from moving in the right direction, try another to see if you are crazy, or maybe it is not right for you... But this takes time and testing, and you might have to get better with it to acheve results you like...

Get busy...

Steve K

[Tin Can]

Somewhere I have a 60's Burke & James lens rental and sales catalog. While I am old enough, i just wasn't doing LF, never even heard of it and at age 16 in 1967 when I moved to Chicago I was content shooting 35mm.

The B&J catalog is incredible, with every lens ever discussed here in it. All easily available at that time. Loaners, rentals, bargains just as Bernice experienced. And others many here.

I collect LF catalogs, buy LF gear willy-nilly as it comes along and fiddle with it. I do use LF, and sometimes I make a print I like. For my wall.

Since LF gear is way cheaper than ever, plentiful and obscure, it gets me out of bed instead of grumbling too much. A challenge.

We all know that everything LF and film in any form will most likely become extremely rare in 100's or 1000's of years.

Do it now!

[Paul Ron]

like everything in life, ya gotta try m all.

[andrewch59]

I great resource on lenses and how utterly amazing you can get them to perform is Jim Galli's tonopah pictures. Yes I know most are soft lenses, but have a look at his Eddie lens, who would have thought, all it took was Jim's tenacity and another wall hanger is made.