gdanmitchell wrote:
Buying a Stradivarius won’t make you t a better violinist. Working on your technique and interpretation will. ;-)
-
But at a certain level of competence as a musician, buying an excellent violin, like a Stradivari, Amati, Gurarneri, or Stentor will make you sound better and provide a better playing and listening experience. That's why good violinists pay big money for a fine violin.
chiron wrote:
But at a certain level of competence as a musician, buying an excellent violin, like a Stradivari, Amati, Gurarneri, or Stentor will make you sound better and provide a better playing and listening experience. That's why good violinists pay big money for a fine violin.
Your list of violins makes exactly my point. There is no one “best” violin, much less violin manufacturer (as there is no one “best POP” lens) — instead it is important to get a very good violin and play it well. It is the skill of the person playing a good instrument that makes it work, not the choice to use this or that specific instrument. I guarantee you that Perlman, Hahn, Bell, or Mutter playing a decent but not remarkable violin will impress you far more than some decent mid-level professional violinist playing that Stradivarius, et al.
It is also true that different violinists prefer different violins — again a parallel to the notion that there is no “best” lens.
In addition, it isn’t common knowledge, but quite a few of those super-expensive violins (and other very old instruments) are not actually owned by the musicians. They are sometimes owned by wealthy investors and collectors (institutional or individual) who then parcel them out to deserving virtuosi.
One more music story — I have a ton, since my professional life was built around that endeavor: I’ll anonymize the person I’m describing for professional reasons, but it concerns a professional double-reed player. If you know double-reed musicians, some of them can be as obsessive about reeds as the most obsessive lens fanatic. (It is a bit different, in that they don’t buy “the best” reeds, but instead obsess over the best tools for making them and the best materials to use.) Anyway, this can make some of them become, well, obsessed in an unhealthy way, to the point that they imagine that without the perfect read they are dead in the water. (Meanwhile, listeners can’t detect any differences attributable to the specific reed knife or gouges used, but instead respond to the player’s technical chops and expressive ability.) The musician I’m thinking of has a motto: Learn to play well on bad reeds. That is admittedly a statement designed to provoke, and the real point is that you can make first class music using excellent reeds… and give up the fruitless and ultimately unproductive infatuation with the search for the holy grail of perfect reeds. Or lenses.
chiron wrote:
But at a certain level of competence as a musician, buying an excellent violin, like a Stradivari, Amati, Gurarneri, or Stentor will make you sound better and provide a better playing and listening experience. That's why good violinists pay big money for a fine violin.
True, but I'll even venture this idea. I see myself as a photographer as being pretty incompetent with post processing software. I really have no idea how to do all the fancy stuff people do with it. So for me having lenses I can rely on to give me that "3D Pop" straight from the camera matters. My basic routine on a RAW file is just a levels adjustment, switch to LAB, adjust curves to saturate colors a bit, a little contrast in the A and B channel, then resize and sharpen as needed for the output. So I truly value lenses like my C/Y Zeiss 100/2.0, and 85/2.8 that consistently give me the look I like pretty much right out of the camera.
RustyRus wrote:
I don't know if this is 3d Pop but this thread has gone from intresting to making me want to drink all of these at once-
Warm light, darker corners, colors on the primary subjects, very narrow DOF with beautiful bokeh, slight angling of the subject, nice soft light from front right, well controlled reflections on the bottles. etc.
To me, it is not at all apparent that the "pop" part of 3D-Pop is a desirable characteristic of a lens. 3D-Pop appears to mean that there is a lot of visual separation between a foreground figure and the background of the image. To me, this usually looks highly artificial, very much like images shot before a green screen or the background-screen shots that one often finds in old movies or with a studio backdrop. 3D-Pop, in this sense, seems to me to be a weakness in the visual image created by a lens.
The shaping of foreground figures and also of the background, so that both are visually present and in a smooth, coherent relationship to each other, seems much more desirable to me. This doesn't preclude a lowering of contrast in the backgrounds, but it certainly should preclude something that looks like it was shot in front of a screen. I think both the Batis and the Loxia lenses do a very fine job of giving shape and form to the figures in an image in a way that places them smoothly in relation to the backgrounds.
chiron wrote:
To me, it is not at all apparent that the "pop" part of 3D-Pop is a desirable characteristic of a lens. 3D-Pop appears to mean that there is a lot of visual separation between a foreground figure and the background of the image. To me, this usually looks highly artificial, very much like images shot before a green screen or the background-screen shots that one often finds in old movies or with a studio backdrop. 3D-Pop, in this sense, seems to me to be a weakness in the visual image created by a lens.
The shaping of foreground figures and also of the background, so that both are visually present and in a smooth, coherent relationship to each other, seems much more desirable to me. This doesn't preclude a lowering of contrast in the backgrounds, but it certainly should preclude something that looks like it was shot in front of a screen. I think both the Batis and the Loxia lenses do a very fine job of giving shape and form to the figures in an image in a way that places them smoothly in relation to the backgrounds....Show more →
This basically describes the differences in my lens lineup from a decade ago, when I was looking for "more pop" ... that was largely using my C/Y lenses on the EF platform (vs. the flatter native EF lenses), looking for faster / more abrupt "pop". I did notice that my M645 lenses tended to have a more "gradual" transition, than some of the C/Y's accelerated transitions.
Then, as I progressed into a different platform, my personal desire for transition rates relaxed a bit ... more in line with what you are describing as your desired preference. The "max" pop is attention getting, and it can be "impressive" ... but, it can also become "tiring" to look at such abrupt changes over extended periods. Landing things to a person's individual temperament can of course vary ... but, I'm pretty much on board with your assessment that "too much" pop isn't always the holy grail of realistic transitions.
Back when I first embarked on my studies, it stemmed from the notion of folks looking at an image, and replying ... "It looks like I'm looking out my window." Obviously, the image was 2D, but their physiological response was cued toward their natural view of a 3D. And, from that ... my exploration into Trompe' Loeill began.
The maximum pop thing ... would not elicit such a looks like a "window view" response, but there are certainly plenty of folks who are enamored / impressed by it. Others have a preference more in line with what you described.
I posted the above image to illustrate that "pop" tends to be relative to background blur. This image was shot on a M240 and 50mm F1.4 Summilux lens. To me, it shows a significant amount of "pop" at the top of the central figure. But as you look down towards his feet, the amount of pop diminishes due to reduction in background blur. There is still pop at his feet, but that is a result of the reflective nature of the walkway raising perceived contrast.
A lot of work is done in compositing to do the opposite of the sticker effect look to have the subject sit in with the background and effects as lifelike as possible.
For the window analogy, the quality and design of the lens dictates if that window is open or closed or something in between (with a sense that you are looking through some kind of veil).
I just noticed this thread on the log in page and cannot believe it is 106 pages long. No way am I reading through all the posts, however I have a couple of questions. Has 3d pop ever changed the value of any image, or made a bad image good?
.
