old-gregg wrote:
Guys... guys! This thread is 14 years old
Having started out quite innocently, the thread is now, so to speak, stuck in the middle of puberty. It's known that the brain undergoes significant changes during this time and therefore no longer functions rationally. We adults should therefore be understanding.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
Having started out quite innocently, the thread is now, so to speak, stuck in the middle of puberty. It's known that the brain undergoes significant changes during this time and therefore no longer functions rationally. We adults should therefore be understanding.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
The comparison images perfectly illustrate the immense impact even the slightest compositional choices can have on the overall effect of a photograph. Here, the hair is pulled taut from the forehead behind the ears, resulting in a flat, uniformly bright light across the face from ear to ear. There, the hair flows loosely beside the cheeks, creating depth and shadows that bring life and dimension to the face. Of course, the forum's 3D photography expert doesn't notice any of this because he doesn't pay attention to such details; otherwise, the people in his "portraits" wouldn't so often have half-closed or fully closed eyelids, hands over their mouths, or other typical flaws that photography novices have been warned about in every guidebook for the last century. But whatever. To each their own....Show more →
It's a nice video showing the differences in rendering, sharpness, etc. It's not great at showing 3d pop though. I'd argue the shot that shows the most pop is the one with the curly girl, which is not part of the comparison.
Looking at the comparison shots, it's 1.2 > 1.8 > 1.4 (they should have been shot at the same aperture!) for me I think. Still, those shots don't really exude pop ...
philip_pj wrote:
It's very common to see people say 3D is mostly due to light conditions, and there is certainly enough truth in the idea to give it some validity. It has the happy advantage of absolving flat lenses of not delivering 3D because 'we are only dealing with light conditions' so all lenses will work if only we have good light. We have 'golden hour' for landscapes and heavy slanting light for much else in photography, the cinematic look.
I used to agree with this, before doing a lot of mountain travel that forced a lot of middle of the day shooting - vertical light! Below are two images shot around noon that you might agree show great 3D in the absence of optical tricks like strong longitudinal elements like paths, roads etc. Mountains are very hard to photograph to show image depth, but I'm happy with these. They get there on the basis of excellent tonal separation (both luminance and color) and mid-tone dominance. They should be flat but they are not. F8, no bokeh, no real focus fade, but a lot of micro-contrast. ...Show more →
I feel like the raw images here would have most likely been pretty flat. It appears that you did some tasteful editing and they look nice with some good depth. In my experience however, a nice jpeg engine and the right picture profile might have been able to spit out a similar result.
That is Julia Trotti's editing.
I agree with NiftyFifty's comment on the composition details (like the hair). My lens of choice here would be the 35/1.4 but I surely am happy there are other 35mm lenses than the Nikon trio available.
This thread is really excellent and really excites my scientific side. Indeed, I also believe that some lenses have a little “je ne sais quoi” to them—a bokeh, color rendition, field curvature… I don’t know… And it is also true that, under certain conditions—and depending on each person's perception—it can give a 3‑D POP effect.
For me, it all started with the Zeiss Loxia 2/35. Without being aware of all the literature on the 3‑D POP effect, I found the photos taken with this lens truly “special.” At the same time, my scientific curiosity was intrigued: this lens is far from perfect (field curvature, only really sharp from f/4,…) yet it produces beautiful images. That was enough for me to dive into research and stumble across pages and pages dedicated to “Zeiss 3‑D POP.”
Moreover, it seems you can’t fully reproduce this effect in software; otherwise why make such a fuss? A Lightroom plugin called “3‑D POP” and voilà!
Knowing that the lenses known for 3‑D POP have a relatively "simple" construction (e.g., Loxia 2/50, Loxia 2/35, Sony 1.8/55,…) and that companies like Sony, Sigma, Canon, and others employ some of the best optical engineers, why don’t they create (more) lenses with “3‑D POP”?
1. Is it a mysterious thing, and even for Zeiss, did this characteristic appear “by chance”?
2. Is it dependent on some patent?
3. Do they simply not care at all?
4. Do they try but fail to achieve it?
For me, I’m increasingly leaning toward 1 & 3 as the most likely explanations. But then why does this topic generate so much debate for use (customers), and why all brands don't care about it? Who is right? What do you think?
tuxounet wrote:
Moreover, it seems you can’t fully reproduce this effect in software; otherwise why make such a fuss? A Lightroom plugin called “3‑D POP” and voilà!
Moreover, it seems you can’t fully reproduce this effect with a lens; otherwise why make such a fuss? Pick up a "3D Pop Lens", take a picture and voilà!
This thread is really excellent and really excites my scientific side. Indeed, I also believe that some lenses have a little “je ne sais quoi” to them—a bokeh, color rendition, field curvature… I don’t know… And it is also true that, under certain conditions—and depending on each person's perception—it can give a 3‑D POP effect.
For me, it all started with the Zeiss Loxia 2/35. Without being aware of all the literature on the 3‑D POP effect, I found the photos taken with this lens truly “special.” At the same time, my scientific curiosity was intrigued: this lens is far from perfect (field curvature, only really sharp from f/4,…) yet it produces beautiful images. That was enough for me to dive into research and stumble across pages and pages dedicated to “Zeiss 3‑D POP.”
Moreover, it seems you can’t fully reproduce this effect in software; otherwise why make such a fuss? A Lightroom plugin called “3‑D POP” and voilà!
Knowing that the lenses known for 3‑D POP have a relatively "simple" construction (e.g., Loxia 2/50, Loxia 2/35, Sony 1.8/55,…) and that companies like Sony, Sigma, Canon, and others employ some of the best optical engineers, why don’t they create (more) lenses with “3‑D POP”?
1. Is it a mysterious thing, and even for Zeiss, did this characteristic appear “by chance”?
2. Is it dependent on some patent?
3. Do they simply not care at all?
4. Do they try but fail to achieve it?
For me, I’m increasingly leaning toward 1 & 3 as the most likely explanations. But then why does this topic generate so much debate for use (customers), and why all brands don't care about it? Who is right? What do you think?...Show more →
I think a lot of brands (and customers) are more into getting the "best" lenses when shooting test charts. Zeiss have been one of few that actually cares about rendering, where a technically inferior lens can have qualities that are not necessarily measurable. Voigtländer is an other such manufacturer, even if their designs and intents are more all over the place.
I too was intrigued with the results from the Loxia 35, and if it wasn't for the curvature of field, I would have kept it. The "poor" test results could not have been more misleading though.
But if so many people care about rendering, why don’t those brands try to create more lenses with character? For instance, if Sigma/Sony could launch an AF version of the Loxia, wouldn't it be a winner?
I suppose nobody can answer this. Maybe someone working for a lens brand could see this and answer the question…
P.S. I know the Sigma 2.8/45 (and had it), but it still falls far short of the Loxia’s rendering.
I can answer your question - 'if so many people care about rendering, why don’t those brands try to create more lenses with character?' - with confidence.
1. Corporate philosophy. Most lens makers - top to bottom - have invested extremely heavily in the 'more MTF is better' ideology, and I really have to call it that, an ideology, a way of doing business. ALL lens designers are taught to pursue the correction of aberrations as if their lives depend on it. Until recently - as the backlash unfolds in real time - their careers certainly did. It would be sacrilegious even to question the philosophy in any design studio.
2. Economics. Once the hard work is done and the assembly line is set up, does Nikon make more money from a (still plastic clad) $2600 item or a $580 item? It's very much big business - Nikon made well over 100 million (D)SLR lenses in F-mount.
3. History. Designers sweated blood and tears for over a century trying to get more performance from their glasses and processing. They finally succeeded in recent years, a decade or so back. MTF went through the roof, even at unprecedented aperture settings. It will be hard to turn the ship around, even if they want to. And they don't.
4. Marketing. This is the big one, the one they needed to make it all work, the one that was fundamental to their success. They simply had to persuade the buying public. To get people on side, they needed a top down marketing strategy so overwhelmingly obvious and enticing that few could resist.
It was top down marketing at its most cynical. Photographers had to be convinced they should strive for the most expensive lenses from each maker. Very little effort was put into making high end lenses lighter and smaller, because people are impressed by large things - look at the monster trucks that ape Mad Max on our roads.
Under tiered marketing regimes, cheaper lenses are always less impressive than expensive lenses.
Other aspects helped their cause:
faster lenses = greater quality, and this is confusing many Nikon users right now, as the f1.8 series are the 'performance optics, and the f1.4 series are 'character' lenses.
CA was/is heavily demonized in lens reviews. It's common to see reviewers use 200% to try to find (so called) image-damaging CA, and the topic is discussed endlessly. It is the evil that must be defeated above all else, and only when it is eradicated can we enter lens nirvana.
As with all successful propaganda campaigns, blanket coverage was required and the industry media and YouTube presenters complied, with near-total obedience. We have saturation media, compliant media, universal opinion leader support, and this is why it is so jarring to read anyone who disagrees.
It is the very success of the major companies in the field in brainwashing camera users that the best images inevitably flow from the most expensive, fastest and most respected LENSES that is the reason the buying public don't want more character lenses. The next and final issue is so important it needs its own post...
Why do we have lens reviews, rather than lens image reviews? Why are we more interested in arcane lens specifications than the images they make? Why do we believe that an aberration - of and by itself - should disqualify a lens that produces beautiful images?
Why do most YT reviewers spend up to half their presentation fiddling with rings - spinning aperture rings for clicks, checking focus ring damping, and handling the lens, while providing a dozen or so images randomly included as an afterthought, at the end of their pieces? Why are there so few image comparisons of competing lenses in the forums and the media? Why don't reviewers shoot a variety of genres from a lens to test it more thoroughly and work out its strengths and weaknesses, and who it might suit?
Why do we have so little shared terminology to describe images - 'image appreciation' - when we can find out all kinds of unnecessary specs about lenses? Why do we have such a miserable lexicon for the analysis of out-of-focus image content a.k.a. bokeh? How much actual photography do lens designers actually do? Why don't they show or talk about the kinds of images their lenses can produce?
These are artistic instruments, not soap powders or screwdrivers.
Lens 'Quality' does not equal Image Quality. Image Appeal = Image Quality.
So what we need is a paradigm reversal. The images must become the main focus, rather than the means by which we produced them, the lenses. The precious images are the pots of gold that lie at the end of the process of photography, but the lenses themselves are the means by which we produce our images. They are functional tools, not objets d'art in themselves.
How many truly great lenses get rejected because the corners are 'poor' or they have field curvature? How many images are dependent on some small object in a corner of the image? Is there an attractive grasshopper down there? Why did technical perfection become the holy grail ahead of image impact?
I am as guilty as anyone here. Until I wised up and went my own way, I pursued lens performance purely based on the scientific tests and measurements, and the (usually narrow and impoverished) reviews.
The images from my lenses were technically great - clean, accurate, edge-to-edge and corner-to-corner resolution no one could complain about. But it's like a jigsaw: you get the straight bits, but there is something missing in the middle. For me, those somethings were: character, 3D, skin rendering and color performance. I could not find much to read or view about any of that. Now we have the web.
Makten wrote:
Zeiss have been one of few that actually cares about rendering, where a technically inferior lens can have qualities that are not necessarily measurable.
The word you were looking for is quantifiable. Like, say, the smoothness of the lens Bokeh is trivially easy to measure, but hard to condense into a few numbers*. This distinction may sound like nitpicking, but given how certain folks in this thread have been droning on about quality without showing any according measurements whatsoever, it is not obvious to everybody.
*) Can be done, of course, but few seem to bother. Possibly because the usual Bokeh ball parade images already tell enough of the story.
Daran wrote:
The word you were looking for is quantifiable. Like, say, the smoothness of the lens Bokeh is trivially easy to measure, but hard to condense into a few numbers*. This distinction may sound like nitpicking, but given how certain folks in this thread have been droning on about quality without showing any according measurements whatsoever, it is not obvious to everybody.
*) Can be done, of course, but few seem to bother. Possibly because the usual Bokeh ball parade images already tell enough of the story.
If 'quality' was measurable it would be called quantity
I think the problem is people trying to find the 'best' lens (or the one with the 'most' pop, etc.), often using proxies like price or MTF charts (measurable things), rather than looking for lenses that have qualities that contribute to their personal photographic vision.
OregonSun wrote:
If 'quality' was measurable it would be called quantity
Definitions from Oxford Languages:
quality
1. the standard of something as measured against other things of a similar kind; the degree of excellence of something.
2. a distinctive attribute or characteristic possessed by someone or something.
Daran wrote:
The word you were looking for is quantifiable. Like, say, the smoothness of the lens Bokeh is trivially easy to measure, but hard to condense into a few numbers*. This distinction may sound like nitpicking, but given how certain folks in this thread have been droning on about quality without showing any according measurements whatsoever, it is not obvious to everybody.
*) Can be done, of course, but few seem to bother. Possibly because the usual Bokeh ball parade images already tell enough of the story.
Sure, but the measurements would be quite useless when there is nothing to compare with.
Bokeh and everything else is changing with focus distance and it would take a huge effort to measure and present the results if they were to cover "everything".
Personally I rely much more on sample images than lens tests with charts and such. They are often shot at a lot closer distance than I will ever use any lens, and thus don't reflect what I will do with the lens anyway.
The new Zeiss Otus ML 35mm reviews are out and has a very close focus with high contrast/micro-contrast. The bokeh is quite nice and the price is right. “L” mount not yet covered.
I would like to see posted a demosaiced flat unprocessed raw image from any of the lenses that have a praised "rendering" or "3D pop". I am interested in seeing the intrinsic (that is not caused by post-processing) "character, 3D, skin rendering and color performance" (in the words of @philip_pj) of these lenses.
I personally believe that the look of digital photos is mostly determined by the subject and post-processing. Lenses contribute distortions, no doubt about this, and the distortions can be used for creative purposes. However, to me, a lens that is free from distortions and aberrations is preferred for most applications. I think this answers some of the above questions about why the mainstream lens manufacturing and design doesn't pursue the development of lenses that have "character." These are arguably not needed by those who are skilled in post-processing and invest time in post-processing. I suspect that the lenses that have "character" and "rendering" are sought-after by photographers who want to convert raw to jpeg with "minimal post-processing" that is by applying some standard or custom profiles, or by using AI-guided processing. Even this path from raw to jpeg involves a significant amount of post-processing, except that it happens under the hood, with a minimal input from the photographer. This approach is a bit like playing a lottery, taking chances. It does work to some extent, and can produce decent quality pictures, better than the smartphone quality. I expect these are never outstanding pictures though. While I understand this approach of minimal post-processing, I am not interested in adopting it, and hence I am not interested in collecting lenses that have a special rendering.
bwcolor wrote:
The new Zeiss Otus ML 35mm reviews are out and has a very close focus with high contrast/micro-contrast. The bokeh is quite nice and the price is right. “L” mount not yet covered.
j4nu wrote:
You can sure buy a lot of pop for 2400€ .
I’m surprised that this lens hasn’t created more of a stir. The almost $10,000.00 Leica 35mm f/1.2 resulted in many posts, whereas this lens, available in three mounts, barely causes a ripple. I guess that few have the lens, or have had the lens long enough to put together a reasonable evaluation and secondly, it is a rather large lens.
