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Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

dpreview.com

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Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#131

Post by dylan604 »

pier25 wrote: post #123
dylan604 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the point of the type of film stock used. The film grain is why pretty much everyone will wince when you ask to do a 16mm->4K. Hell, 16mm->HD was rough. I don't have any examples on hand. But with large amount of time I have found myself with over the past year to watch a lot of content, I too have noticed even some of the last episodics to be shot on film (2005-2010 range) are very noticeable. I have also s…

Another point to consider is that many 4K 35mm movies, are actually upscaled from 1080p or 2K scans. Here's a good list to check whether a film is real 4K or not. https://www.digiraw.com/DVD-4K-Bluray-ripping-service/4K-UHD... I've now remembered that the X-Men films from 20 years ago did look pretty good in 4K HDR. And apparently they are "real 4K". Also the 4K remaster of The Fifth Element.

Sorry, I was assuming we were not talking uprezing and true film scans. Uprez outputs can look disastorous as people tend to use a heavy amount of noise canceling. Bad temporal noise filters look so bad when you can see residual artifacts from 4-5 frames earlier. shudders. Or someone that did this to content that had a 3:2 cadence, and now want to restore to original frame rate even though the cadence is undetectable by filters. Select fields it is! Ugh. too many flashbacks popping off.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#132

Post by proudfoot »

crazygringo wrote: post #99
proudfoot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not capturing the rays, you only get where they strike. You can't fix it all computationally. Secondly, we already do correct distortion and chromatic aberration in software, but this doesn't really make up for loss of resolution that you can't fix. Information is being lost.

> You can't fix it all computationally. Can't you? If you're dealing with known hardware, then you can apply a deconvolution. Blurring can literally be undone, people do it all the time. It's harder when you have to estimate the kernel, but much easier when you already know the lens's exact properties. Also when you apply it directly to RAW data. So not exactly sure which information you're referring to you when say…

You don't have the exact kernel, if you're even slightly wrong you can end off being worse off. You'll have very significant variation in lower quality optics.

And there's a variety of sharpening tools that claim to do this! DxO is a company that sells a raw processor for precisely this purpose. People still buy better lenses.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#133

Post by [deleted] »

ben7799 wrote: post #37

I love 50mm lenses but a lot of this stuff is ridiculously academic since photography is artistic & creative in nature. DPreview largely seems to write for the crowd that doesn't even care about the art aspect and just wants validation that they have better photo gear than others. These new 50mm lenses often defeat the point cause they're enormous, heavy, very expensive, and have little benefit over the slower versio…

[deleted]

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#134

Post by jcun4128 »

jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #84
cratermoon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DPReview largely seems to write for the crowd that doesn't even care about the art aspect and just wants validation that they have better photo gear than others. DPReview, FStoppers, PetaPixel, and back in before the web the Popular Photography and Modern Photography magazines. There's a big market for prosumer gear that costs a lot, has ideal technical specs, and hangs around the owner's neck like a prize. Of cour…

A while ago I read a comment that was really eye opener: most big YouTube photography channels out there are mostly about gear, not about "taking pictures". It shows how much money the industry moves (or how prevalent GAS is).

> GAS

Haha... I was getting sucked into this, still am in a way. I spent about a year (2019) with a now cheap Sony Nex-5n with an 18-55 kit lens... but wanted to upgrade, more MP, higher video quality... got an A7II (24MP, 1080P) and then an A7RIII (42MP, 4K) ... I bought a 12-24mm F4 G lens at $1.3K __USED__ which to me is insane and that's not even that much in this space. It's just my car is $2K... I still can't comprehend it... I've been poor most of my life till recently, I still am poor but yeah... just interesting climbing the levels... Since the last month or two purchased 6 other lenses recently all under $1K but yeah... it's like "I need that 55mm" or "I need "12mm" just funny... then you think, this money is just sitting on your shelf not invested... idk.

I am self aware though, FIRE and make more money in general, try to avoid the above.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#135

Post by frostburg »

bitL wrote: post #117
lmilcin wrote: post #3

I have a bunch of full frame lenses. Recently I looked at some very old ones I haven't used in a long time. I thought they are faulty (soft). After some diagnosing I found that it is not the fault of lenses but rather in the meantime I have started looking at images at 1:1 in Lightroom and gotten used to ridiculously sharp images from new cameras. Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it…

Now do the same with Sigma SD1 and quality lens and you'd be frustrated with the "sharp images from new cameras" the same way you consider old ones "faulty". Some things can't be unseen once you see them the first time.

I really like my DP3m, but (with static subjects, which honestly you need with the Sigma, too) modern multi-shot implementation (especially the Panasonic one) get pretty close.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#136

Post by charrondev »

ISL wrote: post #87
dheera wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried a couple L lenses and they were plastic, felt cheap as fuck, and horribly difficult to focus. Even tried a 50mm f/1.2 L and returned it within an hour of unboxing it. That thing, despite costing 3X as much, felt like a cheap toy in comparison to a Rokkor 58/1.2 or a Nikkor 50/1.2 (both of which are 1/3 of the price in perfect condition), and at the end of the day I still liked the rendition and hand feel of m…

Many of the Ls are metal on the inside. A tough lightweight plastic shell can have major advantages (lighter, impact resistance, etc.) For a great example of a sharp modern L, check out the 16-35 f/4 IS. I'm not an ultra wide photographer by nature, but that lens impresses me each time it is called-upon. Choosing lenses, in the long run, is such a personal choice. My favorite first came to market in the early 1990s (…

Yeah I’ve got a few of the L lenses and am impressed by them. I think the 50mm f/1.2 is particularly known for being soft though.

35mm f/1.4 - super sharp, great quality lens.

100-400 f/3.5-5.6 II - amazing lens. Very sharp and focuses very fast. I often use this with a canon multiplier as well for wildlife shots. For the price it’s amazing.

16-35 f/4 IS - this is such a great landscape lens.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#137

Post by karmakaze »

crazygringo wrote: post #99
proudfoot wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not capturing the rays, you only get where they strike. You can't fix it all computationally. Secondly, we already do correct distortion and chromatic aberration in software, but this doesn't really make up for loss of resolution that you can't fix. Information is being lost.

> You can't fix it all computationally. Can't you? If you're dealing with known hardware, then you can apply a deconvolution. Blurring can literally be undone, people do it all the time. It's harder when you have to estimate the kernel, but much easier when you already know the lens's exact properties. Also when you apply it directly to RAW data. So not exactly sure which information you're referring to you when say…

I think you might be able to do a good job if you had a depth map of the image. You could use ML to guess them. Computation without that treats incident angles that vary by the distance ratios as the same.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#138

Post by ghaff »

jgalt212 wrote: post #89
cratermoon wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> DPReview largely seems to write for the crowd that doesn't even care about the art aspect and just wants validation that they have better photo gear than others. DPReview, FStoppers, PetaPixel, and back in before the web the Popular Photography and Modern Photography magazines. There's a big market for prosumer gear that costs a lot, has ideal technical specs, and hangs around the owner's neck like a prize. Of cour…

slight correction: In good light, great photographs can be taken with any camera.

That's true although the best smartphones have made pretty significant gains. I've been slowly working my way through my catalog of photos to clean it up and go back to a lot of my older phone photos taken in dim restaurants and the like and the photos were generally pretty awful.

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#139

Post by salimmadjd »

Matrixik wrote: post #85

Roger Cicala knows a lot about lenses and pushed lens manufacturers to have better testing and quality, he created https://www.lensrentals.com/ because he got sick with low quality checks of lenses: When I started Lensrentals I had a lot of conversations with service centers that went like this. Me: "That lens you repaired still sucks". Person at service center: "No, it’s within specs". Me: "What are the specs?" Serv…

His lens tests are excellent. The lens rentals blog is the best place to find them [0]. If you're in market for high quality lenses, lens rental blog is a great resource.

I also like cameralabs' lens tests [1]. Not as scientific as lensrentals, however, it has real samples and images of charts for comparison, so you can get a sense for what the different resolution means in image resolution. It also tests things beyond resolution. Such as out of focus rendering, coma, sun stars, etc.

[0] https://www.lensrentals.com/blog [1] https://www.cameralabs.com/camera-lens-reviews/

Re: Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

#140

Post by 4ad »

pier25 wrote: post #101
dylan604 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 35mm->4k scans can look amazing. There's a lot going on though with film to digital scanning. The film stock itself has a lot to do with it. From the condition it has been stored as well as the actual type of film stock. The choice in a physical scanner also makes a difference. Single pass realtime captures vs slow speed triple flashed scans. Single pass is usually on a CMOS type sensor, where the triple flas…

35mm -> 4K can look amazing in terms of color, but I've yet to see a film where the added detail is not mostly film grain (exaggerated by sharpening). Do you have a good example?

Not quite what you ask, but very related: http://yedlin.net/ResDemo/
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