Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are modern 50mm lenses so damned complicated?

dpreview.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 291 posts

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

#151

Post by astrange »

pier25 wrote: post #18
evandev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off motion smoothing on your TV. It's also called the "Soap Opera Effect".

I have a 65'' OLED TV and 24fps content is unwatchable without motion smoothing. When the camera pans, the "jumps" between frames are too distracting. I only use it at about 10-20% though, not at 100% which I think is the default setting and I agree is vomitive.

There's two levels of motion smoothing, one from 24 to 60fps and one from 60 to 120fps. The second is important for OLED to avoid judder (uncomfortable panning).

I think the people complaining about the first are whiners and as a digital video expert I will allow you to leave it on.

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

#152

Post by Saris »

ajross wrote: post #24

What I don't understand isn't the design of the lenses, which are chasing ever-tightening windows of precision in a competetive market with high margins and discriminating consumers. Of course they're going to be overdesigned. What gets me is that lens distortion is a fully reversible convolution. It's not lossy, at all. Or rather, it's only lossy in the sense that the existing quantization in the sensor is already l…

That's basically what micro 4/3 cameras are doing. As far as I know they all can do distortion correction in-camera for JPEG output, and the prime lenses are generally quite cheap and very compact.

For example Panasonic has a 25mm f/1.7 lens that is 125 grams and costs $150 brand new.

Of course you can also buy similar focal length lenses that are huge and weigh over a pound, while spending $1500+. But I don't know how much advantage those really give except in specific rare situations.

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

#153

Post by foldr »

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…

Old lenses are generally fine when stopped down to sensible apertures in my experience. What’s new is the expectation that lenses should be ultra sharp wide open. Expensive lenses are a very niche enthusiast market now, so the design criteria aren’t especially rational.

An exception would be old kit zooms from the film era, which really are awful, since they were designed for people who rarely even went up to 8x10 prints. Modern kit zooms are usually very sharp lenses, though.

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

#154

Post by astrange »

cratermoon wrote: post #144
jcun4128 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 c…

The most I've ever spent on a camera was just under $2K, in July of 2019, for a 35mm manual rangefinder, without a light meter, built in 1953.

Sony's $2k cameras are extremely worth it, and they can mount rangefinder lenses, which saves you buying their (also good) FE-mount lenses.

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

#155

Post by agumonkey »

reader_mode wrote: post #4
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…

>Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it is because of low quality of image? Yes, that's the same thing -- our tastes change. I've had the opposite reaction - I'd watch something I've seen before in 4k remastered or something and it would be a worse experience because the extra details reveal the low quality tricks you can get away with on lower reproduction quality. I've even noticed po…

What I feel is that digital medium is too pristine, I dearly miss analog limits that gave glare and blurry trails on spotlights. Even tone often added to the pictures (another instance is Kodachrome). It wasn't a defect imo

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

#156

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jcun4128 wrote: post #134
jk7tarYZAQNpTQa wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

Wait, you got a car for $2,000?

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

#157

Post by astrange »

meowzero wrote: post #46
Miraste wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody has done this with a full frame sensor, as far as I know. I'd be interested to see smartphone image processing with a sensor that size.

Most image processing has to do with imitating full frame sensors (better low light photography, DOF, etc.) So I'm not sure if full frame/APSC/Med-format cameras need the same image processing that camera phones have. Also, most people who use the bigger sensor cameras are probably pros. Most of them would prefer a "blank slate" and use RAWs.

Camera phones have significantly better processing than newer full frame cameras at this point; obviously they can't take the same pictures, but full frame cameras can't do HDR, noise stacking, night mode etc very well. You can do it by hand by shooting raws and editing them together but it's inconvenient. The autofocus is also more advanced in iPhones with lidar.

I assume part of this is that the camera companies are Japanese and refuse to pay any engineers more than $20k a year.

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

#158

Post by xgulfie »

reader_mode wrote: post #4
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…

>Have you ever watched an old TV show and despaired how unwatchable it is because of low quality of image? Yes, that's the same thing -- our tastes change. I've had the opposite reaction - I'd watch something I've seen before in 4k remastered or something and it would be a worse experience because the extra details reveal the low quality tricks you can get away with on lower reproduction quality. I've even noticed po…

I was watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S. in HD and there is the occasional out-of-focus shot you would never have noticed at the intended resolution

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

#159

Post by astrange »

ryanmarsh wrote: post #68
ajross wrote: post #24

What I don't understand isn't the design of the lenses, which are chasing ever-tightening windows of precision in a competetive market with high margins and discriminating consumers. Of course they're going to be overdesigned. What gets me is that lens distortion is a fully reversible convolution. It's not lossy, at all. Or rather, it's only lossy in the sense that the existing quantization in the sensor is already l…

why hasn't someone come out with a camera with a junky single-piece lens and a fancy image processing backend and won the market? I believe it’s called the iPhone.

Doesn't do much of any lens compensation. It compensates for the sensor quality, but not the lens. There is portrait mode of course.

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

#160

Post by FredPret »

saiya-jin wrote: post #14
evandev wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn off motion smoothing on your TV. It's also called the "Soap Opera Effect".

This so much. People either don't use it and then its unwatchable with it (my case), or get used to it since its default setting on TV and +-don't notice it after some time. Every time I go back visiting parents, which have TV with this on, anything on TV feels surreal and not in a good way. Which isn't bad, watching TV instead of interacting with my parents is stupid waste of time anyway and TV itself actively helps…

What a hilarious bug-and-yet-a-useful-feature on the part of their TV
Post reply on HN