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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?

#111

Post by intpx »

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…

> photography is artistic & creative in nature.

This is a pretty broad generalization. There is plenty of photography that is nothing but technical. Also, the technical side of photography is what drives the innovation to enable the creative side. Do hobbyist landscape and portrait photographers need to be pouring over test data like this or even benefit in appreciable ways from these advances? Not likely. But the R&D that is done in optics begins with some of the most technical fields and trickles down.

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

#112

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?

#113

Post by dylan604 »

dheera wrote: post #74
dylan604 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Canon's L-series (red bands) have metal casings. The glass is also nicer, the barrels are rated much higher for dust/moisture protection. This is reflected in their much higher price tags.

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…

>and horribly difficult to focus. >I don't use autofocus, pretty much ever, so that isn't a consideration.

But it is a consideration. Modern lenses are all designed for autofocus bodies. Yes, you can flip them into manual, but it is still a manual adjustment on a gear designed for computer control. A decent manual focus lens will typically have 270 degress of motion in the filter ring allowing much better control for humans. A autofocus lens typically only has 90 degress of motion (and then infinite turning drek). Much hard to get critical focus manually on an autofocus lens than a manual focus lens.

Also, your older lenses probably weigh much more than the modern lenses. Lots of people prefer the lighter barrels.

I do a fair bit of astrophotography, and the modern Canon glass is great for that. Crip, clean, and no need for focus once truly focused on infinity (varies on each lens, but typically "close" to where it is marked). The older lenses just don't have the sharpness.

So there's a place for each of the older and newer lenses in my kit.

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

#114

Post by dheera »

dekoruotas wrote: post #109
dheera wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love my Contax Zeiss Planar 50/1.4. It's small and compact, feels like a precision instrument, has lovely rendition, is sharp as a tack in the center at f/2 and sharp corner-to-corner at f/4, built like a tank, has a super long focus throw for precision focusing, and cheaper than most equivalent modern lenses. It's perhaps my second most frequently used lens, after the 28/2 "Hollywood" Distagon (which isn't really…

Unfortunately these are now nearly impossible to find without spending silly money... Where did you acquire yours?

Several from old grannies and grandpas selling stuff on Craigslist, a couple from the MIT Swapfest and other flea markets, some from the FredMiranda and MFLenses Buy&Sell forums.

A few from eBay, some good deals pop up every now and then if you're patient for a few months and set up notifications based on keywords rather than thinking "I need this lens right now".

Sometimes if you see an auction on eBay with a high starting price and no bids, it's possible they have been re-listing the item for a long time, and you can message the seller and say you'll buy it right now at a lower price if they turn on that option; many would be happy to be "done with it" and sold. Sometimes if the seller is local you can convince them to cancel the listing and do an off-eBay, in-person sale for cash at a discount (eBay charges a lot of seller fees).

If you bid on an actual eBay auction, place your bid with the highest price you are actually willing to pay and ONLY in the last 10 seconds, or preferably last 3 seconds. By doing that you will either lose OR win but get it at just slightly higher than the next highest bidder's max price and significantly less than your stated price, while leaving that second bidder with no time to re-think and re-bid. By doing the single last-minute bid, you effectively turn the auction into a sealed-bid, second-price (Vickrey) auction for yourself, which is most efficient for you in a game theoretic sense.

KEH has very reasonable prices on most old lenses. Not cheap, but very reasonable.

Also, if you're willing to take apart a lens with a slight amount of haze/fungus, sanitize and clean the hell out of it (not for faint of heart), and put it back together, you can get some very, very steep discounts. Or if the lens has a couple of scratches, you can get steep steep discounts due to loss of antique value, you don't need to take anything apart, and it will have zero noticeable impact on wide aperture images.

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

#115

Post by packetlost »

mellavora wrote: post #56
tachion wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But of course they have - every major smartphone manufacturer is eating the whole consumer camera market alive for quite few years now.

yes, but perhaps this is because of other things? Like that a person is going to have their phone with them anyway? Even if a phone camera is only 1/2 as good as a consumer camera, the ease of use and convenience is going to win the 99% of the market which doesn't care about 'professional grade' results. And the 1% that does care is going to buy a SLR. Not better tech (better as in takes better photos), rather more c…

Good enough for most people's point-and-shoot, but a smartphone camera is by no means competitive for anything beyond that. Hobby photography is fairly common too, and most people won't be using smartphones for that.

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

#116

Post by mateo1 »

amelius wrote: post #8

How are these lens systems designed? Do they use "black box" optimization methods like gradient descent, simulated annealing or even genetic algorithms to find the optimal configuration of lenses?

There's no point in using such methods as the physics surrounding optics aren't a black box, they're well-known and understood. However lens design is very complicated, there are dozens of design parameters and trade-offs to be made, while also taking in account time, cost, materials etc. It's also not a problem that can be solved analytically for realistic use cases.

Computer ray tracing has been used for decades. I'm not sure what the state of the art tools are however.

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

#117

Post by bitL »

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.

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

#118

Post by dukeofdoom »

I have an interchangeable lens camera and multiple lenses. But I usually leave these at home when I travel. Camera prices have gone down so much, you can do amazing things with minimal gear and budget.

Minimal size and weight that still gets the job done is mostly my take on this. small specific cameras for the task at hand. I have a very similar to this, and it's very compact and gives me multiple cameras and angles. Sound quality is often more important than video quality anyway. And you can get good video quality by just using a tripod and an external mic like the rode micro.

1. g7x (mark iii) f1.8 lens and canon colors for talking head videos or pictures. Sony equivalent zv1 would be good too.

2. sony fdr3000 for walking around. Wide angle, and natural looking stabilization. or gopro.

3. dji mini drone. The only drone that is legal to fly in many places.

4. phone for everything else

5. Rode video micro (microphone)

6. Small Tripod (Ulanzi MT-16)

________

~1kg and around 1.5k to put together

I actually have more cameras but for Travel I think this is ideal. The only thing I would add is possibly a bridge camera like lumix fz82 or fz1000 for zooming.

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

#119

Post by dylan604 »

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?

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 seen some features from the 90s that looked really clean in comparison. Lots of things go into that, from how much the camera department "cared", what film stock was used, what film processor was used, etc. Towards the end of mass film production, there were fewer and fewer labs left. During they heyday, the soups used in the processing where in constant use. As demand lowered, the soups kind of stagnated especially in the shops financially strapped.

Film is fickle to be sure.

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

#120

Post by kergonath »

breischl wrote: post #96
hrktb wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you make the same line of comment on a anandtech chipset review, arguing it's ridiculously technical and doesn't take into account the art of progamming ? I am pretty glad dpreview does these kind of technical reviews, it nicely completes other photographer reviews who'll dig more on the experience and real world impact side of things.

A lot of photographers buy amazing gear, and ignore the fact that they lack the skill that would use it well or even require that gear. I think the closest analog might be someone that reads the reviews, buys the latest-and-greatest computing hardware... and then uses it to surf the web and play Tetris.

Even if it were the case, what is wrong with that? I mean, we can buy fancy cars without having a background in engineering, right? All the sneering about people being bad photographers and not needing the latest gear is out of touch. Average photographers benefit immensely from fast autofocus with full frame coverage, better sensors and better optics that make taking pictures in difficult conditions easier.

Besides, some people like the technical optical engineering aspect of it and are happy to follow the latest developments in the same way that some people feel the urge to read articles on the latest HPC Xeon. Gatekeeping and condescension is completely unwarranted.

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