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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?

#51

Post by andromeduck »

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…

You'd need a curved sensor to get a flat focal plane if that's what's desired. I personally don't quite get it either but

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

#52

Post by EvanAnderson »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #42
patorjk wrote: post #15

My Nikkor 50mm 1.8G is one of my favorite lenses. When I had a cropped sensor DSLR I used it as my portrait lens, and when I upgraded to a full frame I started using it as a general purpose lens. It creates beautiful images. I've always been curious about the versions with a lower f-stop, but the price always makes me think twice.

I came so close to buying this lens when I got a Nikon D750 last fall. I'm not really a photographer, but I was unsatisfied with the images coming out of my phone, and if I was going to get a dedicated camera, I wanted to go "all the way", so to speak. But the problem with 50mm prime lenses is they all seem to lack image stabilization. (The one exception I could find, a 45mm from Tamron[1], has bad chromatic aberrati…

Spend a few bucks and get a manual focus version from eBay to play around with before you spend more on an AF version. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

At the low noise levels that you get with high ISO on a D750 you really don't need stabilization w/ an f/1.8 50mm. Turn on auto-ISO and cap it it ISO 6400 or 3200. Even in low light you'll get reasonable shutter speeds at f/4.

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

#53

Post by vagrantJin »

robotastronaut wrote: post #41
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 market — the one that would be happy with a mediocre lens and great image processing - likely overlaps with people using top tier mobile devices for their work. After all, acceptable lenses with amazing image processing is basically what the flagship iPhones and android devices bring to the table, and their use case tends to overlap with that of a 50mm prime.

This strikes me as true.

I wouldnt say the camera companies did not see this coming. They did and chose to not do anything about it. I shoot videos with some pretty low end DSLR cameras and they are often lacking the feautures of any modern flagship phone. It's a joke. We once used a whole Iphone shooting at 120fps and made some plain scenes look amazing in post. A revelation since most pro videographers pooh pooh phone cameras without realizing that they are growing with alarming speed.

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

#54

Post by dylan604 »

pier25 wrote: post #12
reader_mode wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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'm a 4K HDR fanboy, but IMO most movies shot in 35mm film should remain in 1080p. 70mm film looks great in 4K though (2001, Nolan movies, etc). It's a shame there is no 1080p HDR content. 35mm movies would benefit a lot more of higher color bit depth that higher resolution. Anyone knows if this is a codec limitation?

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 flashes are typically on a CCD sensor. There's a whole list of things that are involved that makes one 35mm->4k transfer not like the next.

Typically, you as a consumer, will be receiving an H.264 or H.265 stream that your cable box or streaming device decodes. These have all been updated with levels/profiles to allow for things like 3D, 4K, HDR, and 10bit encodes. The shoehorn used to shove new features into these formats has been put to heavy use.

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

#55

Post by dylan604 »

dheera wrote: post #26
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…

Interestingly, I tried several modern Canon lenses about 8-10 years ago and very quickly sold them because they were all not only producing subpar images compared to almost all my lenses from the 1960s-1980s, but they were also made of f-ing plastic and had an incredible amount of backlash in the rings.

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.

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

#56

Post by mellavora »

tachion wrote: post #30
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…

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 convenient tech which is good enough.

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

#57

Post by whoisburbansky »

What are folks' favorite overviews on how these lenses work? Basic optics from my high school physics classes topped out at the telephoto lens from the article, what would be a good place to start to get a better sense of how the designs in the article help with distortion?

[Edit: Found https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/08/lens-geneology-part..., which looks like a promising start]

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

#58

Post by breischl »

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…

Yeah, you're not wrong. There are people who are into photography for photographs, and then there are people are into it for the gear. Not that the latter is necessarily a bad hobby - no worse than any other collecting type of hobby - but it's not the same thing at all.

I do like reading Roger's work (here and at his LensRentals blog) just for curiosity about how lenses actually work, though.

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

#59

Post by diarrhea »

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…

Yes, pretty much. I loved my low-range Canon gear (100D, Sigma lenses). When the Sony a7R3 came out, I got it alongside an array of GM lenses. My God do they blow everything out of the water. It's an insane kit. The best part is the great autofocus of the body; even in low light, even in rapid movement, even in burst shots. Among 1000 shots, I can count focus misses on one hand.

However, the entire thing feels artificial. It's hard to describe. I don't want to go back, but getting shots is so easy now that it's less of a rewarding feeling nailing a shot. Messed up ISO? Doesn't matter, sensor is ISO-invariant, just adjust exposure in post at no cost to quality. You cannot mess up focus anymore. At 10fps, you cannot miss a shot anymore (mostly).

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

#60

Post by sp332 »

pier25 wrote: post #10
jclardy wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had this experience watching the Hobbit in high frame rate - it felt like I was watching a play, a bunch of actors on a stage.

I watched the second Hobbit movie in 48fps and it was a horrible experience. Everything looked fake, which is how I imagine it actually looked in real life. Props seemed made of plastic, makeup looked like makeup, etc. Also, when there was a cut to a new scene, for a few seconds my brain thought the movie was playing faster. Like those old black and white movies of the early 20th century.

That weird speed effect is because they kept the shutter open longer on each frame, so there's more motion blur.
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