Top Ten Myths of Photography

Lens Testing - or why
the worst photographers have the best lenses...
Lens Testing Myths
Optical Myths
Photo Myths (e.g., photographers as photo editors..)
Photography - Ten Tips
Ten Tips to Improve Your Photography
Twenty Things You Shouldn't Do...(humor)
Zoom vs. Fixed Lenses
Zoom vs. Prime Lenses (Chris Bitmead)

Myth #1

Professional medium format costs much more than prof. 35mm:

I believe that you can get a pretty decent mechanical nikon (f2) with matching WA/normal/Tele lenses, tripod/flash and some accessories for about $1000 on the used market. For the same $1000, you could get a 6x6 all mechanical bronica S2A with 2 or 3 nikkor lenses and tripod/flash of the same vintage. For about $1000, you could get a used all mechanical 4x5 studio calumet view camera with 2 or 3 lenses and tripod/flash. Same mid-70s vintage. In the bronica vs nikon 35mm, the lenses are by the same nikon mfger. As another poster noted, I have compared all mechanical cameras of the same vintage and minimal similar 3 lens systems here. Surprise! The costs for similar systems are remarkably similar 35mm vs 6x6 vs 4x5...

Myth #2

6x7 costs more than 6x6, 6x6 than 6x4.5, and 35mm is less than MF:

A Popular Photography article (by Keppler) several years ago priced out system costs for various then current 6x6 and 6x7 cameras - hassy, rollei, bronica, and pentax 6x7. The system costs were compared vs. nikon 35mm. Surprise! The pentax 6x7 was the cheapest system (around $7k US) while Rollei was more than hassy (surprise again). Nikon 35mm F5 was more than the 6x7 pentax system (10K vs 7k$) but less than the rollei ($14k) 6x6 etc. Surprise!

If you compare OEM 35mm systems between nikon, canon, pentax, minolta for their top of the line professional cameras and similar lenses, you will find a similar distribution for overall system costs in a range around +/- 30 percent of the cost of the average professional system.

My point here is that when you focus on total system costs, the costs for a professional system are about the same, not only within a format (35mm, 6x6) but even between formats. The system costs for a professional 35mm current nikon F5 system was in the midrange for 6x6/6x4.5/6x7 systems. I remember being surprised that the largest format (6x7 pentax) was so reasonable vs. Nikon since I *assumed* it must be the most - but it was the least when you actually added it all up.

I propose that this phenomenon is due mostly to pricing photo gear for what the market will bear. Manufacturers leave out costly features that would substantially raise prices above this level and/or reduce profitability.

Myth #3

You should pick one system and stick to it faithfully (e.g. 35mm):

Equally obvious is that each format has its strengths and weaknesses, and each has its place in a photographer's capabilities. I have grown a lot and learned a lot since buying my 4x5 this semester, perhaps more than I have in the last 12 years of shooting 35mm and 6x6 and then some. You cannot be "all the photographer you can be" unless you have the ability to exploit each format's unique strengths in your photography and have that knowledge and experience under your belt.

Myth #4

You can tell which MF camera or lens took which slide:

I have to check my notes to see if a given 6x6 slide was taken with the hasselblad 500c, the kowa 6, the bronica S2 or S2a, or the rolleiflex 3.5f. The sharpest lens is on the rolleiflex 3.5f, by my test shots, if you care. But without a loupe, I can't tell on the slides, or even when projected. My blind lens tests for various brands of medium format gear (rolleiflex, hasselblad, bronica, kowa, yashica..) shows no statistically reliable preference for lenses by price. Finally, a sharp eyed viewer discovered that Bronica photo ads used hasselblad cameras to make their images, thanks to tell-tale film markers from the hasselblad backs. So if even the camera ads aren't taken with the brand of lenses being advertised, why should you and I worry about which brand of lens took the photo?

Myth #5

New OEM zooms are better than older prime lenses:

As for the 35mm crowd, all of my prime lenses beat all of my zoom lenses all of the time, including the nikon zooms against the pentax screw mount lenses. But I can't tell the 135mm screw mount prime from the topcon prime (surprisingly good) from the nikon prime when used at a midrange F-stop on slides of my test target (brick wall). My newest 28-200mm zoom is the worst optically, but still adequate for up to 8x10" prints.

See related study below (myth #31) demonstrating very little difference between manufacturers performance between lens brands, but nearly one full grade of difference in favor of fixed lenses over zoom lenses in optical quality...

Myth #6

You get what you pay for in professional camera performance:

Sorry, but I can't tell the nikon F or nikon F2 vs. nikkormats (3), either on film or for reliability. Same for my nikonos I vs. II vs. III. The most delicate camera I have is the hasselblad 500c, it has had more crashes and repairs than my two bronicas, kowa 6, and rolleiflex TLR combined. The supposedly less reliable bronicas are sherman tanks...

I mock this "you get what you pay for" philosophy on our Beat This! Ridiculous Photo Prices pages. Examples include a $900 lens hood and a $300 camera strap, and an empty collectible camera box ($685 on ebay). By contrast, my best buys pages cite some camera systems which cost less than the sales tax on similar systems whose performance they at least equal, and often beat!

Myth #7

Brands matter a lot

Brands don't matter much. With prime manufacturer's lenses, you can rarely tell differences between brands in the same format with any consistency on the film. So much cross-labeling and rebranding of lenses and outsourcing goes on that Japanese competitors rarely attack third party makers who may also be the sources for some of their present or future lens runs.

A lens may be marketed under a dozen different names internationally, or the same name (Vivitar) and basic lens design may be made by three or more manufacturers over time, and in multiple countries (Japan, China). Most recent lens designs are very good, and large differences in price may not be reflected in either performance or longevity as you might hope.

See related Posting below on how Canon, Nikon, and Minolta have essentially similar overall averages on lens tests (photodo).

Myth #8

Professional equipment is different from amateur photo gear:

Again, a Popular Photography article by Keppler in the last year or so dissected a current Canon Rebel vs. Canon EOS to compare construction of amateur entry vs. professional camera. The differences seemed pretty minor, with the nod going to more reliable and rugged construction of the professional camera. But the minor differences didn't seem to explain the large seven-fold higher cost differentials to me. The features were very similar, leading you to conclude the professionals paid a lot more for just a little bit more reliability.

Many professionals opted to buy a nikkormat as a second camera body, rather than buy a second F2 photomic. Why? Not because of the lower cost of the nikkormat, but because it offered a single feature (faster 1/125th flash synch than F or F2) that *might* have value to them in rare cases.

Similarly, professionals buy much much more expensive faster lenses simply because they can't afford to miss out on particular photos and push the limits of their film speed and lighting more often. But most amateurs, even serious ones, will be hard pressed to justify such needs by the number of photos they take under such wide open conditions. I can't. Surprise again, as the slower, least expensive prime lenses often are rated sharper or equally good at typical shooting apertures as their much more costly faster cousins. It is just easier to design a slower lens.

Myth #9

Film costs go up as you go from 35mm to 6x6 to 4x5 formats:

This is obviously true only for individual slides or prints. The problem is costs are the result of per photo cost times number of photos taken. I might shoot ten rolls of 36 exp. film on 35mm and be happy to get ten or 12 really good photos. If I shoot ten rolls on 120 (12 exposures), I might also hope to get ten or 12 good photos, possibly by cropping more. And if I shoot ten or 15 sheets of color transparency 4x5 film, I might also hope to get 10 or 12 good photos with cropping out of it. The final cost in each case is going to be remarkably similar (circa $75 for prof. lab processing and similar film costs too). But the good pictures will differ markedly, with the 35mm being more spontaneous and candid, the 4x5 for architecture and sculptures that don't move much perhaps, and the 6x6 in-between and in the studio/lab.

Myth #10

Professional price is proof of professional performance

Price is usually proof of marketing, advertising, overhead, and profitability perhaps, but performance is rather less direct. This is a hopeful note, because it means you may be able to take as good a photo with a $100 pentax screw mount camera and $25 normal lens as with a 10x more costly F3 or 50x more costly F5. Similarly, a decent Yashicamat 124G may take as good a photo as a rollei TLR, a bronica S2a as good as a rollei or hassy SLR. The professional price tag may relate more to convenience nuances and ruggedness or reliability than to performance. These characteristics are important to professional photographers, but even serious amateurs may be hard pressed to justify the dollar cost differences versus the imperceptable differences on film...

Conclusions:

Eventually, you will need to master not just 35mm but also Medium Format and also Large Format to fully develop as a photographer. So those who ask about switching from one to the other have it wrong. You don't switch, rather, you add medium format and you add 4x5 to what you can do now with 35mm, expanding your range as a photographer with MF and LF...

Price differences for professional photography equipment are probably less than you think. As the Popular Photography article concluded, the 6x7 pentax was cheaper than the nikon 35mm system, which was right up there with the other medium format systems. Surprise!

Format matters a lot. You can often tell 35mm from 6x6 from 4x5 when projecting transparencies or on very large prints. The bigger the negative, the better - it is a law of nature.

Format matters because 35mm really is different from 6x6 which differs from 4x5. Candids are easier with 35mm and 6x6; camera movements are easier on 4x5 than on bellows setup 6x6 or 35mm pc lenses. Doing studio work with 6x6 and a polaroid back is easier than on 35. The formats really are different, and they have different feels and strengths to exploit.

Finally, don't get "married" to any format, especially 35mm, with what we've shown is a false sense of either economy or limiting your horizons to either 35mm or 6x6 or 4x5 rather than eventually doing all three.

Fortunately, this advice is relatively low cost. For example, by the time you flesh out your 35mm prime lens lineup by a few lenses, it may be cheaper to change format than to add an extremely wide angle or telephoto lens. You can buy a view camera 4x5 (e.g., calumet) for $250-350, and a 6x6 Bronica S2 or S2A SLR for about the same price. I would argue that you will get more out of that investment as a photographer than you will out of a less frequently used lens like a fisheye** or super-tele.

Don't limit yourself to one format, expand into new areas, and

"Be all the photographer you can be".

[**n.b. In my case, I have opted for a fisheye adapter I can use on both my 35mm cameras and 6x6 cameras (maybe even my 4x5 with a custom filter adapter ring?). This more flexible approach reduced my 35mm system costs so much that I could float a 4x5 camera or bronica 6x6 or decent TLR. ]

Source:
From rmonagha@post.cis.smu.edu Sat Nov 29 19:28:33 1997
Date: Fri, 28 Nov 1997
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: MF greater $$ than 35mm - total system costs, MF can be cheaper than 35mm
Summary: used medium format cameras rival used professional 35mm costs

Background:
I am into 35mm (nikon, minolta, pentax, topcon), 6x6 (bronica, hassy, kowa, rollei) and most recently 4x5 (Calumet). If you compare all mechanical serious amateur/semi-professional equipment of similar vintage, you may be shocked at how little difference there is between different system costs even across such diverse formats as 35mm 6x6 4x5...

I am posting this in part as a response to a number of positive responses...

More Myths Uncovered!

Myth #11

Diopter Lenses are inferior to extension tubes or macro lenses

Whenever people ask about taking macrophotography pictures, well meaning replies try to steer them away from those awful diopter or closeup lenses (e.g., +1 diopter lenses). Unfortunately, those posters are just repeating yet another myth of photography!

My first suspicion that this common belief is a photographic myth came from reading a HP published book on taking closeups of flowers. The author stated he preferred using a diopter or closeup lens for such photos - and had sold many thousands of such flower closeups using one! In his tests, the use of a normal lens and closeup lens provided the best results for flower photography.

What makes this approach so attractive is that closeup lenses do not "cost" you any stops of light, unlike bellows or extension tubes. But many folks use the slower and harder to use extension tubes rather than closeup lenses because they have heard this myth of photography.

I finally found some supporting data and comparisons of the same lens with closeup diopter lenses and extension tubes (See Diopter Lenses Page). In fact, the closeup lenses had less distortion (1.5% vs. 2.7%) than extension tubes. The closeup lenses also had higher sharpness than not just the extension tubes, but also zoom lens macro settings and even high cost macro-lenses!

How can this be? Extension tubes and bellows are basically projecting not only the size of the image, but also any defects in that image from faults in the lens itself. So you get more distortion and less sharpness.

Macrolenses are optimized for flat-field work, where the edge has to be just as sharp as the center. In our test table, the 100mm f/4 macro-Takumar lens had the least distortion (0.7%) and the only example where edge sharpness equaled center sharpness (56 lpmm each). But the closeup lens on a 50mm f/1.4 nikkor reached an astonishing 88 lpmm (but only 50 lpmm in the edges).

So use a macro-lens if you need minimal linear distortion or even sharpness from center to edges (e.g., copying flat documents, stamps, artwork). But a good quality (two element achromatic) closeup lens may actually outperform both extension tubes and macro-lenses for natural objects such as flowers and rocks (e.g., three dimensions).

Myth #12

Variation within a batch of lenses is nearly zero:

When you read replies to a request for user comments on a given lens, don't you wonder how one user can say what a great lens XYZ model is, while another says it was the worst piece of trash s/he ever used?

Or how about the endless debates about which manufacturer's brand or model of a given lens type is the best? Posters argue passionately for Nikon, Canon, Hasselblad, Rollei, and so on as being the best. Others swear by (and at) lens tested reported in different magazines such as Popular Photography. Many folks dismiss Third Party Lenses out of hand.

I finally have a partial explanation for what's going on here. The answer is lenses vary, not only between different manufacturer's brands and models of similar lenses, but even within the same batch of lenses!

In fact, the variations within a batch can be much larger than the smaller variations between some manufacturers lenses!

A number of Kowa normal lenses from the same batch or series were compared by Modern Photography. In our table of results, you can see that there were some terrific ranges of variation in performance of these supposedly identical lenses!

Many people accept a single lens test published in a magazine as a basis for comparing different manufacturer's brands of specific lenses for purchase. Such folks will not be happy when they see the large range of variation shown in our table of lenses! What I am saying is simply that the variation within a batch of lenses may be very large - perhaps even larger than the variation between different brands of lenses.

What this means in practice is that you could get a lens in which all elements worked together, with variations and tolerances cancelling out. Such a lens could perform very well compared to a lens from the same batch in which the elements had tolerance variations that added up against you. In most optics, a few thousandths of an inch can cause major changes in centration, sharpness, and optical aberrations.

When you are dealing with a used lens, or even a new lens which may have been dropped during shipping, you have even more chance for variation from the ideal settings. How can you tell it isn't a lemon?

The answer is you have to cherry pick your lenses, or at least test them carefully with a return guarantee. Cherry-picking refers to testing a number of the same model and brand of lens to find the best performer in the bunch. A number of professionals like to cherry-pick their pricey optics to ensure getting the "best of the bunch". If you don't test your lens, how can you be sure you aren't getting the "worst of the bunch"?

In short, knowing about the potentially large variation in lenses helps explain why different magazines may get different sets of test results (from testing different serial numbers of the same lens design). You can also see why some folks hate a particular lens, and others love their own specific lens of that design.

You are probably the first person to actually test, on film, the performance of that new lens. As you know see, you can't just assume or expect your purchased lens will equal the performance of the magazine tested lens, right?

Myth #13

High priced lenses are built better mechanically:

It is surprisingly hard to find comparisons of the internal construction or mechanics of lenses. It is costly to compare different lenses of the same focal length or type to perform such a test. In fact, I have only seen one article in Modern Photography in which such a test was done.

The results were fairly shocking even to the authors and magazine editors, who had accepted the common photography myth that higher cost lenses were built better mechanically. Except for Leica lenses, there was no direct correlation between build-quality and cost of the lens.

Source: *What's Inside Counts* by Bennett Bodenstein, Modern Photography, September 1972, p.86
What's Inside Counts by Bennet Bodenstein
The Prinz fooled us by being far better than its price indicated... (n.b. Prinz was $60 vs. up to $321 for Leitz)... However, to our consternation we also learned from disassembly and examination under low-power magnification that price often had no bearing on quality at all. Indeed, many assemblies of the lowest priced lenses were far superior in design, construction and finish to their high priced brethren... [Emphasis added]

see related notes at How Much Quality Do You Need? pages...

The pro repair facility found that some low cost third party lenses actually had relatively expensive mechanical designs and high quality of construction and finish. Conversely (and perversely), some of the more costly optics of similar focal length had much poorer internal designs and lower quality of construction. Quality of threads, coarseness of materials, solidity of design, use of exposed versus counter-sunk screws, and other quality indicators varied without clear relationship to lens cost.

In short, they had to report that there were a number of lower cost, third party lenses under various importer labels, that had quality of construction features that rivaled the best and much more expensive OEM models. Conversely, some of the more expensive lenses had various short-cuts (poorer quality, use of greases) that one would expect in the lowest cost lenses only.

What makes this photographic myth particularly important is that many users realize that their very costly OEM brand-name lenses don't always perform significantly better than the lower cost third party optics. But they took solace in the myth that their lenses were more rugged and better constructed mechanically.

I think the recent evolution of auto-focus lenses may well over-turn this photographic myth too. By design, auto-focus lenses need to be lower mass in order to be faster to focus. While polycarbonate plastics rather than metal may reduce both costs and weight, I am not convinced that the ruggedness and durability will equal that of the older all-metal mechanical lenses.

The rapid obsolescence of camera lens mounts with new AF camera models and especially new AF lens mount designs may render the issue of durability of camera bodies and lenses a minor point (similar to the issue of durability of obsolete PCs!).

Myth #14

Are Pricey Prime and Macro-lenses Always Better than A Cheapy Zoom?

Most of us believe that a 105mm f/2.5 prime nikkor lens or a pricey prime 105mm f/2.8 macro-lens (micronikkor) can handily beat a cheapy 75-150mm f3.5 Series E nikkor consumer zoom lens across the board.

Surprise! An actual table comparing these 3 lenses at a 1:50 image ratio shows otherwise!

What's going on here? The macro-lens is optimized for macrophotography, not distant objects. It is often the case that macrolens designs requires tradeoffs that make the macrolens a less capable performer for distant landscape work. Similarly, the 105mm f/2.5 nikkor portrait lens is optimized for taking portraits, rather than larger scale objects.

It is also a less well known fact that normal lenses are among the sharpest, fastest, and least costly lenses. Similarly, a short-range (2:1) short-tele zoom can be optimized to provide surprisingly sharp results, as the table shows.

Myth #15

Expensive Faster Larger Aperture Lenses Always Beat Slower Cheaper Ones:

Most people understandably believe that if they pay a lot more for a faster lens, it should be a better lens than a cheaper, slower (smaller aperture) lens.

That's true - but only at the fastest apertures where the slower lens can't compete. In other words, a 50mm f/1.2 or f/1.4 lens is always better than a 50mm f/2 or 50mm f/1.8 lens when used at f/1.2 or f/1.4. After all, you can't use the slower aperture lenses at f/1.2 or f/1.4, right? ;-)

But these fast lenses are much larger, physically bulkier, and necessarily heavier in weight. They may require larger filters too. And you may have to pay several times the price of a less than one f/stop slower lens to buy one. Ouch!

Many photographers are surprised to discover that these faster lenses are often more poorly corrected for aberrations at the slower apertures than the less costly slower lenses. In other words, the slower, less costly lens may outperform the faster, much more expensive lens at some apertures.

What makes this worse is that you may actually rarely use that ultra-fast lens at its wide open aperture. If you are one of those who bought the fastest lens for its higher price and presumed higher performance, you may be surprised to find that your pictures could have been the same or perhaps even better with the lower priced slower but better corrected lenses.

Myth #16

Expensive filters are really worth every penny extra you spend:

Are expensive filters really worth the sometimes high prices asked? You can spend $50, $75, even $200 and $300 US for a single filter. Are these filters that much better than the other brands? Lots of posters will warn you away from non-OEM brands (such as Tiffen and Hoya).

The obvious solution to the question of whether or not non-OEM filters are significantly worse than the higher priced filters is to shoot some comparison shots and test them out. Roger Hicks has done so (for BJP), among other photographers. The consistent results of such testing is that it is either impossible or very hard to tell the results of using different priced filters in real-world photography tests.

There are some notable exceptions. Some brands of polarizing filters have a color cast that isn't neutral enough for many users. Very low cost filters may not be truly optically flat. Filters may vary slightly in actual color and filtering effects, even if they are labeled the same generic type. Some wide angle lenses require special over-sized or thin design polarizers and other filters to prevent vignetting too.

But the vast majority of third party photography filters such as Hoya and Tiffen will have effects hard or impossible to distinguish from the much more expensive Nikon, Canon and other OEM brands, as well as the highest priced filters available.

Filter ads make a lot out of being multi-coated or even super-multicoated rather than singly coated or uncoated. The difference between a singly coated and multi-coated filter will probably not be noticed by most photographers in real-world photographs. An uncoated filter may introduce marginally more flare in some back-lit situations, but otherwise be very hard to distinguish consistently in most photographs.

The real often unsung benefit of higher priced filters may be in their mounts, which are often made of brass. Cheaper filters tend to seize up more on lenses and each other due to the use of lower cost metals (e.g., aluminum) in their filter rims.

See filters page for more resources and links.

Myth #17

Today's zooms are so good they beat yesterday's prime lenses handily:

Lots of people are buying pro-quality fast zooms, typically f/2.8 aperture (e.g., 20-35mm f/2.8 and 70-210mm f/2.8), secure in the claims that these new lenses designed during or after the late 1980s will outperform their old prime lenses from the 1970s and even earlier. The good news for bargain hunters is that many older fixed or prime lenses are at least as good as the latest prosumer zoom lenses, and sometimes even a bit better! The more costly pro zooms may be about as good optically, though they will typically have higher flare and more distortion. Meanwhile, many fixed lenses will be faster, focus closer, take smaller and cheaper filters, have built-in lens hoods, and will be smaller and less weight to carry in your camera bag or on your camera.

Zoom lens designs necessarily have more elements than most single focal length prime lenses in order to do their zooming magic. They also have to have more correction for aberrations and other problems that crop up in going from one end of their range to another.

In general, the extra elements in a zoom lens means that a single focal length, prime lens of similar design will necessarily have less flare than the zoom lens. The less the flare in the lens, the higher the contrast in the slide or negative.

To make matters worse, how many folks do you see using lens hoods on zoom lenses? Not many, since it is so hard to use the required compendium lens hoods. Regular lens hoods either vignette at one end of the zoom range, or are less than optimal at the telephoto settings if they are wide enough for the widest settings.

Yet we all say how important a lens hood is to reduce flare, right? Yet most of us use zoom lens without any lens hood at all. As noted above, zooms have more inherent flare than primes, and that defect is magnified by our failure to use lens hoods on zooms.

In short, I suspect that a prime lens with a lens hood will beat a similar quality of design and construction zoom lens with more elements (and flare) where a lens hood isn't used.

Once you accept this observation, it becomes easier to accept that the convenience of using zoom lenses is bought at a sometimes high price - both economically and artistically. Some users report becoming lazy when using a zoom to crop without taking the opportunity to move around and find the best shot.

We also list a number of other ways prime lenses may beat zooms, ranging from close-focusing abilities to lighter weight around your neck-strap.

The most expensive pro quality zoom lenses from the late 1990's onward have finally gotten good enough to displace prime lenses for many 35mm users requirements. But zooms have made minimal inroads into medium format and large format photography where image quality is such an important factor. Many optical and artistic factors favor prime lenses over zooms for these and other users.

Myth #18

I can make sharp 20" x 30" prints from my 35mm or APS:

Only a few 35mm lenses can achieve sharpness ratings over 80 lpmm delivered on a 24x36mm (or 1" x 1 1/2") piece of film. To make a 20" x 30" print, you need a twenty-fold enlargement. Ignoring losses in the enlarger lens, your 80 lpmm on the film will only be 4 lpmm on the final print (as 80 lpmm = 4 lpmm x 20X magnification).

While opinions vary, a critically sharp print is often figured as one achieving at least 8 lpmm. So our 20" x 30" print is well under this critical sharpness value.

Given our outstanding 80 lpmm performing 35mm lens, we could only enlarge our 35mm film image by ten-fold (10X) enlargement. A 10X enlargement would be 10" x 15" or so in size. Such a 10X print would be critically sharp (e.g., 80mm lpmm = 8 lpmm x 10X magnification).

When people tell us they get great prints from their 35mm cameras in 16" x 20" or 20" x 30" sizes, they are expressing an opinion about acceptable sharpness. Moreoften, such users view their prints at distances that make these sharpness losses less obvious as they are viewed farther away.

Others are happy with prints that are much less than 8 lpmm as a standard of critical sharpness. Most of these people can readily identify the higher standard 8 lpmm prints in side by side comparisons, however. So it isn't that these quality differences aren't visible. They are.

In short, the physics of photography and the limits of lenses are such that there is a limit to how much you can enlarge a 35mm negative and still get a critically sharp image. Even with expensive lenses, that limit is currently around 10X to 12X. Beyond this enlargement ratio, and the 35mm shot will appear less sharp than a similarly sized enlargement from a larger format negative.

Some direct scanning and laser scanning processes may avoid some of these physics limitations. But in general, I restrict large enlargements of 16" x 20" and beyond to my medium format or 4x5 cameras when I want maximum sharpness and the best range of tonality.

See Quality Factors Page and Is Medium Format the Best Compromise? for more information.

Myth #19

Anything other than the very best Nikon lens will Insult your Nikon Camera

Many photographers believe that using anything but the very best OEM lens by their camera maker will "insult" their fine camera bodies. Only Nikon can build lenses that take full advantage of Nikon camera bodies. Will you really "insult" your camera if you use anything but an OEM lens?

For mechanical (non-AF) lens mounts, you can rest assured that your camera won't be "insulted" if you use another brand of lens. So long as the lens fits the mount, stops down and otherwise works properly mechanically, you can use it on your non-AF camera. After all, this is the basis of the large third party lens aftermarket.

This myth may have somewhat more truth now, thanks to autofocus lenses. Many AF lenses have software coded features which are embedded in chips in these lenses. Third party lenses may not precisely match the software or design of these lenses, and so may fail to perform similarly under all conditions.

Some subtle differences between third party lenses and OEM lenses may also provide some problems to a small number of users. For example, Nikon lenses are spec'd to shut-down their aperture blades rapidly (e.g., 20 msec) in order to work with Nikon's fastest motor drives on pro camera models. Not all third party lenses may have such fast, ball-bearing aperture mechanisms. So motor drive users on pro cameras may have some problems with these slower closing third party lenses in some light conditions. But I have never encountered these problems with lots of third party lenses on my pro motor-drive mount Nikon cameras (F, F2..).

But in general, lots of us don't need the very best lenses available. This fact is responsible for the huge growth in zoom lenses, particularly for the mass acceptance of the convenient but so-so quality consumer grade zoom lenses of the past.

So instead of your camera being insulted by your using a third party or non-OEM lens, it may be your wallet that gets insulted. Many OEM lens buying photographers are buying quality and durability that they may not be using in their amateur photography hobby. Many more amateur photographers are unhappy because they can't afford the very best lenses, when the truth may be that they couldn't tell the difference in their style of photography if they had OEM lenses or not.

The flip side of myth #18 for large (20" x 30") prints is that if you only make smaller prints, you aren't likely to take advantage of the very best lenses. Less than 1% of all enlargements are 8" x 10" prints or larger! So for 99% of all prints, and especially in the most popular 4" x 6" print sizes, the quality of the lens is much less important than when making larger prints.

Lots of photographers sneer at the new APS format, and many of us carry heavy and expensive medium format systems to overcome limitations of 35mm use. But for the majority of amateur photographers, the need for high quality lenses isn't there. Virtually any cheapy third party lens can exceed the resolution requirements for making a 4" x 6" print!

Similarly, digital camera photography involves a much smaller image surface (on the chip itself, often 3/8ths of an inch). This smaller size explains why such light and small lenses do so well. It is much easier to make a very small coverage and sized lens to be very sharp. Indeed, many microfilm lenses are two or even three times sharper (in lpmm terms) than their 35mm brethren that cost much more to make. But the smaller format means that these lower cost, smaller lenses can potentially outperform their larger 35mm and even medium format brethren.

Myth #20

Slides are Sharper than Prints

In the past, slide film was generally sharper than print film. A corollary was that slides had wider dynamic range than most prints. Slides were also much cheaper to process than making prints, and easier to display and store. So slide film became the medium of choice for magazine and professional photographers.

Recent innovations in films have produced print films that are slightly sharper than the best slide films. Moreover, print films have much more latitude in exposure than slide films. Some newer print films have 5 stops or more over which an acceptable print can be made, compared to only one or two for many slide films.

One reason that slide films have seemed sharper is the tendency to blow them up to gloriously large sizes on bright screens in dark rooms for viewing. Alternatively, slides are viewed through loupes which can provide much larger apparent enlargement factors (e.g., 8X, 10X, 12X) than typically seen in test prints.

The apparent sharpness of projected slides is illusory when viewed at normal viewing distances. Try this experiment, the next time you are in a movie theatre. Hold up an 8 1/2" x 11" piece of paper at normal viewing distances for a similar sized 8" x 10" or so print. You will immediately notice that the sheet of paper handily covers the viewing screen. In fact, most slide shows and movie theatres project slides so these images subtend angles at the eye little more than for 4" x 6" prints (if that).

In other words, we are fooled by the large size of the slide on the screen into thinking there is much greater sharpness and image information in the slide than is really being seen. Despite the apparent large size, the viewing angle of the slide as seen at our eyes corresponds to a relatively modest sized print enlargement at normal viewing distance.

In summary, if you want the sharpest images possible, you may want to look at print film. Black and white films typically have a thinner emulsion than the multi-emulsion color print film, and are the sharpest film media generally available today (ignoring holographic and specialty films). Today's color print films may be sharper than your old favorite slide films. Besides being sharper, print film is more forgiving of exposure errors than slide films.

[added 2/6/99 #11-20 in response to posting (below) of same date...]

Myth #21

You Don't Need Lens Hoods for Night-Time Photography?

Do you need a lens hood when the sun isn't shining, e.g., at night? By now, you have probably guessed that this is another photography myth.

The reason you need a lens hood at night is that there are many very bright lights in night-time scenes (in cities, towns, near highways..). These bright lights can produce a lot of flare and glare reflecting onto your night time image. The longer night-time dark exposure times makes night time flare much worse than daytime flare (ratios can be 10,000:1).

For more information, see flare pages.

Myth #22

Your Lens Sharpness Limits You in Real-world Shooting, Not Your Film

Test charts have super-high contrast (being black or white, after all). At a contrast ratio of 1:1000, many films can record 100 lpmm or more.

But at an average contrast value of 1:6, as you might find in the real-world, your color film is probably capable of recording only 50 lpmm!

Since most lenses deliver well above 50 lpmm, this observation suggests that your color film may be much more limiting than any inherent sharpness differences in your lenses - at least with average contrast (1:6) subjects!

This table helps explain why so many lenses that do poorly on high contrast test charts perform surprisingly well in real-world shooting on color film. You can also see one reason so many professionals shoot with slower speed films (such as Ektar 25), and why Fuji Velvia is so popular too!

Thanks to Patrick Bartek, here is a table of films and lpmm values...

Film	1.6:1 Average	1000:1 Very High
Ektar 25	80 l/mm	200 l/mm
Vericolor 400 Pro	40 l/mm	100 l/mm
Ektachrome 100	50 l/mm	100 l/mm
Ektachrome 64T	50 l/mm	125 l/mm
Fujichrome 100 Pro (RDP)	50 l/mm	125 l/mm
Fujichrome Provia 100 Pro (RDP II)	60 l/mm	140 l/mm
Fujichrome Astia 100 Pro (RAP)	55 l/mm	135 l/mm
Fujichrome Velvia Pro (RVP)	80 l/mm	160 l/mm
Fujicolor NPS 160 Pro	63 l/mm	125 l/mm
Fujiolor NPL 160 Pro	63 l/mm	125 l/mm
Kodak T-Max 100	63 l/mm	200 l/mm
Kodak T-Max 400	50 l/mm	125 l/mm
Kodak Technical Pan 2415/6415 in HC-110 D	125 l/mm	320 l/mm
Kodak Technical Pan 2415/6415 in Technidol (liquid)	100 l/mm	320 l/mm
Kodak Technical Pan 2415/6415 in Technidol LC	100 l/mm	320 l/mm

See Film LPMM for related posts.

Myth #23

Nikon Mount lets you Interchange Lenses and Bodies - New and Old - Freely

Before I get accused of being anti-Nikon, I have 9 bodies (F onwards) and not only lots of 35mm nikkors, but also medium format nikkors and even LF.

Most of the major 35mm brands have "orphaned" their older manual focus cameras and lenses in changing mounts - often several times - over the last decade or two. The switch to autofocus has been used to justify the need to again "orphan" the current generation of lenses - sometimes including the first generation of autofocus lenses succeeded by a second! All of these changes have left many unhappy owners with obsolete lenses that won't mount on the latest cameras (at least not without feature losing mechanical adapters).

The major exceptions are Nikon and Pentax. In fact, with Nikon you can take any of the latest lenses and still mount them on the earliest F-mount bodies. I like to use my 35mm f/2.0 AF-D autofocus nikkor on my Nikon F body with the sportfinder prism. However, the latest autofocus nikkors lack the meter coupling "prong" needed to couple with the older camera metering systems (Nikon Ftn, nikkormat FT/Ftn, F2..). Without this minor retro-addition, you have to use stop down metering with the newer lenses on most of these older cameras.

But what you would want is to use your investment in old lenses on the newest bodies. For the oldest nikkors, called pre-AI, attempts to mount them on most later model Nikon bodies will result in D A M A G E!! On a Nikon EM, for example, the lack of the AI/AIS tab on these older pre-AI lenses can cause damage to the mount of the Nikon EM and similar cameras.

A few transitional cameras (Nikon FE, FM, F3..) had a button you could press to push up the AI indexing tab mechanism out of the way so you could mount the older pre-AI lenses without damaging the camera mount. Even so, you generally have to use stop-down metering with these pre-AI lenses. Now you know a major reason why these 20 year old Nikons still sell used for more dollars than they may have cost when new!

Before you buy a nikon body, check out any lens limitations in John White's Compatibility Table. This table will help you spot any potential issues.

You can have the metering "prong" for older cameras retro'd onto newer lenses that lack them at services such as John White's shop. John also does conversion of pre-AI lenses to AI style inexpensively (circa $25).

However, look and price carefully. Many of the older nikkors have been superseded by better designs, especially in AI mounts. Today, even these AI mount models can often be had for little more than the cost of the older pre-AI lenses plus the needed $25-30 conversion costs!

On the other hand, some of the nikkor lens designs haven't changed in decades (105mm f/2.5..), so an older model lens may deliver identical results to the latest models for a small fraction of the cost. So if you have the right camera body, you can save major dollars using the old lenses.

But it is a myth that you can just take any old Nikon lens and use it on any nikon body. In some cases, you will damage the camera if you try. But if you learn the ins and outs of the Nikon bodies, you can keep on using a remarkable fraction of the older lenses within their limits on your old and new Nikon bodies.

Brian Reynolds adds these comments on the Pentax mounts:

All K mount lenses work on all K mount bodies. The only exception I'm aware of is the auto focus version of the ME Super which used a dedicated lens. The K manual focus lenses have to use aperture priority or manual exposure setting, and of course you can only use manual focus when you mix auto focus and manual focus body and lens types (K and KA are manual focus; KAF and KAF2 are auto focus). I think some of the some of the auto focus bodies have focus confirmation indicators when used with manual focus. I'm also not sure if the screw mount adapter works with the latest K mount auto focus cameras.

See John Glover's posting regarding new Pentax ZX-50 and ZX-30 autofocus incompatibilities with many older lenses (drat!).

Myth #24

It's the Lens that Takes the Picture, the Camera's Just a Box

Oh yeah? Then try to get some of those Leicaphiles to give up their silky smooth mechanics and high priced Leica bodies for one of those Russian copies. Good luck. But if the lens is really critical (as most Leica-philes maintain), and the camera body is just a box, then it shouldn't make any difference, right?

Similarly, few Nikon users want the serviceable Nikon mount cameras made by non-Nikon formerly Soviet camera factories - even the locals. In fact, there is a pretty large group of Nikon users who don't want to buy Nikon cameras which weren't made in Japan (e.g., Malaysia or Chinese made Nikons). You can find similar Leica-philes who turn their noses up at Canadian made Leicas. Many Rollei-philes are upset about the Korean "Rolleis". Others are upset at Minolta made cameras under German nameplates. And how many folks have Contax cameras when they could use much cheaper Yashica bodies with the same lenses?

In other words, the camera body is a major element in your photography efforts and your success therein. If a camera lacks mirror lockup, as many do, you may be at a disadvantage trying to do some macro work. Another camera may have a double exposure lock that is needed by some photographers, but not at all by others. But camera features are often a compromise, with marketing added in. In other words, some of the most useful and needed features may only be available in the higher priced mid and upper range models (e.g., depth of field control, mirror lockup) as an incentive to get you to pay more for these high-priced camera "boxes".

Myth #25

You should Balance Your Lens and Camera Body Purchase

Should you "balance" your lens and camera? Is it fair to make fun of someone who has a kilobucks camera body (say, a Nikon F5) with a low cost 50mm f/1.8 lens? Is it ridiculous to use a $75 used nikkormat with a fisheye lens that cost ten times as much or more?

The guy with the F5 and 50mm lens may know that the 50mm lens is the sharpest as well as the cheapest lens in the Nikon lens lineup. Having the sharpest lens on your camera is a hard concept to argue against IMHO.

As noted above, the nikkormat may have features (mirror lockup) missing on more current AF cameras. You can't use some nikkor 8mm fisheyes without a mirror lockup body. In this case, features drive camera selection.

Generally, folks think someone with a pricey pro camera body (e.g., F5, EOS-3) are silly if they don't buy the most expensive pro lenses to match their "pro" bodies. Since the pro lenses are often heavier by far, due to faster aperture, this isn't always as logical as it might seem.

Conversely, many folks are bemused when they see my collection of very wide prime lenses. Why don't you replace your 20/24/28/35 set of primes with a single 20-35mm nikkor zoom? Well, the zoom costs twice as much as the primes, is not quite as good optically, and is slower at f/2.8 than my average prime lens. The zoom is also heavier on the camera and around my neck, and has marginally more flare. The four primes weigh slightly more than the zoom, but if one of them fails I'm not out of business. So the lack of a pricey high end zoom pro lens is not necessarily a mis-match to my camera/lens needs.

What about the guy with a $2,500 camera and a $130 third party lens? Or the guy with a low cost yashica body and a prime Zeiss contax lens that cost $2,500? Isn't that a mismatch. Personally, I can understand the second case more than the first. But I really haven't seen all that many cheapy third party lenses on the high priced pro models - have you? Most camera store clerks seem to do a great job of ensuring that doesn't happen! When it does, we can just chalk it up to the camera as jewelry crowd.

In short, cameras and lenses should be balanced to meet your needs, with features that make sense in your style of photography. I use some low cost nikkormat bodies with expensive lenses because they have the features I need. But I also will buy a new camera body simply because it has the TTL flash I need for some macro shots. So match the camera's features and the lens characteristics to your photography needs.

Myth #26

Optical Elements in Lens Mount Adapters Reduce Sharpness A Lot

Many people recommend against using Lens Mount Adapters which contain optical elements. These optical elements are essentially a small teleconverter lens, typically equal to circa a 1.1x teleconverter (vs. standard 1.4x and 2x teleconverters). These elements have to be added to the mechanical mounting ring to enable the shared lenses to focus at infinity properly. Without the optical element, the lens would be too far from the film plane of the other camera model with the mechanical mounting ring in place. Just like a teleconverter (1.4X, 2X), the optical elements enable the lens to be mounted farther from the camera mount but still retain infinity focusing.

I suspect that the bad reputation of low cost 2X teleconverters has also been extended to damn these optical mount adapters - unfairly.

If you actually test optical mount converters, you find that the actual effects on sharpness are quite minimal. Similarly, effects on contrast are also very minimal. In these Popular Photography test results, the optical converters "cost" only a few lines of resolution over the lens without the adapter in place.

However, be aware that most such adapters sacrifice automatic diaphragm and other automatic operations (e.g., autofocus) and require stop-down metering.

A more serious loss for wide angle lens fanatics is the slight teleconverter effect of that 1.1X or 1.2X optical element. A 1.1X teleconverter element would convert a 17mm ultrawide angle lens into a 18.7mm or 19mm lens, while the 1.2X optical elements would yield more like a 21mm lens equivalent. That's a big jump at the wide end, where a 19 or 21mm lens might be half or a third the cost of a 17mm prime lens.

Conversely, a 1.1x element on a 200mm lens yields a 220mm effect, while the 1.2X yields a 240mm effect. Both are close enough to the 200mm in actual coverage angle so as to not have as major an impact as the shifts at the wide end.

Finally, the optical converter element mounts cost about double what a non-optical element mount costs (e.g., $60-75+ US vs. $30+ for a mechanical mount). However, one such adapter can be used with many lenses to share lenses between two seemingly incompatible cameras (albeit using stopped down metering on the recipient).

Myth #27

You Can't Mount Brand XYZ Lenses on Brand ABC Cameras

A related observation to the above Myth #26 regarding optical elements is that you usually can mount lenses from similar kinds of cameras such as different brands of 35mm SLRs onto each other.

In the ideal case, the XYZ lens will come from a camera with a longer lens registration distance than the brand ABC camera. In this case, all you need is a mechanical mounting ring to mechanically mount the lens rear to the camera's lens mount. Naturally, the thickness of the mechanical ring is chosen so it holds the lens at the right distance to focus at infinity. This distance is the same lens registration distance of the brand XYZ camera it is designed to mount on. See our lens mount adapter FAQ for more details as well as Myth #26 above.

Many people claim that you can't share lenses when the lenses are too close in lens registration distance. They reason you can't build a mechanical mounting ring thin enough to fit and mate the cameras and lenses together (e.g., only 1-2mm available).

Similarly, they will also claim that you can't mount a lens with a shorter lens registration distance (e.g., Canon FD 42mm) on a camera with a longer lens registration distance (e.g., Nikon AI 46.5mm). They reason that you would have to shave off some of the metal from the camera's mount to allow the lens to be at the needed point for infinity focusing (here, 46.5-42 or 4.5mm).

Fortunately, we can use negative diopter lenses in the form of a weak teleconverter to effectively match the "shorter" lens to the "longer" camera mount. These optical elements are typically 1.1x or 1.2x strength teleconverters. Unlike conventional teleconverters, these mount adapters have the ABC camera body mount at the bottom and the XYZ lens mount at the top, with an optical 1.1x or 1.2x teleconverter inbetween. So you can mount nearly any 35mm format lens on another 35mm camera, with the right teleconverter elements and mechanical mounting adapters. Unfortunately, only a few popular combinations are available commercially (e.g., Canon FD to Nikon).

Generally speaking, adapters are usually restricted to the same size format (e.g., 35mm film) lenses or smaller. So you can probably use your medium format lenses on your 35mm SLR, but you can't use your Konica 35mm SLR lenses on your Hasselblad 6x6 body (except at macro). There are a few exceptions, where the 35mm lens has more coverage (again, see the Lens Mount Adapter FAQ for details, also homebrew lenses pages).

Myth #28

Pro Cameras are more Reliable than Amateur Cameras

Let us compare a typical Hasselblad 500cm camera, the workhorse of the pros, with a typical Nikon FE, the choice of many serious amateurs. The Hasselblad's leaf shutter MTBF is estimated at 30,000 shutter cycles, while the camera bodies have an MTBF (mean time before failure) of around 60,000 cycles (shots, not rolls). For comparison, the Nikon FE has a MTBF of around 75,000 cycles for its shutter, which is the major failure mode. In other words, the Nikon FE is considerably more reliable than the Hasselblad, even though the Hasselblad costs ten times more. But wait, it gets worse, as the Nikon EM (MTBF 50,000 cycles) at $129 is also more reliable than the Hasselblad (based on MTBF). Aargh!

Naturally, this comparison between formats isn't really fair. The mechanics and film sizes are totally different. Still, the same pro camera owners who talk about camera reliability on the one hand, usually also highly praise the professional repairs and support they get from their pro camera makers. They also recommend annual CLA (clean lube adjust) servicing or more frequently for their pro equipment. Granted, they shoot more film than most amateurs, but the above MTBF helps explain the reason for such maintenance precautions.

How much more reliable is a pro 35mm SLR than an amateur 35mm SLR? We have already seen that the consumer 35mm SLR (Nikon EM MTBF 50,000 cycles) and serious amateur 35mm SRL (Nikon FE MTBF 75,000 cycles) are surprisingly reliable compared to top reliability pro 6x6 cameras. How do they compare to the pro's Nikon F series? The Nikon F3 is the best contemporary pro non-AF 35mm SLR for comparison, and rated a MTBF of 150,000 cycles. So the F3 has twice the MTBF of the Nikon FE and three times that of the Nikon EM.

Assuming our pro Nikon F3 camera user shoots a dozen rolls of film a day, as many professionals do, what does that mean? It means they can reasonably expect to have to replace their F3 camera's shutters on an annual basis (i.e., 150,000 shots). The same pro user using a Nikon FE had better plan on semi-annual repair bills!

Is it worth paying up to 700% more for a more reliable pro camera such as the Canon EOS, rather than a similar featured Canon Rebel? Herbert Keppler of Popular Photography described a tear-down and comparison of these cameras. Most of the observed differences in build quality were rather modest, making it hard to justify the 700% cost difference IMHO. Hopefully it is obvious that if the EOS has twice as high a MTBF as the Canon Rebel, at seven (7) times the price, you are paying a major premium for that pro camera's extra reliability.

Are cameras as reliable as they could be? We have reports of pro Nikon F5 shutters hitting 250,000 shutter cycles and some Canon EOS shutters got past 420,000 shutter cycles. Wow! So while these examples may be atypical, it seems clear that shutters could be made more reliable than the current average of 150,000 cycles (on pro 35mm SLRs). I suggest that the reason cameras aren't made more reliable has more to do with the costs and lack of perceived benefits and market demand for such reliability.

My theory is that the pros accept the need for at least an annual CLA and repair maintenance cycle. They also invest in backup bodies, so that when their heavily used gear goes down, they have another camera to fall back on (or two or three..). Paying 700% more for pro gear to be made twice as reliable would be a bad tradeoff against having a spare camera, which has other uses. Most pros would do at least an annual CLA of their gear, even if the improved MTBFs suggested they could go longer. So long as the typical camera plus backup camera make an annual maintenance cycle, more reliability isn't worth the huge incremental costs.

Serious amateurs can expect about 5 years before a major failure, shooting a roll a day in their Nikon FE class cameras. Given the cost of such repairs, many choose to upgrade models rather than put $150 US or so into a repair on an older camera model. If the manufacturers improved the reliability of their serious amateur cameras to that of the pro camera levels (double MTBFs to 150,000 cycles), it would only result in halving of new camera sales to upgrading serious amateurs, right? And given many pros don't need all the pro features of the pro cameras, wouldn't they also pick the equally reliable and five to seven times cheaper amateur models with the same reliability and features they need?

Finally, for the cheapy consumer camera users, reliability doesn't matter very much. They don't shoot enough film to wear out even the low reliability shutters. Economy measures such as plastic camera and lens mounts don't matter much either, as few consumers change lenses often. Paradoxically, the least reliable cameras are the ones least likely to wear out. The pro cameras are the ones most likely to fail from high use, which partly explains the pros' fascination with camera reliability.

The camera makers know cameras have to be reliable enough, but most non-pro buyers won't pay a lot extra for more reliability. The pro camera users solution to camera reliability is to carry backup cameras. Given the cost differences, I suggest that approach is also a good one for serious amateurs who are contemplating a new pro camera model for its perceived reliability benefits. Instead, consider buying a second and newer serious amateur class camera. Oftentimes, these cameras will have "trickle down" features from the current pro camera model technology (or be ahead of it). The cost is much less, and you aren't paying a lot (700%) for a modest improvement in reliability in the pro models. Unless you shoot a lot of film, you probably wouldn't benefit from this direct investment in higher reliability.

Myth #29

My Commercial 35mm Lens Hoods Are Optimal Designs

You might expect that a plastic lens hood that costs $300 would be the ultimate in flare control. Yet a poster improved his $300 lens hood by putting in $1 worth of black felt to reduce shiny reflections from the plastic.

How about length? To really reduce flare producing light, an optical rule of thumb suggests the lens hood should be at least as long as the lens' focal length. So your 200mm prime telephoto lens should have a 200mm or 8 inch long lens hood for optimal effect. None of the three 200mm lenses I have with built-in lens hoods are longer than about 2 inches, extended to the maximum, from the glass. If 8 inches is optimal, is 2 inches really enough?

And how many of you have any lens hood at all for your zoom lens, where the need for a lens hood is highest? It isn't because a variable lens hood can't be designed - Sigma has one design that varys as you zoom the lens from wide angle to deeper at the telephoto end on some of their zooms.

One of the pro secrets is that using a compendium (accordian-like) lens hood on their lenses lets them get optimal flare busting action out of their lens hood and lenses. These compendium hoods can be extended like a bellows, as needed, to provide the degree of protection needed.

I suppose you realize that an optimal lens hood on 35mm, which is a 2 x 3 rectangular format, would have to be a matching 2 x 3 format lens hood, right? In fact, many 6x6cm lenses have an outside bayonet mount for a square shaped lens hood, will retaining an inner filter mount for filter use without disturbing the lens hood arrangement(s). By comparison, my 35mm round lens hoods are rather poor shape factor compromises, right?

Still think your 35mm commercial lens hood is optimal?

One solution is to build your own lens hoods, using the lens hood vignetting tests at our flare related page.

Myth #30

UV filters help to filter UV and improve Haze performance

From a posting by Karl Synder:

Filter          UV Light Absorption
UV              22%
Sky 1A          45.5%
UV 15           81%
UV 16           86.5%
UV 17           97%
Haze 2A         Virtually all UV light


[Source: B&H;'s "The Professional Photo SourceBook", page 360, Tiffen Filters.]

In general, UV filters don't really do much for haze or for filtering out UV, and even the skylight filter lets more than half the UV pass through.

In actual practice, this doesn't matter, because most modern multi-coated lenses are excellent filters for UV, and so need no UV filtering at all.

(See Ultraviolet Photography on the benefits of uncoated lenses for use in UV photography work...).

If you are shooting at high altitudes where there is a lot more UV or with older lenses, UV filters might actually help a bit, but a UV17 or Haze 2a filter would be an obviously better choice if you want to eliminate UV.

What most people really want to eliminate is not UV but blue light. Scattering from dust and airborne moisture causes distant scenes to appear bluer than they really are (for a similar reason, the sky is blue). While our modern lenses efficiently prevent UV from getting to the film, they are designed to let the blue light through.

So if you want a filter to penetrate the haze, get a strong haze 2a or better filter that actually not only absorbs UV light, but also some of the blue. Or cheat, and use infra-red film and filters to really slice through aerial haze (that's what the military does with aerial infrared photos). Using IR film and filters removes almost all of the scattered blue light which gives rise to the haze effect, along with all the blue and most other colors ;-).

In short, UV filters don't really filter much UV. Your modern lenses don't need them to filter any UV, since they don't pass much UV through modern multicoated optics anyway (under 0.1% without any filters). Surprise!

Myth #31

Canon or Nikon or Minolta Lenses are Better on the Average...

Oivind Midttun has calculated the mean and standard deviations for three major 35mm lens makers - Nikon, Canon, and Minolta - for a long series of AF lenses selected by a user (Roland) from Photodo's MTF lens scoring site.

What is surprising here is not that there are some differences, but that they average out to be such SMALL differences between the average prime or zoom lenses for these hotly debated manufacturers. Nikon and Minolta are essentially identical in their average lens MTF/Photodo scores. Surprise!

Moreover, this table also shows how AF primes handily beat AF zooms by nearly a full grade (0.8+). The statistical analysis suggests that 5 out of 6 zooms are worse than the bottom (worst) 1/6th of the prime lenses!

Compared to the average zoom lens (3.1), 97.7% of the prime lenses are above its score (at 3.2). In other words, only one prime lens in fifty is as bad as the average zoom lens. Impressed yet?

And while there is a 50%:50% chance that a prime will beat a score of 4.0, there is only one chance in fifty (2%) that a zoom will equal or beat 4.0!

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: nkjbm@kj.uib.no (Oivind Midttun)
[1] Re: Canon vs Minolta vs Nikon lenses
Date: Mon Aug 23 1999

Calculating the average and standard deviation of the results for fixed focals and zooms is a bit interesting: Canon lenses may be slightly better "on average", and fixed focals comes out a lot better than zooms (as expected). The spread of the quality of the lenses made by the three manufacturers are similar. Any other conclusions?


        Canon                   Nikon                   Minolta
Fixed
Mean    4.1                     3.9                     3.9
Stdev   0.4                     0.3                     0.4

Zooms
Mean    3.2                     3.1                     3.1
Stdev   0.5                     0.5                     0.5

Oivind

Roland roland.rashleigh-berry@virgin.net wrote:

>I hope photodo won't mind but I have been comparing their figures for
>Canon, Minolta and Nikon AF lenses. It's an awful lot easier if you can
>put those figures side by side so you are comparing like with like.
>Literally side by side by opening 3 Notepad windows and shaping them so
>they will fit next to each other in three columns.
>
>I fact I've done just that. Perhaps you would like to try it out.
>
>Roland  
.... lots of individual lens comparisons from Photodo values follow...

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: rmonagha@smu.edu (Robert Monaghan)
[2] brilliant analysis! Re: Canon vs Minolta vs Nikon lenses
Followup-To: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Date: Mon Aug 23 1999

Neat! Brilliant analysis and idea! Assuming a normal distribution, we get:

        mean    stdev   -2      -1      mean    +1      +2 stdev
prime                   2.3%    15.8%   50.0%   84.0%   97.7%
canon   4.1     0.4     3.3     3.7     4.1     4.5     4.9
nikon   3.9     0.3     3.3     3.6     3.9     4.2     4.5
Minolta 3.9     0.4     3.1     3.5     3.9     4.3     4.7
avg=    4.0     0.4     3.2     3.6     4.0     4.3     4.7
zoom
canon   3.2     0.5     2.2     2.7     3.2     3.7     4.2
nikon   3.1     0.5     2.1     2.6     3.1     3.6     4.1  
Minolta 3.1     0.5     2.1     2.6     3.1     3.6     4.1
avg=    3.1     0.5     2.1     2.6     3.1     3.6     4.1

In other words, 97.7% of the zoom lenses (at 4.1) are below just over half (4.0) of the prime lenses. So you have a 50:50 chance that a prime will beat 4.0, but only one chance in 50 that a zoom will do so! ;-)

Or, 97.7% of the prime lenses (at 3.2) are above the average of the zoom lenses (3.1), so only one prime lens in fifty is as bad as the average zoom lens. Hmmm?

Some 5 out of 6 zoom lenses (3.6 at 84%) will be worse than the worse 1 out of six prime lenses (also 3.6 at 15.8%). Or only one zoom lens in six will be as good as the worst one sixth of the prime lenses.

So much for the myth that today's zooms are "just as good" as primes

for more, see my pages on prime vs. zooms at

http://www.smu.edu/~rmonagha/third/primes.html ;-)

And while I personally don't put a huge amount of stock in single point MTF scores by photodo or anybody else in my lens selecting, I have to wonder why nobody else noticed such graphic similarities (between manufacturers) and differences (between AF zooms and primes) before! ;-)

Nice Job, Oivind Midttun!

regards to all - bobm

[Ed. note: I thought the bell shaped curve for ratings was interesting...] From: "Klaus Schroiff" me@photozone.de Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Re: Lens testing Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2002 >Hardly a reliable or controlled process. As is every other survey out there. Again - have a look at the results. e.g. standard zooms (roughly): top-end: Minolta, Canon, Nikkor f/2.8 zooms plus some slower Carl-Zeiss zooms high-end: Tokina AT-X Pros middle: most better consumer grade zooms and Sigma EX low-end: kit-zooms and bottom-end third-party stuff There're ... 2 excellent 5 very-good 10 good to very-good 12 good 12 average 8 sub-average 5 poor 5 very poor ... survey verdicts in this specific class. A healthy distribution I think. I do not claim that these results are 100% accurate - you'll certainly find performance outliers here and there if you do a deep scan. However, it's certainly better than russian roulette - far better. cheers Klaus http://www.photozone.de

From: Alan Browne alan.browne@videotron.ca Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Measurbation: The best Minolta lenses v. Canon, Nikkor Date: Sun, 02 Mar 2003 I ran a "selective" sharpness scoring of lenses from the photodo database. I selected lenses for scoring based on most of the best Minolta lenses to see how Canon and Nikkor could stand up to them. Photodo looks at sharpness only and the results are weighted. So the final number filters out a lot of quality information. Other attributes of a lens (distotion, bokeh, contrast, build quality, etc) are either not contained or heavilly filtered out of the result. If I made any errors, please point them out to me. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 20 f/2.8 35 f/2.0 50 f/2.8 50 f/1.4 85 f/1.4 100 f/2.8 135 f/2.8 200 f/2.8 300 f/2.8 17-35 f/2.8 (f/3.5) 28-70 f/2.8 80-200 f/2.8 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * This does not match perfecly accross Minolta, Canon and Nikon, so I "best fit" where I could. Where there were several models from one manufacturer, I chose the "best" sharpness version. Canon alternates Nikkor 50 f/2.5M 50 f/1.8 85 f/1.2 100 f/2 105 f/2.8 135 f/2 200 f/2.8L II 300 f/4 17-35 f/2.8 Results: Best lens Count Sharpness "Ties" Lenses Canon: 6 3.77 2 13 Minolta: 4.5 3.66 2 13 Nikkor: 0.5 3.57 1 10 (or tie (0.5 points)) There was one tie between Minolta and Nikkor (20 f/2.8) and two ties between Minolta and Canon (50 f/1.4 and 200 f/2.8) (IOW: Minolta had to "tie" in three cases to get 1.5 points, Nikon had to "tie" to get all of its half-point!) Nikkor did not "enter" in three cases: 200 f/2.8 and 50 f/2.8 macro, so this certainly cost Nikkor at least 1 or 2 points of opportunity. (In two cases, there was no close lens, in one case (17-35) it was unrated at photodo). Standout: Minolta 100 f/2.8M: 4.5 v 4.2:Canon, 3.9:Nikkor The Leica 100 f/2.8M also gets a 4.5 from photodo Leica ElmaritR 90/2.8 gets 4.6 Results: http://www.aliasimages.com/LensComp.xls I did not design this test to make Nikkor look bad (and given the "sharpness points" they did fine.) I selected many of the best Minolta lenses to see how Canon and Nikkor would stand up. I'm sure a re-selection of the lenses would give Nikkor a much better standing. Cheers, Alan

Myth #32

Film Changes its Speed in Cold Weather

Sorry, but various sources confirm that film speed stays constant in cold weather. However, reciprocity losses may be less in really cold weather when taking longer exposure time photos such as astrophotographs. You also have to worry about static electricity discharges and film becoming too brittle to move without splitting in your camera. See Cold Weather Camera Pages and Film reciprocity pages for more details.

Astronomers often "hyper" film by exposing the film to various inert gases, usually under pressure. Hypered film performs better in longer exposure astrophotography too. Reportedly, the film emulsion actually swells and changes its properties absorbing the gas. But let the roll of film sit around in your camera bag, and the gas diffuses out and the film goes back to normal.

There is hope. Some new film technologies (AGFA) promise to extend film sensitivities by up to tenfold. Use of formic acid related chemicals will help prevent lowered efficiencies of film when electrons knocked off by light get "lost" and don't effect the silver grain (roughly 80% of electrons are "lost" or ineffective in most films today). While CCD devices will still be more sensitive (and photomultipliers more sensitive still), at least this will give those of us using film something to look forward too?

Myth #33

Uncoated Lenses are Unusable

See related postings by Ed Romney and others below. In fact, you can use uncoated lenses for many situations, especially if you use a lens hood to help control for flare. Moreover, uncoated lenses are ideal for ultraviolet photography.

Myth #34

Process Lenses are Only Good for 1:1, not Landscapes

Sorry, but see Ron Wisner's page debunking this myth (and the post below).

The short answer is that symmetrical lenses and process lenses can work very well not just at closeup distances, but also at infinity for landscapes and other uses. So use the prejudice against them to buy them up cheaply!

Myth #35

You need special Quartz Lenses to Do Ultraviolet Photography

Actually, you can do longwave ultraviolet photography using glass photographic lenses, provided they aren't multicoated, and preferably uncoated! See our ultraviolet photography pages for ideas and details.

For shortwave ultraviolet photography, below 330 nanometers (to around 215 nanometers), quartz lenses may be required (unless you can use mirrors). However, simple quartz lens elements are available for under $100 US from sources such as Edmund Scientific Corp.

Myth #36

World is 18% Grey, and Reflected Light Meters are Calibrated to 18%

Actually, the world is really closer to 12 or 13% grey. Reportedly, Ansel Adams convinced Kodak to use 18% based on some calculations he made. But Bob Shell, the noted photographer and editor of Shutterbug observed:

However, photographic light meters are not calibrated for 18% reflectance. This is the myth. They're actually calibrated for 12.5 - 13 % reflectance, one half stop less reflective than a Gray Card. That's why you make a 1/2 stop compensation from a reading taken from a Gray Card.

Another glitch I have found with grey cards is that they can vary by an entire stop as you angle them from the horizontal by about 30 degrees or so, depending on the lighting. A better solution might be an ambient light meter...

[See also Meters Don't See 18% Gray]

Related Postings:

From: Tim Daneliuk tundra@tundraware.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
Subject: Re: Hasselblad Heresy!
Date: Mon, 02 Feb 1998

Tom Clark wrote:

Some may remember that I shot my RB67 side-by-side, shot-for-shot against my friends Hasselblad. The film was from the same box. The shots were framed the same and exposed the same. The same lab processed both rolls as part of the same order.

When the proofs came back, the variations between the two were very small and were not consistently in one direction or the other. In other words, there was more variation due to lab processing than could be attributed to the cameras.

So I promised to pick one pair and have an extreme enlargement made of a small area from both cameras. Then I would publish the results here. Guess what?

Mamiya wins hands down!

My friend says that he probably just didn't focus as accurately as I did. Maybe so, but I can't find any feature at any distance on his shot that is in focus at this degree of enlargement.

Tom Clark

Ya know, this general thread ("My esoteric and expensive camera is better than your esoteric and outrageously expensive camera...") is becoming most tiresome. I own a 'Blad and I betcha I couldn't see the difference between 30 x 36 inch prints made from negs on the Mamiya 7, RZ, Hassy, Rollei TLR, and Rollei 600x cameras. Why do I say this? Please read on -

Just for snicks, I just bought a very clean, but very old Mamiya C-22 TLR on eBay recently. It has an equally old chrome 135mm lens on it. After checking shutter speeds (pretty dang close for a critter that old), I proceeded to shoot a roll of Agfa APX 100 through it, processed the film in PMK Pyro as usual, and made a small stack of 11x14s.

Keep in mind that I normally produce prints from Hassy or 4x5 view camera negatives - I expected to see quite a noticeable difference. Guess what? While the old Mamiya is certainly not as sharp and as contrastly as all the Zeiss glass sitting in my camera bag, it still produced prints worthy of display - this with a lens whose technology and design is at least 30+ years old.

Now, if I have to pay attention to see the differences between a 30 year old lens (that is, let's face it, never been known for being among the world's best) and a modern state-o-the-art Hassy lens, I seriously doubt I'll see any *repeatable* differences between the best lenses made today by the world's foremost lens designers. The truth is, that film flatness, film resolution, developer type, and lens-to-lens variations will come into play long before any of the aforementioned lenses will be a limiting factor.

Hey, I like hardware as much as anyone. If I had the dough, I'd own all the above just for fun. But folks, you're measuring NOISE not signal with the kind of anecdotal tests described above.

So, Pax Optica to all of ya, and happy shooting (pardon my fractured Latin/Greek ;-)))

Tim Daneliuk Work: tim.daneliuk@ps.net

And here's another rule ;-)

From: howard hknauer@home.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: How far apart in Focal Length should primes be?
Date: Sun, 01 Feb 1998

Here's the rule.

The distance between focal lengths is inversely proportional to the amount of money available to purchase more lenses and directly proportional to the attention span of the photographer with his new equipment.

Approach to Lens Choices

From: Nick Fiduccia nickf@cup.hp.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: How far apart in Focal Length should primes be?
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998

Dennis:

Regarding your question about how to choose your lens sets......

Your set you are contemplating 20, 35, and 85 is OK but, I would add a 50mm to fill the 85/35 = 2.4X gap in your set. These are cheap, light, and usually of high optical quality. It may allow you to shoot in low light conditions because of the wide aperature that these lenses usually come with. Many do not like the 50 because it gives a natural perspective which they considered boring. However, it is one of my most used lenses and one I alway have with me!

One last comment, Roger Hicks once advised getting only one lens to start with and really learning to use that lens. You should find this lens meets perhaps 30-50% of your needs. Then, only after spending a significant amount of time with that one lens, you will have a good idea what your next lens purchase should be at which time you should purchase it. This two lens set should meet 50-80% of your needs. After a while of using these two lenses, you will have a better idea of what third lens would complete your set! I think this is a good approach to follow if you are just starting out. I also prefer 4 lens sets. Any more than that become a problem to juggle in the field!

I think you cannot go wrong with the set you have chosen! Happy shooting!

-Nick

Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998
From: Eric Goldstein egoldste@bu.edu
Subject: [Rollei] "Superior" lenses (was Portraiture)

Todd Belcher and I have been discussing what makes a lens "superior" in the absolute sense and whether this is even a meaningful distinction. He raises some interesting points, and since the rest of the list is probably already asleep with boredom from the two of us 8-), I'll offer up this one...

At some point in the late 60's/early 70's or so, lens factories such as Leitz and Zeiss made a major shift in design philosophy, namely to move away from maximizing lens resolution (because the overwhelming majority of the end users didn't/don't typically enlarge beyond 4 diameters or so) and toward maximizing lens contrast (which enhanses apparent resolution). They did so by optimising designs which disburse light energy away from the center of the image points/discs, and concentrate this energy more around the periphery, resulting in an image disc with a light airy center and a denser edge. I have a copy of a leitz piece discussing this change for the Noctilux, and have seen other papers which document this general shift in design philosphy for other factories and lenses. I'm not an engineer and I don't know which design parameter(s) effect this trade off, perhaps someone else can help here if anyone is interested...

Anyway, in this real-life example of trading higher resolution for higher contrast, which is the "superior" and which is the "inferior" lens?

Eric G.

-------
Date: Mon, 09 Feb 1998
From: Richard Knoppow dickburk@ix.netcom.com
Subject: Re: [Rollei] "Superior" lenses (was Portraiture)

This is an old design problem and is illstrated in Kingslakes older book which someone mentioned in an earier post (Lenses in Photography). It has to do with the distribution on energy in a point. The higher resolution lens contrates the energy but has a number of rings around the point, the high contast version will broaden out the point but reduce the rings. This has to do with the effects of diffraction. There is a similar compromise necessary in radar and satellite antennas where the "rings" are called "lobes". The design process is called "apodization".

For a camera lens, chosing contrast rather than resolution results in greater acutance or visual sharpness. This is more important for color than for B&W.; As color photography became more dominant the lens makers, particularly the Japanese, compormised designs more toward acutance than resolution.

----
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles,Ca.
dickburk@ix.netcom.com

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998
From: peter.kotsinadelis@octel.com
Subject: Re: [Rollei] Re: Contrast vs sharpness
...

2. With regard to Contrast versus resolution, the thread has been interesting reading. One friend of mine who does a good deal of Photography for publication and switched to Canon EOS. The EOS lenses were great for slides but he did not like them for B&W.; When he grabbed his old Nikon for some B&W; shots and showed them to the editor, his editor exclaimed, "what did you do get a new lens?" The images look far better. Needless to say, he sold the EOS and lenses and bought a N90s and Nikkors and has been happy ever since.

I remember a similar story about Rollei, in the 1960s the Zeiss Planar lens formula was allegedly changed to provide better contrast but suffered in terms of resolution. I know the E2.8 remained with 5 elements, but there was a 6-element 3.5 design. Perhaps this is fact or more talk but many I have spoken with feel the early Fs and Es were far sharper optically then the later model Fs. Comments?

Peter K
peterk@iname.com

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 1998
From: Eric Goldstein egoldste@bu.edu
Subject: Re: [Rollei] "Superior" lenses (was Portraiture)

Mario Nagano wrote:

This search for better color images, should explain why Rollei adopted Planar/Xenotar lens for their high-end TLRs, leaving Tessar/Xenar for their basic/intermediate models?

Mario-

I think that there is an alternative explanation here, namely the great "need for speed" which marketers were pushing lens designers to engage in at the time. Especially during the 60s, faster lenses were a big sales point, and an optic which had a max aperture of f/3.5 was regarded as slow and old...

Also, the post war years brought many more exotic, more affordable optical glasses into the reach of lens designers, and in many instances they were able to use them to recalculate even tried and true formulations into higher standards of performance. For instance, I can recall seeing the test results of some post-war recalculated tessar-types getting very close to being apochromatic. I suspect the "color" labeling was more marketing than anything else, as I can't see why these changes would not be equally useful in b/w...

Eric Goldstein

[Ed. note: Fred is replying to my post on why so many lenses test above average on the magazine photo tests. My answer was that these tests were set many years ago, and most third party lenses had improved since then. So today's average lens tests well above yesteryear's lens averages.
A second part of my post was that you could often get 90% of the use and quality of the current top of the line lenses for very little of their cost. Fred Whitlock is a noted reviewer of Nikon lenses on the web in particular, so it is interesting to see him affirm here that there are many bargains yet to be found for low dollars on the used lens market...]

Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998
From: Fred Whitlock afc@cl-sys.com
To: Robert Monaghan rmonagha@post.cis.smu.edu
Subject: Re: thanks Re: Why the average lens is above average..

Like I said, the differences are often subtle. It's pretty obvious that the prices are not. I have found the same thing to be true in the world of audio. A small amount of improvement usually carries with it a large amount of cost. What you say makes great sense to me. The 105 f2.5 is good example. It is and always has been an excellent lens. It's available used for a little over $100 and will outperform any zoom lens ever made at that focal length. I feel the same way about the old Nikkor 200 f4. Not only is it excellent optically but it's also small and light compared to many lenses like the 180 f2.8. If you look at my web site you will see a photo of the dunes at Stovepipe Wells in Death Valley. They were photographed with an F3 that I bought used and my Nikkor 200mm f4, a lens I have owned and used since 1977. I see no reason to replace it. I wore out my 180 f2.8 this year. It started to rattle it had been used so much. The replacement I bought was used. Probably the sharpest telephoto lens ever made for a 35mm camera and I paid less than I would have for a new prime telephoto of any focal length.

Your attitude is a healthy one. Getting 90% of the results for 10% of the cost makes sense in anyone's book. It is also very true that even the slightest amount of motion blur will have an effect far greater than the difference in performance between any two tripod mounted lenses. Nice to meet you. Good shooting.

Fred
Maplewood Photography
http://www.maplewoodphoto.com

From: Ken Neely klneely@earthlink.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
Subject: Re: Bronica lenses
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998

Hello, David,

It's my understanding that some of the early (EC, S2 perhaps) Bronica lenses were made by Nikkor. I could be wrong, but that's not the point.

This IS the point - do not become hung up on the foolish "who makes the best lenses" discussion. It is meaningless, pointless, indefensible by any reasonable means.

With respect to lens quality and the quality of images to be had the truth is this:

THERE ARE NO MISTAKES TO BE MADE by buying anything new from a known manufacturer of medium format equipment. Pretty much the same situation with used equipment too, except that condition can be an issue. You can't tell the difference between images made by a Hasselblad, Mamiya,Bronica,Rollei,Fuji, etc. Neither can anyone else, nor can any machine known to man. This assumes similar focal length, identical conditions etc.

Here's the rub - like everything else, there can be bad examples of anything. You could get a bad lens accidentally passed by an inspector, from any manufacturer, regardless of price or reputation.

So my advise is this : make your choice based on the issues that matter to you.

''The best lens'' issue doesn't really exist, except in the minds of those who have nothing better to do than defend choices they have already made.

Me ? I've seen superlative work from virtually every camera manufacturer known, except Kiev. Don't know anyone who owns one of those....

Of course that's just my opinion. I could be wrong....

Ken Neely (of)
Ken Neely Commercial Photography

[Ed. note: here's another opinion...]

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: David Johnson david@xlnt.com
[1] Re: Bronica lenses
Date: Mon Feb 09 20:05:34 CST 1998
Ken Neely klneely@earthlink.net wrote:

So my advise is this : make your choice based on the issues that matter to you.

''The best lens'' issue doesn't really exist, except in the minds of those who have nothing better to do than defend choices they have already made.

I own several 35mm lenses: Vivitar, Minolta, Nikkor, Olympus, and Yashica.

Believe me or not, the Nikkors are noticeably better in sharpness and contrast. Even my wife and her brother have noticed without me telling them what I used. The difference between my best and my worst lens is not at all subtle. It is quite striking.

Me ? I've seen superlative work from virtually every camera manufacturer known, except Kiev. Don't know anyone who owns one of those....

I have taken some great photos with my worst lenses. Sometimes I wish that these photos were as good as what my better lenses would do. This is much the reason why I want to get a MF system. I have shot a Leica and at best is only barely noticeably better than my best Nikkor. I usually can't tell the difference. I have seen some MF photos where it is quite obvious they weren't taken with 35mm. If only the aesthetic elements of a photo mattered and the technical elements don't, why don't we all just abandon getting any of the expensive stuff and just shoot 110 or disc cameras (an extreme), or just shoot 35mm with Phoenix and Sun lenses?

Or is what you really mean is that all MF lenses are competent? I don't believe that is true either. I have seen a new photo taken with an old MF camera (Hasselblad?) that used a lens before multicoating. The contrast was particular poor. I would rather use my multicoated Minoltas in 35mm than that lens in MF.

David Johnson
XLNT
david@xlnt.com

Date: Mon, 09 Mar 1998
From: David Johnson david@xlnt.com
Subject: Re: Nikon vs Sigma - continuation

I am an advanced amateur and have the budget to get the good stuff without having to make money with it. If I had a budget like I did when I was in high school, I would do like I did then: get a Minolta with a Minolta normal lens and third party lenses for other focal lengths. IMO, Nikon's strengths are in the lenses and build quality of the N90s and above bodies. If this is out of your budget, IMO, you would be better served by Minolta and third party lenses. When you are on a tight budget like I was in high school, the question is not "bang for the buck" but just being able to buy any bang. Minolta delivers good bang for the buck and 3rd party lenses deliver cheap bang. In my experience, it is better to get a cheap lens than no lens at all. I don't think Nikon is a good choice for a tight budget.

David Johnson

Date: Sun, 03 May 1998
From: Phil Stiles pjs@worldpath.net
Subject: Testing my Zooms lenses

I did a lens test the other day with four lenses for Nikon. This was not an exhaustive or comprehensive test, but I think the results are worth sharing.

Most of my photos are pictures of people, and my favorite prime lens is the 35mm/f2AF. I put the camera on a tripod and put a newspaper on a wall ten feet away. I shot every lens at f/8 and set every zoom at 35mm. I used T-Max 400 CN. Then, in the darkroom, I enlarged each sample to 16X20, and wrote the lens on the back of the print before exposure. After they were dry, I sorted them for sharpness, creating a hierarchy. The differences were not great from sample to sample, but were quite evident comparing last to first.

        Results:
        1. 35mm/f2AF
        2. Sigma 28-105/f2.8-4 "aspherical"     
        3. Nikkor 28-70/f3.5-4-5
        4. Nikkor 24-120/f4-5.6

The real surprise to me was the Sigma, although I had been very pleased with the quality of the images it produces, especially toward the short end of the range. For a little more than $200, this lens is a real cost/performance winner. The "build quality" is not great, "cheap plastic" comes to mind as a description. The focussing throw is a mere quarter turn, not intended for manual use. At this distance, Pop Photo recently found it to outperform a Tamron which cost three times more.

Phil Stiles in New Hampshire, where we call Spring "Mud Season."

[Editor's note: the following posting may also help refute the view that large format lenses are expensive. A recent study on large format lens resolutions can also be found at: http://www.hevanet.com/cperez/testing.html; but Marc's figures show that you can buy large format lenses for prices not dissimilar from 35mm prices (e.g., nikkor vs nikkor comparisons).]

Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998
From: "Marc F. Hult" hult@cinternet.net
Newsgroups: xrec.photo.equipment.large-format
Subject: MF v LF lens cost:

It seemed to me that there were really two conclusions here: 1) that "aerial lens resolution[] [tests] confirm that 35mm and medium format lenses generally outperform ... large format lenses" and (2) "large format lenses [are] ... much more expensive [than] 35mm and medium format lenses".

The first conclusion has already been dealt with in part in other posts.

But there also is no data to support the second assertion/conclusion although elsewhere on the web page there is a comment that might be interpreted to say that large format lenses are 10 to 20 times more expensive than 35mm lenses.

So here are prices from the March 1998 B and H price brochure (or see www.bhphoto-video.com) for a ultra-wide, wide, normal, and portrait lenses for manual focus 35mm, 645, 6x6, and 6x7cm medium-format, and 4x5" large-format lenses:

35mm manual focus:
Nikon  AIS     20f2.8/28f2/50f1.4/105f1.8     530+600+299+650 = $2080

Medium Format:
Mamiya 7       43f4.5/65/4/80f4/150f4.5       2600+1600+1300+1800 = $7300
Mamiya 645     35f3.5/55f2.8/80f1.9/150f3.5   1030+660+660+600    = 2950  (no shutters)
Mamiya 645 LS  24f4/55f2.8/80f2.8/150f3.5     2110+1620+1300+1590 = 6650   (w/leaf shutter)
Mamiya RZ67    37f4.5/65f4/90f3.5/150f3.5     2690+1870+1390+1490 = 7440 
Bronica SQ     40f4/65f4/80f2.8/150f4         1800+1440+1100+1570 = 5910
Hasselblad CF  40f4/60f3.5/80f2.8/150f4       4000+2040+1720+2760 =$10520
Rollie         40f4/60f3.5/80f2.8/150f4       5520+3460+1930+3110 =$14020

Large Format (4x5):
Nikkor         65f4/90/8/150f5.6/210f5.6      990+790+510+630   = $2920
Rodenstock     65f4.5/90f6.8/150f5.6/210f5.6  1200+920+560+830 =  3510
Schneider      65f5.6/90/8/150f5.6/210f5.6    1200+950+670+950 =  $3770

Note that all 12 large-format lenses include a Copal shutter (#0 is $235 at B&H; #1 is $313) but the 35mm and some of the medium format lenses don't.

Adjusted for the price of the shutters, all three large format sets are less expensive than any of the 35mm or medium format sets. Surprised ?

Clearly "large format lenses" are NOT "much more expensive [than] 35mm and medium format lenses".

Hope This Helps (to explain why all this seemed to be a parody) ... Marc

--
Marc F. Hult
hult@cinternet.net

[ed. note: prices aren't fixed, Rollei, which used to be _most_ expensive MF lens brand, is now evidently competing again with Hasselblad and Mamiya]

Date: Mon, 18 May 1998
From: David Seifert dseifert@earthlink.net
Subject: Re: [Rollei] On Rollei Prices

Not exactly true. For reasons I don't fully understand it is now quite possible to buy new PQ lenses for nearly the same prices (or less) than their 'blad equivalents.

For instance (quoting the B&H; Pro SourceBook)

                    Rollei PQ               Hassleblad CF

30/3.5 Distagon     4495                    5797
40/4 Distagon       4195                    3995
50/4 Distagon       1999                    2696
120 Makro-Planar    2999                    2774
150/4 Sonnar        2199                    2756
250/5.6 Sonnar      2599                    2107

I am not sure whether these prices are real (or perhaps grey?) but if so, Rollei has decided to get in the game, big time. Prices for MF lenses are shocking to begin with. In the past the prices for the Rollei versions were absolutely mind-numbing. Remembering that the Rollei versions use the much more sophisticated shutter technology and 1/3 stop diaphrams these prices represent quite a value. I guess it is hard to use the term "value" when talking about things with pricetags like this but you know what I mean (grins).

Best Regards,

David Seifert
dseifert@earthlink.net

From: godders@netcom.com (Godfrey DiGiorgi)
Subject: Re: Lens Advice for a beginner
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998

I buy mostly prime focal length lenses for two reasons: speed and size. Unless you spend megamoney for fast zooms, prime lenses are one to three stops faster on average, and zooms are always more bulky than primes.

Prime lenses are usually just a smidge sharper, it's true, but the differences are getting less apparent nowadays. They are more durable, however, and have fewer components to be out of alignment thus they make a better used purchase. They're also cheaper, one at a time, then zooms are.

The other reason for preferring prime lenses: zooms tend to make you lazy. Well, me anyway. Peer through the viewfinder, dial that zoom back and forth, voila! framed and snapped. Problem is that you explore fewer perspectives that way ... perspective is a function of camera to subject distance and it doesn't change because you twisted the zoom ring on the lens. Prime lenses make you move back and forth with respect to the subject which shifts perspective, from which you can find all kinds of interesting pictures that you'd miss if you stood in one place with a zoom.

For students interested in photography, I think sticking with one or two prime lenses is a better learning experience. For folks just out to take pictures, sure, a zoom is convenient and easier to deal with for the average picture taking situations.

Godfrey

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: stafford@wind.winona.msus.edu (John J. Stafford)
[1] Re: Why Medium Format?
Date: Tue Jul 14 15:35:54 CDT 1998

My gosh, unless you are young enough to outlive the mistake, then don't sell your 35mm equipment in order to get into medium format. There always seems to be a time and place for 35mm, even 'old' 35mm equipment.

For example, one day you might just want to shoot something that moves. :) I mean moves fast. 35mm is quite good for that. Or you may find yourself in a hostile environment. (but I've always wanted to shoot a riot with a Linhof press. Right.) Or you just might like to have some fun with the little format.

From: stanshooter@mailexcite.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: Nikon Lenses - Too Expensive?
Date: Sun, 02 Aug 1998

The cheapest Tamron used with a tripod will beat out the most expensive Nikon, Canon or Leica glass.

One advantage of having a pure Nikon system is that everything works the same. Forcusing rings twist the same way. Filter sizes are somewhat standardized. Electronic chips should work properly with old, current and most future cameras.

I do happen to own a Tamron SP 90mm Macro and it is an excellent lens. I use it with my Pentax and used to use it with my N90s before I sold the thing to move to Pentax MF equipment.

My impression from owning Nikon equipment is that the cheap consumer Nikons are somewhat better than the cheap Tamron, Sigma, Tokina lenses. But when you get to the high grade "pro" stuff, most differences in lens quality are small compared to differences in the photographer's technique.

Subject: Re: FAST lenses
From: "Jim Williams" jlw@nospam.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998


>What ever happened to really FAST lenses?
>
>Canon 50mm F.095, for example?  Nikon 85mm 1.4? And _good_ moderately fast
>long lenses like 180mm F2.8 (at a _reasonable_ price)?

They're certainly not as popular as they used to be -- partly because fast films have gotten better, and partly, I suspect, because zoom-lens-touting photo magazines keep writing articles that say, "You don't really need those crazy super-fast lenses." Some of it is changes in fashion, too: in the '50s and '60s, the role model was the crusading photojournalist, and camera owners wanted to use their cameras to "document life as it is," which meant (among other things) being able to take pictures discreetly in dark places. Along about the '70s -- the Antonioni film 'Blow-Up' might well have something to do with this! -- the role model became the swinging model/fashion/commercial photographer. With this kind of 'photo lifestyle' as the role model, being unobtrusive was NOT a good thing -- what was the point of being a photographer if the chicks didn't KNOW you were a photographer, huh, baby? On-camera flash was a great way for photographers to draw attention to themselves, so it suddenly became a lot more acceptable than it had been back in the photojournalist-worshipping era. And who needs a fast lens when you're blasting away with a flash?

That said, I suspect the truth is that the super-fast lenses of the past were more written about and discussed than actually purchased. Allowing for that, they may be as available now as they ever were. The 50mm f/0.95 Canon vanished mostly because it was for a rangefinder camera, the Canon 7 series, and rangefinder cameras in general declined in popularity.

(Incidentally, I have one of these lenses, and -- contrary to what many people think -- it's really a pretty good performer, as long as you use it carefully.) But super-fast lenses are far from extinct... Canon and Leica today both make 50mm f/1 lenses; Canon and Contax have 85mm f/1.2s, and Minolta and Pentax have 85/1.4s; Nikon, Canon and MInolta have 35/1.4s; Nikon's got a 105/1.8; Nikon and Canon have 135/2s; etc. As to those "reasonable-price" 180/2.8s, I suspect that in constant dollars they cost no more now (maybe less!) than in the days when about the only ones you could get were the Zeiss Olympic Sonnar and the Isco.

From Medium Format Digest:
From: Bob Atkins bobatkins@hotmail.com
Subject: Response to why do aperture ranges only cover 7 stops?
Date: 1998-09-10

Diffraction effects as measured on the film are directly proportional to f-stop, not the physical size of the aperture. The physical aperture size counts, but so does the distance to the film. Both factors are included in the f-stop.

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: bhilton665@aol.com (BHilton665)
[1] Re: 35mm vs MF ?
X-Admin: news@aol.com
Date: Sat Oct 31 13:41:13 CST 1998

>From: "Anders Svensson" anders.-.eivor.svensson@swipnet.se
>
>Another reason for staying with 35 mm is that slides (IMHO the ultimate
>form for color photography) is much more expensive in MF - ridicoulusly
>so compared to 35 mm equipment.

Anders, I agree that slides are the way to go, but in the US it's not THAT much more expensive to shoot MF vs 35mm film. Using the B & H catalog prices it costs $5.29 for a 35 mm roll of Velvia (36 exp) or $8.58 if you include Fuji processing. You can buy two rolls of 120 Velvia for $6.38 and get 30 shots using 6 x 4.5 format (32 in some cameras :) and I think it costs me about $3.25 or so per roll for development at a local pro lab.

So a 50% or so premium for film that's 2.7 x as large area-wise. Not a bad deal at all! And most of us probably tend to shoot less film with MF ... it may be very different in Sweden, but in the US it's the cost of the camera systems, not the film, that keeps many people away from MF, I feel.

Bill

rec.photo.technique.nature
From: hult@cinternet.net
[1] Re: Nature Photography with 35mm vs. Medium Format
Date: Sat Dec 05 09:56:39 CST 1998

On Fri, 04 Dec 1998 03:54:44 GMT, Jeff Rankin-Lowe sirius@on.aibn.com wrote

>It also depends on what the original poster meant by "nature photography".
>If, for example, he was doing wildlife and would be using lenses longer than
>400mm (or shorter lenses with a teleconverter), then 35mm is better because
>those focal lengths are available. I'm not sure what the longest focal  length
>medium format lens is, but I doubt that you can get a quality MF lens in a
>comparable focal length.

Actually, a new 600mm f4 for a Pentax 67 costs $1,000- $2000 _less_ than a 600mm f4 for a Canon or Nikon at B&H; (December 1998 price brochure).

And a Pentax 67 800mm (eight hundred millimeter) f4 (f-four) is available for _less_ than the price of a Canon 600mm f4. Last I knew, Canon and Nikon didn't even make a 800mm f4.

ABIK, these particular Pentax lenses don't have ED elements. The 6x7 ED lenses are more pricey: an 800mm ED with a matching 1.4 converter is $11,000 at B&H; (At $1.00/mm its a heck of a deal ....AND they have a toll-free number and accept American Express so you can save on the phone bill and get lotsa frequent flier miles to boot. However I don't think that 11,000 miles would be far enough to assure my post-purchase safety ...)

HTH ... Marc

--
Marc F. Hult
hult@cinternet.net

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: "Dirk J. Bakker" dbakker@mindspring.com
[1] Photo Myths and Folklore (was Re:
+ Disadvantages of 220 film)
Date: Fri Feb 05 18:05:09 CST 1999

jbaker@calarts.edu wrote:

>   daveveitch@aol.com (DaveVeitch) wrote:
> > Only down side is the emulsion
> > isn't as thick, so it isn't as ridgid when you go to print, and similar
> > problems with storage. DV
>
>  this response belongs in rec.photo.mythology
>

Hmmm... rec.photo.mythology.

That's not a bad idea. But instead of a group, I propose the writing, maintenance and periodic distribution of a document serving the function of a FAQ, but for photography's misconceptions. A treatise to make Monty Python proud!

Prime topical candidates would include, but not be limited to:

1. Optics math and related 'thorny' issues ("I was never very good at in
school.") such as:
    a.    DOF calculation, or how to become a member of the "circle of
confusion",
    b.    Lens coverage, Image circles vs. lens angle,
    c.    Lens nodes, and "where to put them? or find them?",
    d.    Number sequences, or why 2.8 is, in fact, 'larger' than 4,
    e.    Lens format conversions, or what is "normal",
    f.    Hyperfocal distances and how to travel them in relative comfort,
    g.

2. Mechanics/Design/Ergonomics:
    a.    Zoom Lens,
    b.    Telephoto or large focal length lens,
    c.    Macro Lens,
    d.    Flash synch speeds,
    e.    DOF preview, or "What am I missing, if I can't see a thing!?",
    f.

3. Electronics:
    a.    Auto Exposure calculation, or "why Sunny-16 rules",
    b.    Auto Focus, or the prestige of fighting your equipment, letting 
it win and keeping one's composure,
    c.     Battery power dependence,
    d.    Practical guide to using pop-up flash from the 363rd row of a 
Stadium

4. Standardization:
    a.     ASA, ISO, and "why I refuse to learn DIN",
    b.     APS, and group segregation,
    c.     DX,
    d.     Why the concept of reciprocity just fails me,
    e.

5. Format war "merits", including:
    a.     Resolution issues, or when is more less, more or less,
    b.     Aspect ratios,
    c.     Image scale, or "Is big best?",
    d.

6. Camera "Brand" merits:
    a.    If Nokin is part of a better family, then why is Laika a dog?
    b.    The definitive treatise on what a PRO camera is!, or is "for",
    c.

7. Best Lens focal length, or
    a.    Answers to "why does my 50mm MocoPikon f/1.4 lens take boring
pictures, and his f/2.0 doesn't?"!
    b.

8. Photo Glossary:
    a. "Prime", "Choice", "Lean",
    b. "Macro", "micro",
    c. "Panoramic", (true-, false-, or cropped-),
    d. "fast",
    e.

9. Visual perception:
    a.    Why can I live with horizontal converging lines but not with 
buildings tipping backwards!
    b.Are fish-eye lenses normal? And what focal length lens do fish use?,
    c.

10. Practical advise:
    a.    What film for Argentina?,
    b.    Should I use a bubble-level from inside my canoe?,
    c.    How to dodge printing and still get it done,
    d.    Can I use an umbrella with my flash, if it's raining?,
    e.

Then there could be special supplementary topics, such as:
    a. how to combine 2, or more, factors and not end up in the looney bin.
    b. how to assimilate high-technology concepts overnight, not read the 
manual and be ready for that wedding tomorrow.

Simplistic Photographic Answers, Truisms and Other Nasty Misconceptions Enshrined, we could call it. Or simply SPAT+ONME. Perhaps you can think of something more dignified? It should be a thing to read and avoid (consciously) contributing to. The photographic equivalent of the Flat-Earth Society's Bible. If 'news' of its being updated should ever reach a subscriber, woe on to him/her that caused its enlargement, unless due credit is withheld (for a fee/'chantage'), of course.

Seriously now, if you think something along these lines has merit. Have a giggle and forward samples to me. Feel free to modify, or add to the above and e-mail me or post to the group.

Dirk Bakker

P.S. This alone could make the proposed photo newsgroup reorganization unnecessary and reduce traffic by a calculable percentage! Your mileage may vary.

;o)

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: Brian Ellis beellis@gte.net
[4] Re: top 10 myths of photography page URL
+ Re: Photo Myths and Folklore
Date: Mon Feb 08 11:24:34 CST 1999

One of the more interesting photography books I've read is "Controls in Black and White Photography" by Dr. Robert Henry. Dr. Henry was one of those people who apparently enjoy running tests and, with his educational background in medicine and chemistry, was well equipped to do so.

Photography was a hobby and he decided to devise and perform tests to either support or dispel some of the conventional photography truths (e.g. the more the silver content of the paper, the richer blacks you can obtain.) While some of them proved true under rigorous testing, many did not. Parts of the book are highly technical and were beyond my knowledge (or interest) but anyone can understand Dr. Henry's conclusions. A very interesting book if you're into black and white photography and want to learn some things based on fact rather than myth.

Brian

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: Shawn Henry shenry@shore.net
[1] Re: The truth about CB lenses
Date: Tue Feb 09 1999

I would lay money on the fact that none of you folks deriding the new lenses could actually to the difference if you didn't know it the first place...

I've owned & shot every thing from Bronica to Hassey to Mamiya to Rollei (no Pentax yet, but I'll probably buy one soon... The Fuji I've shot, but never owned...) and given a 6x6 chrome without the notches, I have a hard time remembering what I used...

After shooting so many different makes, (yes, I've used at least several 35 mm systems as well) I can tell you with certainty that the biggest loss in sharpness results not from the brand but from the photographer...

Best to all,
Shawn

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: Anders Svensson Anders.-.Eivor.Svensson@swipnet.se
[1] Re: Objective assessment of lens quallity (against price) for Nikon
Date: Fri Feb 12 02:30:22 CST 1999

Neil Mowbray skrev:

> Hi Folks,
>
> Does anyone know where one can find an objective assessment
> (i.e. scientific) of Nikon lenses and third party lenses for Nikon?
>
> Regards, Neil
> neil.mowbray@tokaiasia.com.hk

Of course you can, what do you want to hear... ?

Problem with "objective" lens quality assesments are that they are hard and expensive to make (if not too simplified, like the MTF value) and that even the simple measuring methods (like MTF) consistently shows that the differences between samples may be bigger than between makes.

Some problems that are reported by MTF (very popular method) are very serious, some are next to meaningless - and they may still look the same on the graph... The non flat focal field will look about the same as real edge unsharpness - one will always show up, the other will "never" show up in "real-world" use (except for reproduction, ofcourse...).

Therefore, making your own evaluations (from testing, if you have that inclination), listen to (several, known) experts and try to form an informed opinion by yourself may be as good as going by published "objective" lens tests.

Remeber the "bokeh" thread. Lens quality above the easily measured may be mostly in the eye of the beholder...

--
-----------------------------------------------------------
Anders Svensson
Anders.-.Eivor.Svensson@swipnet.se
-----------------------------------------------------------

[Ed. note: Mr. Bob Shell is Editor of SHUTTERBUG magazine...]
Date: Tue, 26 Jan 1999
From: Bob Shell bob@bobshell.com
Subject: Re: [Rollei] Source for Rollei 35 filters

...

Any filter, even the best, will degrade the image slightly and change the focus slightly.

I always tell my students not to use filters except when absolutely needed if they want maximum image sharpness.

BTW, we tested a lot of filters several years ago and found no relationship between price/brand and optical flatness.

Bob

rec.photo.technique.nature
From: pburian@aol.com (PBurian)
[1] Myths in Photography
Date: Sat Mar 13 08:37:23 CST 1999

How do these myths get started????

1. X-rays in modern airports used for CARRY-ON luggage will damage film.

No. It's the new CAT scan system used for CHECKED BAGGAGE that will do that.

2. If you travel with film out of its plastic containers, horrible things will happen.

No, unless you are in a sandy area or around salt water spray. I routinely travel with 80+ rolls of film and never use the plastic containers except in high humidity areas like Costa Rica. Even there, they are of little use once they have been opened.

More myths: I know there are dozens more but these are the two currently under discussion on this Board. Anyone have more of them?

Peter Burian

rec.photo.technique.nature
From: Russell Russell@photoserendipity.com
[1] Re: Myths in Photography
Date: Sat Mar 13 13:36:45 CST 1999

As to myth #1, it does depend on circumstances. First, some airports are using the newer technology x-ray machines for carry-on. Second, it depends on the fil m you're carrying. Even the airport signs at LAX say only that the x-ray will not affect film of speeds 1000 and lower. Since I occasionally carry 1600 and 3200, I have them hand check it and I've never had a complaint or problem.

Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: build quality myths? Re: Heres why I use Contax and not Nikon!
Followup-To: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Date: 29 Jan 1999

I think we have all swallowed this "build-quality" myth without much thought

Unfortunately, I have only seen one article (Modern Photography in 70s?) in which they dis-assembled and compared machining and build quality on many (prime) lenses between brands. That article reported the astonishment of the authors that the build quality of lower cost lenses was often much higher than some of the more expensive bigger name lenses (Leitz was the major exception - and I'm not a Leica fan ;-). In short, their study showed that build quality and price were not as closely related as often stated.

Bob Shell's comments (as a noted repairman/expert) on the tradeoff in Nikon lenses of ruggedness versus centering is also interesting in this context. If you "buy" ruggedness at the expense of much higher cost precision manufacturing, that's one thing. If you "buy" ruggedness at the expense of centering or sharpness, that's something else!

it will be interesting to see how the tradeoffs for today's light-weight (low mass) plastic (albeit polycarbonate) auto-focus lenses do in the ruggedness derby. Again, I haven't seen any tear-downs or comparative tests other than optical quality (being as good, sometimes better, than the older non-AF lenses).

I would be interested in any pointers to more recent comparative studies of lens ruggedness and the tradeoffs involved. My sense of many posts is that some higher priced third party lenses (Tokina, Sigma) have at least equal "ruggedness" and mechanical quality, but few folks have noticed these improvements over the past...

regards to all - bobm

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: "bbb" bbb@bbb.ca
[1] Re: Why are Macro lenses inferior for...
Date: Thu Apr 01 15:52:07 CST 1999

John J Stafford wrote in message ...

>Why are Macro lenses inferior for photographs taken at infinity?
>Or is this a fallacy?  My medium-format macro lens is just fine
>for macro and close-up work, but at infinity it is clearly not
>as good as my normal lens.  Is it just my lens?
>
>(Note, I am VERY critical when it concerns sharpness. Something that is
>sharp to others is often unacceptable to me.)

John,

Here is what I vaguely remember from university. I hope that it helps:

For various reasons, symetrical lenses tend to perform better at a reproduction ratio of 1:1, while asymetrical lenses tend to be better at ratio of 1:n (with n being a number higher than 1).

A true symetrical lens does not have a front and a back, meaning that you could point either end towards your subject and get identical results. Macro lenses, although they are rarely completely symetrical, tend to be more symetrical than non-macro lenses. This is why they may perform better at reproduction ratios close to 1:1 (relative to non-macro lenses).

An example of a very asymetrical lens would be a retrofocus wide-angle. As you may know, if you flip one of these around (with the filter ring pointing towards your film plane and the lens mount pointing towards your subject), you can get surprisingly good results for reproduction ratios greater than 1:1.

Note that all of this applies in theory only. Modern optical designs are much more complex than this simple explanation can account for, and all of the theory in the world can not beat out one proper test of an actual lens.

Bernard

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Date: Thu Apr 01 20:57:57 CST 1999
From: tired.of.spam@nospam.com (Rudy Garcia)
[1] Re: Why are Macro lenses inferior for...

In article , Stafford@wind.winona.msus.edu (John J Stafford) wrote:

> Why are Macro lenses inferior for photographs taken at infinity?
> Or is this a fallacy?  My medium-format macro lens is just fine
> for macro and close-up work, but at infinity it is clearly not
> as good as my normal lens.  Is it just my lens?
>
> (Note, I am VERY critical when it concerns sharpness. Something that is
> sharp to others is often unacceptable to me.)

For the same reasons that regular (non-macro) lenses don't produce sharp images at close subject distances.

The design of a lens is a set of compromises. Macro lenses are designed to optimize the field flatness, due to the narrow depth of field available at "macro" distances. They are also designed to be sharp at subject to front nodal point distances comparable to image plane to rear nodal point distances. This usually leads to designs that are fairly symmetrical.

However, with modern optical designs, macro lenses can also be capable of producing tack sharp images in non-macro situations.

Another "myth" that still exists is that macro lenses are invariably slower than their non-macro counterparts. It was certainly true at one time, but state of the art macro lenses today are on a par with non-macro lenses.

From: John Halliwell john@photopia.demon.co.uk
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
Subject: Re: Why even shoot 120/220 chromes?
Date: Sat, 17 Apr 1999

...

>Well, the market is small because... I have a Pentax 67 and several 
lens, I
>like it a lot and the transparencies are fantastic, stunningly better than
>35mm. But I still use 35mm for many things. My Pentax LX and a bunch of
>lenses weighs a fraction of the P67 and three lenses. That can mean a lot
>when you are chugging up the mountains here in Colorado. Although the P67
>can be used on a small Gitzo G126, it prefers the bigger and heavier Bogen
>3021.

Maybe it's just me, but my Mamiya 645 kit (camera plus 4 lenses & 1 extra back) weighs about as much as my 35mm kit (2 bodies, 2 zoom & 2 prime lenses plus lots of other junk). I don't really miss anything other than an equivilent to my 300mm 35mm lens.

I haven't worked it out, but I guess the money I spent on both kits is probably about the same (maybe slightly less for the 35mm). It's ages since I shot anything on 35mm.

--
John

From Nikon Mailing List:
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 1999
From: "Colin Povey" cpovey@paradyne.com
Subject: [NIKON] Lens and Body Quality

I learned from some media that camera body is only a 'box', the most important is the lens' quality. If so, then why we need expensive camera body? I'm using Nikon F60. For example, what's the difference between F60 and F90 (or F100) for picture's quality?

Welcome some input for this point of view.

Rong-Fa Ho,

Finally, someone else sees the light!

Yes, in essence, the body is just a box to hold film. The lens makes the image.

Now, having said that, there are some things you get with high-end bodies, some of which are intangible.

Easy to see features

Higher speed picture taking (F5 is 8 fpm)

Removable prisms

Faster auto focusing

Interchangeable viewfinder screens

Better metering

DOF preview button

Ability to use older lenses

Ability to use AF-S lenses

Hard to see features

Increased ruggedness (switches should last longer on an F5 than on an N60, for example)

Longer life (Nikon designs shutters for F cameras for 150,000 exposures, and for amateur cameras for 50,000 exposures)

Improved dust and water seals

If you notice, most of the hard to see features are designed to ensure the pro (who makes his living taking pictures) can get the picture, regardless of the conditions he is working under.

I am sure there are a lot of other features that are different between high-end cameras (F5 and F100 specifically), medium level cameras (N90s), and lower-end cameras. But, as you indicated, they can all take the same quality picture.

Colin

rec.photo.equipment.35mm
From: "Fred Whitlock" afc@cl-sys.com
[1] Re: Best general Purpose Nikkor Lens?
Date: Sat Aug 14 09:20:00 CDT 1999

For the fun of it you should run a test between the 55 f2.8 wide open and the 35 f2 at f2.8 using a subject at infinity focus. What you will find is that the 35 is noticeably sharper in the corners than the 55. Up close is another matter, of course, since the 55 is a macro lens and optimized for close focus. At f8 they should perform pretty close to one another. Don't forget the 35 is a retro focus wide angle and that says a lot. The current 35mm f2 AF Nikkor is a superb performer. It's my second choice in a 35mm lens after the Leica Summicron for pure performance. I'm a big fan of the 55 f2.8 and it's one of the few manual focus Nikkor lenses I've kept for my system, but it's a macro and it does macro things best.

Fred
Maplewood Photography
http://www.maplewoodphoto.com

...

Date: Sun, 02 Jan 2000
From: ed romney romney@teleplex.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Lens Coatings, not absolutely essential

When I worked in a camera store in 1951 we were supposed to tell the customers to trade their cameras because a coated lens was essential for color pictures. I never told them this, because I knew it was untrue. Uncoated lenses of four elements or less make remarkable pictures, even of backlit contrasty scenes. Note the torchlite parades and backlit scenes in such old movie films as The White Hell of Pitz Palu and Triumph of the Will. (I don't like Hitler but Triumph is technically excellent) These films were made before lens coating was invented. Or you can go to http://www.edromney.com/bromoil.html where two pictures with the sun IN them were made with an Exakta with a 150mm Meyer uncoated tele lens. There also is shown a backlit portrait of a little girl made with an uncoated F2.9 Plaubel lens and a waterfall backlit taken with an uncoated Voigtlander Scopar F4.5. I did extend the tonal range with bromoil in this print but the others I mentioned are ordinary BW prints. Older lenses in time acquire a sheen or polish that has the same properties as lens coating. These precious lenses have this quality. Don't overlook uncoated lenses just because they are old. You can buy them for $10 from ignorant people these days . Of course you should use a lens shade. More complex lenses such as the Leitz Summar and all zooms really do need coating, but Tessar types , Protars, Dagors and older telephotos do very well without lens coating.

Best wishes...Ed Romney

Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2000
From: "David Foy" dfoy@marketactics.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: Lens Coatings, not absolutely essential

I suspect Ed illustrated his point about coating with b/w because coatings are not particularly relevant with color.

If I remember the brochures correctly, Pentax promoted their SMC (Super Multi Coated) lenses not as having superior color correction, which they don't, but as allowing much more light in, which they do, thanks to substantial reduction in the amount of light reflected away. The effect is that a good, wide-aperture lens can be physically quite a bit smaller with coated surfaces.

Coatings probably affect color, but their real function is to reduce "flare," which is really an excess of light reflecting from the surface of a lens. I believe the phrase "color corrected" really -- usually --has more to do with the choice of glass, and less with coating. It takes glass elements of different refractive indices to compensate for the tendency of light passing through non-parallel glass surfaces to exit as a spectrum. One element has the effect of spreading the spectrum slightly, so the next one is made of a kind of glass that compresses it just the right amount. That's an oversimplification but it does illustrate the point.

Before WWII it was widely known that for a lens of ordinary focal length and aperture (in other words not a lens heavily corrected for some premium factor), a properly-formulated three-element lens like the Cooke Triplet, or a well-made Tessar type, all uncoated of course, would provide impeccable results with color. There are a number of standard texts which go into the matter in detail. Kingslake is authoritative. I recommend St. Claire, "Photographic Lenses and Shutters," Ziff Davis (ca 1942) for a non-technical but comprehensive treatement.

It is unfortunate that many people believe the number of elements, and presence or absense of coating, automatically determines the quality of a lens, when in fact an element count greater than three or four is usually only important in lenses designed for wide apertures or toward the extremes of focal length. For example in a lens designed for f2.8, six elements may be needed to equal the performance of a Cooke Triplet at f5.6 or a four-element/three group Tessar at f3.5.

....

Date: Tue, 04 Jan 2000
From: Anders Svensson Anders.-.Eivor.Svensson@swipnet.se
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: Lens Coatings, not absolutely essential

Mike wrote:

> (Anders..) ..is what your saying here "This has to do with different light
> wavelengths focusing in different plane" mean that in a color photo made
> with an uncorrected lens, that some of the image will be out of focus
> because its a longer or shorter wave lenght ?

Yes, but not only in a color photo. The lens, bending the rays, won't know if there is B&W; or color film in the camera... :-)

A unsophisticated, simple lens bends rays differently depending on if the rays are red or blue (or in between). This means that a lens generally will focus either blue *or* red sharply, but not both. This is countered by using a clever combination of lenses, with different propertys and ending up with a lens that focuses all colors reasonably correct. Depending on what kind of construction and how well the compensation is done, these lenses are called achromats or apochromats - the popular APO designation comes from these construction methods.

This has nothing to do (or very little) with anti reflex coatings. Albeit these can have many colors (gold, blueish, greenish or whatever) these coatings help with flare and light transmissivity, not really with making the lens handle different colors of light any better.

So, chromatic aberration, if noticeable, will be seen in black and white photography as well.

--
Anders Svensson
Anders.-.Eivor.Svensson@swipnet.se

Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000
From: ed romney romney@teleplex.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Lens coatings, color + old vs new lenses

....

> Ed says...Maybe I should answer this... to the best of my ability.

> 1. Actually the reason for no color is: I prefer BW... but I'll  take
> a sample backlit color picture with an uncoated  lens to post
> somewhere in the near future. Will tell you all about it then. Can't
> show any now because we never shot strongly backlighted EVEN WITH A
> COATED LENS with the old contrasty too blue 1940's and 1950's
> Kodachrome. I'll use Kodak Gold or something this time.

2. Color correction and coating are two different things. Most correction is in the lens design and it means no color fringes, that the focal length for two colors is the same. Long ago they used to correct for yellow and blue. Now the correction is shifted towards the red. With BxW film and an old lens you get a fantastically sharp picture with a strong yellow or orange filter that knocks out the blue image completely . My barn picture is an example, made with the Avus w/Scopar F4.5.... You cant do this with color film. The only completely corrected lenses for color are apochromats . A lens coating, on the contrary, can merely filter the light , not change focal length

3. Old lenses vs new..New lenses non zoom are generally superior but slower older lenses can be excellent, sometimes equal new...for example Kodak Ektars, Anastigmat Specials, Anastons, Zeiss Tessars, Some Schneider Xenons, Cooke Aviar, older Voigtlander Scopar F4.5....Leitz Elmar F2.8. ...Leitz 105mm F6.3 Mountain Elmar tele...Some Zenit and Zorki lenses..F6.8 Goerz Dagor, Voigtlander Collinear F6.3 and the humble Kodak Anastigmat F7.7 found on autographic back Kodaks in junk shops. I pay $5 for em. Kodak 203mm Ektar F7.7 is this formula too. If the old lens is well bloomed from age , has a metallic sheen to it, it is about equal in contrast to a coated one. Slower lenses are sharper usually. F4.5 Tessar is usually better than F3.5 or F2.8. F6.3 Tessars are best of all and are sold at junk prices.. If you get a bad one it is probably because it was taken apart carelessly for cleaning or maybe repolished. Don't blame me. Often the center element on Tessars gets loose and ruins the definition. Zeiss put out a bulletin on this in the 1930's.

Most of these lenses mentioned were rated by Consumers Research and some were tested by Vern Reckmeyer in the 1934 American Annual. I reprinted this data in my lens test booklet and much of it is in the general repair text. They used to teach all this in photo classes but now the kids learn about Diane Arbus and Minor White instead!! The fun of the older lenses is that they can be bought for $5 to $10 used these days, so you can build up quite a battery of lenses at low cost.

4. But remember too, not everyone wants an absolutely sharp lens. Some prefer Voigltander Heliar , Cooke Speedic F2.5, Meyer Plasmat or the Plaubel Anticomar F2.9 full open for an atmospheric effect.

5. Don't write off cheaper recent zooms completely. The 75-150mm Nikon E f3.5 is excellent and relatively cheap. I now use it a lot. That is enough for now..will probably enrage someone..best wishes..

Ed Romney
http://www.edromney.com

Date: Mon, 03 Jan 2000
From: ed romney romney@teleplex.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Lens coating Redux

It gets rather tiresome me belaboring the obvious to a group that wants to believe that only the latest cameras and lenses praised by Bob Shell in Shutterbug are fit to own. A few points to consider: First, These people don't use lens shades on their Canon Rebels for the same reason they wear their caps backwards. But they DO work..

Next..many of them are unknowingly simulating an uncoated lens by always putting an uncoated skylight filter on front of the lens, a favorite habit of those people who wear solar powered propeller beanie hats and Howard Stern T-shirts, that I see at trade fairs.

Thirdly, a low contrast or uncoated lens can work rather well with a very contrasty color film such as the early Kodachrome and some recent Fuji color films. The uncoated Leitz Summar was rather good with old Kodachrome. Modern zooms of many elements, and recent lenses with uncoated skylight filters act somewhat the same. The problem is they often show an image of the iris diaphragm when pointed at a light source, which well designed simple older lenses do not. I demonstrated this with an older , but single coated, 90mm F4 Leitz Elmar with another picture of the sun in it printed in Camera Shopper a few years back. But who cares? That is the real question and the reason why photography is declining.

Yours faithfully, Ed Romney
http://www.edromney.com

Date: Wed, 5 Jan 2000
From: "David Foy" dfoy@marketactics.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: Lens Coatings, not absolutely essential

The proof one way or another would be to take photographs with a good, uncoated lens and compare them to photographs from a good, coated lens, to see if the presence or absence of coating can always be determined simply by the results.

If your comparison demonstrates to you that under "all" circumstances coated lenses give better photographs, then coating is "essential," even "absolutely essential." If coating helps in many or most kinds of light conditions, then coating is a "very good thing." If it helps sometimes, it's a "good thing."

Ed contends, and those of us who are disputing with you agree, that you will not be able to demonstrate that coating is anything more than a "good" or possibly a "very good" thing. Ed purports to speak from experience; I know I certainly do.

Your assertion that no-one would buy an uncoated lens is simply a misconception. Many knowledgable photographers have no qualms about buying uncoated lenses (used, obviously). We do so all the time, with alarming regularity.

Uninformed buyers who are not aware of what coatings are and how they work, and of their relative unimportance, are the people who would decline an uncoated lens. Here's another one for you -- a scratch, chip, or crack on the front surface of a lens does not degrade image quality (however it does on the back surface). If it is pronounced enough to create a little flare all you have to do is fill it with black paint, with no ill effect other than a miniscule loss of light transmission. Uninformed buyers scorn those lenses; knowledgable buyers buy and use such lenses (assuming of course they are not intersted in their resale value).

Your unspoken assumption that no knowledgable photographer would buy a newly-manufactured, uncoated lens may be true. But I would not bet the ranch on it.

Why is this becoming so tedious?

...

Date: 19 Jan 2000
From: J Greely jgreely@corp.webtv.net
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.large-format
Subject: Re: Process lenses for landscape?

Jim hsthomashs@cts.com writes:

>Landscapes might suffer if forground subjects are
>included.  Does this sound right?

I wouldn't presume to argue with you, but Ron Wisner would:

http://www.wisner.com/myth.htm

A bit of browsing through Kingslake's "A history of the photographic lens" also suggests that a bias against these classic symmetrical designs for general use is unfounded. Their natural correction of coma, distortion, and lateral color is *best* at 1:1, which is what makes them so good for copy use, but most such designs "exhibit only very small transverse aberration residuals even when used with an infinitely distant object".

-j

Date: Wed, 19 Jan 2000
From: dickburk@ix.netcom.com (Richard Knoppow)
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.large-format
Subject: Re: Process lenses for landscape?

nycfoto@aol.com (NYCFoto) wrote:

>How good are process lenses, like rodenstock Apo ronars, for use as infinity
>focus landscape lenses?  Are more general purposes lenses like the Rodenstock
>APO sironar-s's  sharper at infinity?Also are the tele nikkors any good
>compared to the rodenstock APO ronars or Apo sironar S?
>Thanks
>Brian

Many process lenses are of the four-element air-spaced "dialyte" type. The Ronar and Artar are examples. While these lenses are optimized in design to work at or near 1:1 magnification their corrections are very stable with distance so they work about as well at infinity. The main aberration which becomes apparent is coma. Come is reduced by stopping down. Since the lenses must usually be stopped down a couple of stope anyway the coma is of no concern.

This type of lens does not have wide coverage. An image circle with a diameter equal to the focal length is about the maximum. The published specs usually indicate a smaller image circle at infinity but in practice the image circle is a bit larger.

The idea that the lenses are "flat field" and that somehow is a problem with landscape use comes from a minunderstanding. Process lenses, and their cousins enlarging lenses, _must_ have flat fields since they are reproducing a flat surface on another flat surface.

Actually, _all_ general purpose lenses are designed with a flat field as an ideal. However, its possible to improve astigmatism by allowing some field curvature. Slightly curved fields are acceptable for normal pictorial use, so many camera lenses, especially cheaper designs, have some field curvature to make the overall performance better. A few special purpose lenses are designed to produce a curved field but its not at all typical of general purpose lenses.

There are some other lens types used for process work. Kodak and Bausch and Lomb made lenses of the Double Gauss type. These look similar at first glance to the "Dialyte" type, both having four air spaced elements, but in the Double Gauss type _all_ the surfaces are concave toward the stop. I don't know how stable the corrections for this type are. However, being very slow lenses the probability is that there is not much performance lost by working at infinity.

This is also true of the so-called Wide Angle process lenses, which are mostly six-elements in four groups and of the Plasmat type, similar to nearly all LF lenses made now. Again, while these are optimized for 1:1 they typically perform very well at infinity especially if stopped down to a couple of stops.

The reson that change in object distance (or magnification) changes the corrections of a lens is that the angles the light takes going through the lens change. There is an optical principle sometimes called the Abbe Sine Condition which states that a lens with fixed elements can be corrected completely at only one object distance. For conventional camera lenses this the distance chosen is infinity. For enlarging or copying lenses is it whatever distance the lens is intended to be used at mostly. For process lenses it is usually (but not always) 1:1 magnification.

Generally the slower and simpler the lens the more stable the correction will be with distance.

Very fast lenses for 35mm cameras often show noticable degradation in performance when used for close-ups. Slow process and LF lenses show very little change in performance.

---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, Ca.
dickburk@ix.netcom.com

Date: 4 Aug 1999
From: /dev/null@cantsl.canterbury.ac.nz (Bill Rea)
Newsgroups: rec.photo.technique.nature
Subject: Re: 35mm - The Ideal Landscape Camera????

Norm (normsmithxyz@worldnet.att.net) wrote:

: When discussing the relative costs of landscape photography, don't you have
: to take into account enlargers, cost of film, processing etc? I would think
: that in order to really maximize the advantage of MF ot LF you'd have do do
: a lot of this yourself, or have a good pro lab (expensive). With 35mm these
: costs are less for comparable control.

In my experience it is less expensive to do LF than 35mm. I am currently only shooting colour transparency. A sheet of 4x5 plus developing is about $NZ10. That sounds like a lot of money, but it's so easy to shoot rolls of 35mm film. At $NZ1.10 per 35mm slide I can shoot a sheet of 4x5 for every 9 35mm slides. When doing wildlife its possible to shoot a whole roll of film in the time it takes me to put up my Gitzo tripod. Ok, that's not landscape, but by the time I do several bracketed shots with the 35mm and possibly try a couple of different filters plus an in-camera duplicate, not to mention the times I take 35mm and not a 4x5, I'm past my 9 to 1 ratio and LF ends up cheaper because I thought about it a lot more before comitting my image to film.

--
Bill Rea, Information Technology Services, University of Canterbury

[Ed.note: RE: do brands matter?...]
Date: Thu, 20 Apr 2000
From: "Bob Shell" bob@bobshell.com
Subject: Re: [CONTAX] important info

Professionals as a whole don't give a damn about camera brand loyalty. All they care about is the final image. Asking them which brand of camera they use, to them is like asking a writer what brand of computer he/she uses. It is a dumb question.

In 35mm one of the main reasons that almost all pros use Nikon or Canon is the fact that lenses for them are very common. A pro can walk into a rental house in any major city in the world and walk out with a rented Nikon or Canon lens. Ask these companies to rent you a Minolta lens and you will get laughed at. Same for Olympus, Pentax, Contax, etc.

Also Nikon has NPS and Canon has CPS, and they send teams to major events. You can borrow a lens from them on short term, get on the spot repair service with a loaner camera to use until yours is fixed, and lots of other perks.

If you are a professional and want to use some other system, you will not have this sort of support, and you must plan on owning every lens and accessory you will ever need, and carrying it with you.

Bob

- ----------

>From: george day geod@cwo.com
>To: contax@photo.cis.to
>Subject: Re: [CONTAX] important info
>Date: Wed, Apr 19, 2000, 7:15 PM
>

> Precisely.  Most professionals I know are not particularly religious about
> their equipment.

rec.photo.equipment.medium-format
From: T Loizeaux LoizCren@erols.com
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm,rec.
+ photo.equipment.medium-format
[1] Re: leica or move up to medium format?
Date: Wed Apr 26 01:24:40 CDT 2000

I started with the Nikon SLR. Built up my Nikon system with many lenses and a bunch of bodies...a GREAT camera system!

Got myself a Nikon S2 rangefinder...liked the rangefinder concept.It made my photos more "honest".

Got myself a Leica M2, then 3 lenses...GREAT camera system! Opened up my shooting style and had me carrying a camera a lot more.

Got myself a Crown Graphic 2 1/4 x 3 1/4... nice, big, sharp negs and transparancies! Beautiful 11 x 14 b&w; prints! Taught me much about patience and control.

Got myself a Horseman VH-R...a high quality, controlable 6x9 camera that delivers beautiful images. THE camera I take when I want serious art images.

The answer is: One camera or format won't do it all. Choose the right "tool" for the job.

Tom

From Contax Mailing List:
Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2000
From: Bob Shell bob@bobshell.com
Subject: Re: [CONTAX] Photo Myths

Actually, the Kodak Gray Cards are very precisely dyed and are something like 17.687% reflective (I forget the exact fraction).

People ask if I am sure of all this. Well, I'm sure enough that Kodak hired me to revise the Gray Card instructions last year because they had omitted the half stop compensation when the instructions were last revised 18 years previously.

BTW, Gray Cards made by companies other than Kodak vary considerably in reflectance.

Bob

Date: Tue, 02 Jan 2001
From: Terence Danks danksta@ns.sympatico.ca
Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm
Subject: Re: lens cap vs UV filter Re: Do pros use UV filters?

Jerry Coffin jcoffin@taeus.com wrote:

>In any case, glass can and will run over time, regardless of how that
>particular situation came about -- and it doesn't necessarily take
>hundreds of years either.  I've seen glass windows in hot climates
>that became noticeably deformed in only a few decades.

This is a legend. Doesn't matter how often it is told, it is still untrue. See the following URLs. If you still choose to believe it . . . it is your choice to do so.

http://www.urbanlegends.com/science/glass.flow/index.html
http://www.cmog.org/education/EDRUNGL.HTM
http://www.cyber-quest.com/News/Default.asp?Story=6999
http://discuss.pentax.com/pipermail/pentax-discuss/1999/Feb/2615.html

Think of the mess telescopes would be in were this true. The Palomar telescope is still superbly figured. Tolerances there are measured in millionths of an inch over a 200 inche mirror. It was figured before 1950 . . . hasn't "run" yet.

Terence A. Danks
Nova Scotia, Canada
Wildlife and Nature Photography
http://www3.ns.sympatico.ca/danksta/home.htm

From leica mailing list: Date: Mon, 02 Apr 2001 From: imx imxputs@knoware.nl Subject: [Leica] Myth and anti-myth It is remarkable that the idea that there is a significant trade-off between high contrast and low resolution still rides high in Leica lore. As far as I know no one who holds his view has ever presented demonstrable evidence or corroboratable measurements to prove this point. Generally a high contrast implies a high resolution and the other way around. It may be that a shift in focus plane may change this relationship to a small degree, but the general correlation is evident. More contrast is higher resolution. And statements to the effect that a "slight" reduction of contrast brings a "slight' improvement of resolution beg, nay scream for evidence. Now to kill two more myths. Sometimes I feel like Buffy the Vampire Killer. I have the Kodachrome films which I used as comparison for the 100 to 400ISO slide film test some weeks ago. Results will kill some preconceived ideas. The King of all slide films is by now the Kodachrome 64, which resolves easily 90 lp/mm, much more than the E100SW and even close to the resolution of TP in normal circumstances. Especially noteworthy is the excellent acutance, the great clarity of detail and the fine grain. A disappointment was the K25 which at best was as good as the K64, with a small gain in grain smallness, but not enough to offset the drop in speed. The fading out of the K25 then is sensible. No added value. Sorry. Big surprise the K200, which showed as expected a tight but visible grain pattern, but a resolution that beats the Provia 400F at 70 to 75 lp/mm. So the idea that fine grain supports high resolution is as false as the idea that low contrasr supports resolution. If you want to test the qulaity of your lenses, there is only one easy way: use K64! and even K200 will show the defects of most lenses. Do some actual testing! I also had the opportunity to test the surfaces of filters on an interferometer. Results will kill another myth. I used four different BW filters in several colours (not relevant for testing, but to show that there must be different batches). Results? Take a deep breath: NO, absolutely NO image degradation by the filter as all surfaces of the four filters were absolutely plane to the highest possible degree. At worst only one interferometer stripe for the experts. Of course secondary reflections are possible. But the commonly held notion that the addition of the filter adds two surfaces and by that fact should degrade the image quality is simply not supported by measurements. A well made filter in front of the lens will NOT make a drop of image quality! These results show that myths are fine if you wish to cling to stories that seem sensible because they are repeated over and over again and even have been 'explained' to some degree. But so the flatness of the earth had its followers and scientifically based stories. But only measurements bring the facts. Erwin

[Ed. note: thanks to Harold for sharing this interesting observation on filters... ;-) Date: Sun, 13 Jan 2002 16:44:49 -0400 From: "Harold M. Merklinger" hmmerk@fox.nstn.ca To: Robert Monaghan rmonagha@post.cis.smu.edu Subject: Re: Change of URL - Merklinger ... Bob, Thanks for the reply! I was just looking again at your myths page. It reminded me of another related to filters: a skylight filter is just as good as a UV filter for screening out UV and offering protection. Many years ago (perhaps about 1980) I was taking pictures of some black light "art". I wanted to use a UV filter on my Mamiya 645/80 to suppress any possible haze, but had only a skylight. When I looked through the viewfinder I indeed saw haze - a pink haze. Then I noticed that the skylight filter was itself "lit up" - the filter itself was fluorescing under the UV. I checked all my other skylight filters and found many that had this problem, including one with a camera name brand on it! The main message for me was: don't use skylight filters unless they have been checked; they may do more harm than good. I tried at the time to get Modern Photography to publish a warning, but they declined. ... - Harold -- Harold M. Merklinger hmmerk@fox.nstn.ca Home phone: 902-461-1873

From: "jriegle" jriegle@att.net Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Who has the best primes on average? Look here! - but is it really a big deal? Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 This is the average scores of prime lenses from the different makes from the www.photodo.com site. They use MTF tests to grade lenses. MTF or Modulation Transfer Function, tests are regarded by optical engineers as a very accurate way to test how well an optical system performs. Do a web search to learn more about MTF testing of optical systems. To be included in the list, a make had to have at least nine primes to generate an average from: Leica M 4.21 Contax 4.13 Leica R 4.09 Canon 4.05 Minolta 3.95 Nikon 3.87 Pentax 3.87 Tokina 3.43 Tamron 3.40 Sigma 3.31 Summary: I'm not surprised to see the Leica M lenses score such a high average. The craftsmanship (and price) reflect that. I was most impressed to see the Canon scoring above 4. That is excellent considering the system is much more affordable than the makes scoring slightly higher. Nikon and Pentax tied at nearly 3.9 rounding out the camera makers lenses. Primes scoring 3.5 or above can easily achieve quality enlargements worthy of professional use. I've used lenses that scored around 3 that imaged very well. With average scores well above 3.5, the camera maker's lenses will do excellent for whichever system you choose. After a rather large gap, the 3rd party makes ring in. The results don't do them justice, because some of their earlier attempts were not as good as their later lenses that pull their score down. For example, Sigma's early 400mm f/5.6 lenses scored only 1.5 and 2.5, while the latest scored 3.5. Considering that, these 3rd party makes will still lag behind the camera makes. The argument of the number of samples tested or sample variation is not valid because they will simply average out in these results. As photography enthusiasts and/or professionals, we know there is more to a camera lens than just MTF scores. Flare resistance, geometric distortion, out of focus rendering, build quality and handling are other important considerations not considered in this evaluation. Sharpness isn't everything, but having good tools is desirable. I say this averaging list is somewhat inconclusive. Sure the Leica came in first as I, and perhaps many others, would have expected. I'm a bit disappointed that Pentax did not score better, as I'm a Pentax lens user. The best way to judge lenses is to look at them individually. Since virtually no one owns every lens in the maker's line, you can pick and chose the best lenses from a manufacturer's line. For example, Pentax has three very high scoring (4.6 !) lenses. Good Shooting, John

From: Alan Browne alan.browne@videotron.ca Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Re: Who has the best primes on average? Look here! - but is it really a big deal? Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 main problem is the word "average". MTF charts at photodo are great. And if you pour over them, you can learn about the strengths and weaknesses of a lens. If you rely on the "weighted" score, then you are hiding information about the lens. It is still a good guide, but it has been generalised or smoothed for easier consumption. And then to take an average of weighted results by manufacturer, well that tends to hide even more information. The dogs drag down the princes. The order of the lenses below will not surprise many people. (Except maybe Minolta edging out Nikon in this case, but then Nikon put more lenses up), but a lens buyer should look at the lens from many spec points and actual user "happiness" with the lens (with all due weighting of the compentence of the "happy user"). What will the lens be used for? A lens that is not particularly good at a popular aperture for most, might be particularly well suited at an unpopular aperture for a few. That is the value of the MTF charts. It is the photographer that needs to find the lens(es) that let him make the photography he needs/wants to make. As an example, look at the charts for the Canon and Minolta 20mm f/2.8's. Very close scores with the Minolta 0.1 above, a mere 2%. But look at how smoothly the Minolta behaves across axis v. the Canon. The Canon could have had an identical weighted MTF by just increasing those curves a smidgen and yet remain very "wavy" across the axis . YET: at f/8, the Canon is better than the Minolta from 0 to about 9o. At 2.8, the Canon isn't as good as the Minolta, but then the Minolta fades real quick beginning at about 12o off axis and higher to be worse than the Canon. So weighted average MTF's might be a quick and dirty way to rank a lens, but they don't tell the story about how the lens is suited to a particular user. And then weighting them all by manufacturer...more obfuscation. End of ramble. I forgot to say thank you for the effort you put into the roundup. On the other hand, it will give the Leica crowd another data point to crow about! Cheers, Alan jriegle wrote: > This is the average scores of prime lenses from the different makes from the > www.photodo.com site. They use MTF tests to grade lenses. MTF or Modulation > Transfer Function, tests are regarded by optical engineers as a very > accurate way to test how well an optical system performs. Do a web search > to learn more about MTF testing of optical systems. To be included in the > list, a make had to have at least nine primes to generate an average from: ...

Date: 5 Jul 2002 From: "Joe Schimpanzi" JoeSchimpanzi@Monkeybusiness.com Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.medium-format Subject: Re: Why has no one improved on the Blad? > I don't see why a 6008i and a 203FE is a "fair" comparison. For someone who > has no need of automation, it's a pretty biased comparison, in fact. The > 501CM kit I got was _less_ expensive than the nearest Rollei equivalent for > my purposes. Just to give you an update. The price for a Hasselblad 503 CW as quoted to me from B&H; via E-Mail 5 minutes ago is: Thank you for shopping at B&H; Photo Video Our current selling price for the: Hasselblad - 501CM Medium Format SLR Camera Kit (Black) with Folding Waist Level Viewfinder, Split-Image Focusing Screen, A12 (120) Film Back and 80mm f/2.8 CFE Lens is $3,085.00 The price on the B&H; web page for a Rollei 6008I with the 80 mm 2.8 EL (1/500) lens, 120 back, W/L finder, Battery, Charger, Split Screen Finder is only $2,999.99. Major savings with the Rollei? No, but your facts are way off the mark. Need good aim to shoot anything.... This is a comparison of the top of the line Rollei with the bottom of the line Hasselblad. That's why I didn't make this comparison from the onset. I'm in the habit of comparing apples to apples and oranges to oranges. I suggested the comparison between the 6008I and the 203FE based upon features. Not your needs of features. Not my needs of features.

From: Richard Cockburn cockburnREMOVE@webjetters.com Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Re: [Trivia] Photodo's worst rated lens Date: 19 May 2004 "William D. Tallman" wtallman@olypen.com wrote > Richard Cockburn wrote: >> Which of the following manufacturers made the lens to receive the lowest >> score on the http://www.Photodo.com scale? > snip > > Hmmm... how to assemble the world's most expensive Lomo: Start with the > Tokina AF 35-300 f/4.5-6.7 adapted for a Sigma camera body...... > > LOL!!! > Bill Tallman LOL! To be fair to Tokina, the Tokina AT-X 90/2,5 macro recieved a 4.6 score. However, that is Tokina's only lens to score higher than 4. The amount of lenses by each graded manufacturer to score above 4: Canon- 19 Contax- 14 Cosina- 0 Hasselblad- 0 Konica- 2 Leica R- 8 Leica M- 11 Mamiya- 2 Minolta- 9 Nikkor- 23 Olympus- 1 Pentax- 10 Ricoh- 0 Rolleiflex- 1 Sigma- 5 Tamron- 2 Tokina- 1 Vivitar- 1 Yashica- 1 --- -Richard Cockburn

From: Richard Cockburn cockburnREMOVE@webjetters.com Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: [Trivia] Photodo's worst rated lens Date: 19 May 2004 Which of the following manufacturers made the lens to receive the lowest score on the http://www.Photodo.com scale? Angenieux Bronica Canon Centon Contax Cosina Exakta Fujifilm Hasselblad Konica LeicaR LeicaM Mamiya Minolta Nikkor Novoflex Olympus Pentax Praktica Ricoh Rolleiflex Sigma Soligor Tamron Tokina Vivitar Yashica Please take a guess. Scroll down for the answer. [snipped spaces] The loser is: TOKINA Tokina AF 35-300/4.5-6.7 Score: .3 http://photodo.com/prod/lens/detail/ToAF35-300_45-67-838.shtml Currently out of production, this lens has been replaced by the Tamron AF 28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Aspherical (IF) Ultra Wide Angle-Telephoto Auto Focus Zoom Lens with lens hood (NOT RATED). The replacement lens goes to 28mm on the wide. The Photodo score would probably be a negative number. -- -Richard Cockburn

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