Do low element lenses have more "depth" than high element lenses?

Ironheart

@MegapixelSchnitzel that's what the blog post @donaldejose put in his OP did:

http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/10/4/the-flattening-of-modern-lenses-or-the-death-of-3d-pop

http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2015/11/12/depth-vs-flat-lens-quick-comparison

snakebunk

I have been looking at the Yannick Khong blog posts, and I cannot see the 3d effect even if I want to. Images look different of course, but no dimensional difference in my view. To be totally honest I don't believe in this. But I have been wrong before.

heartyfisher

I have had a look at Yannick's posts.. and there are too many illogical precepts, misdirection and unsubstantiated illogical theories to be taken seriously. His examples are also unscientifically chosen and thus useless for logical comparisons. The best description I have seen for his posts is "Vacuous pseudo science" please ignore his data for any further discussions. I am going to.

However as @MegapixelSchnitzel says.. a good set of comparisons with the same subjects and similar lenses would be great and the best example was in the Video I linked to earlier by Shane Hurlbut.

Pause this side by side comparison .. at 4:21 ""

starralazn

I was thinking for awhile that the posts this guy makes sounded familiar... and they are: http://petapixel.com/2016/03/14/problem-modern-lenses/
while there is a different look to older lenses, I don't buy the way that he describes this difference, andl, as heartyfisher says, uses psuedo science to describe what he believes to be the difference. the moment i saw this graphic, i didnt want to continue reading, cause it makes no sense whatsoever http://petapixel.com/assets/uploads/2016/03/download-2-1.jpg

DaveyJ

I saw the Cooke versus Leica lens review and thank Nikon Rumors guys for giving this link.
Not sure I saw the results exactly the same way. For sure the net used with the Cooke lens is a real loser! This penchant of using period lens and such to depict certain eras is not that well supported by my reckoning. Look at the movies like Shane, done many years ago. That is pretty high def and well done. Quentin Taratino's The Hateful Eight shows use of lens that are certainly very good wide field lens. The message of a movie too though is key. Shane takes the high road, and The Hateful Eight takes a plunge in terms of feel good.

Ironheart

@heartyfisher what would you like to see as the subject of a series of tests? I have a few different 50mm lenses with various amount of elements, and I can always rent/buy/beg/borrow/steal others. I'd like to see if we can get to the bottom of this. I haven't stated which side of the fence I'm on, just trying to present facts/info. Curious to see who sees what...

heartyfisher

@Ironheart I too would like to get a sense of what this "3d" effect is. I have been researching it a bit. My preliminary theories (not really theories more like gut feel possibilities) are below.

1) I don't think its to do with the number of elements.

2) I do think the age of the lense has something to do with it. Now why this is I dont know for sure. My guesses are as follows.

2a) The Glass material is different so the colours of the light and wavelengths of light that get through is slightly different. My 50mm 1.4 AIS definitely has the "Nikkor colour". You may ask why would this "colour" have a "3d" effect? well because that is one of the ways we perceive distance. Warmer colours close by, cooler colours further away it may be that the older glass is warmer but yet lets through more blue ie: more saturated for blue (more UV light gets through? Hmmm.. maybe that's why the number of elements matter). or some other properties.. whatever it is, the famous nikkor colours are legendary.

2b) the design of the modern lenses are "too good".. The older lenses tend to be sharp in the center and fuzzy at the side.. also the modern lenses tend to have a flat plane of focus while the older ones are more like the surface of a sphere(field curvature). Again this spherical plane of focus is more natural for our eyes. The lenses that have the flattest plane of focus are the macro lenses. If you have seen images from macro lenses you will notice how slightly unnatural and "flat" they look, a bit like a painting on the wall. So it may be the edge to edge sharpness in the modern lenses combined with the flat plane of focus, is one of the causes of the loss of "3d"ness.

2c) Modern lenses are too sharp !! most people don't have 20/20 vision. One of the cues for distance perception is the further away the more blur an object is. So a slightly weaker lense will show "distance" sooner than a sharp lense.

2d) The older lenses have a very slight barrel distortion. Which is more natural to our eyes and again is another way we perceive distance. Object sizes relative to each other is slightly exaggerated from center ( usually close) to edge (usually further)

2e) Micro contrast is better in modern lenses. In the modern lenses there relatively less differentiation for close objects( eyes ) and slightly further objects (ears) in the older lenses which is ever slightly weaker, the eyes will be that much sharper and ears will be that slightly less contrast. The modern coating that remove flare is one of the ways micro contrast is improved. On older lenses the edge of the frame has more flare and so lower micro contrast thus adding to the perception that the center object is slightly closer.

Combining these factors together some lenses may show more "3d"ness than a modern lense. well thats my gut feeling anyway

Now as to how we test this ... I dunno .. these criteria all have the human subjective element of "feeling the 3d" ..

snakebunk

@heartyfisher: Nice post. A question that comes to my mind is: Can we expect Lightroom 7 or 8 to have a 3D slider, and would it be possible to make one?

MegapixelSchnitzel

The "Presence" menu is pretty close, Snakebunk: three parameters that can induce a lot of "pop."

snakebunk

Yes, the clarity slider has some 3d feel to it (I think).

heartyfisher

@Ironheart what 50mm FOV lenses do you have access to?

I have been thinking about this test ... I have the following lenses that I could use...
1) Nikkor ais 50 F1.4
2) Nikkor afd 50 F1.8 (stuck at f1.8 )
3) Tamron 24-70 VC F2.8
4) Nikkor afs 18-140 F3.5-5.6
5) Nikkor afd 35-70 F2.8
6) Nikkor afs 70-200 F4

It did think that it would be nice if I had access to a Sigma 50 F1.4 or the new nikkor F1.4 or a Micro Nikkor 60mm F2.8 or the Nikkor 58mm F1.4 :-) @Ironheart Do you have access to some of these ?

heartyfisher

[Background receding to infinity] [][][][][][][][][]
[Beach or hills with a bit of] . . . . . . . . . [brick wall]
[atmospheric haze ]


The above is the test subject I am considering ...

A bit like the images below but with a flat wall perpendicular ... to image plane.

A combination of elements from the images below..

alderes

Quite an interesting threat and I came across the topic last year, triggered by the same "challenging" video from the angry fotographer. What actually did fascinate me was his approach to discuss it by means of the wave theory rather the by geometrical optics. I did wonder if prime lenses are really less distracting to colored light than zoom lenses or modern optics. It made me interested into the way that we actually see things and stared into our garden day after day. I tried to catch that 3D impression with different versions of 50mm lenses and zooms but could not really create differences, at least not as obvious as expected. Meanwhile I think that we are fooled by our brain. Human eyes are not taking pictures as a camera does. A camera has got all the problems with limited dynamics at one exposure value and limited sharpness into the depth of the room. Human visual perception actually is not a one foto, it is instead continous processing of a stream of light (waves), in which the eyes are constantly moving - even though these micro moves are not really noticable. That is to say that the eyes are scanning the three dimensional area we are looking into continuously while ensuring that everything is fully adjusted and well balanced: sharp from near to far, bright with enormuous dynamics, clear with good contrasts and always balanced white. Hence, the brain has taken thousands of shots with HDL, focus stacking and all sorts of tricks to create an 3D Imagination. What is even more important: I know my garden so well and, as I am living on three floors, have seen it from many different perspectives; I even walked through it numerous times - I do know the distances and therefore have a really good imagination about its three dimensional arrangements. For the same reason, i.e. the lack of such experience, I actually do not have a 3D impression when looking at the beach picture of heartyfisher above. What I do recall is that stones happen to lay along a beach and that smaller stones usually are farer away. Actually, the distant stones as well as the background are not as sharp as the foreground, which is contradicting the experience.

However, our brain is also "adjusted" to photographic illusions, which is why narrow DoF and Bokeh actually do work as an impression for room and space. I also believe that micro-contrast is supportive for 3D illusions, as it enables constant sharpness along all distances. The same applies for Focus stacking and aperture braketing. But at the end you always need a similar experience to connect with otherwise even the deepest valley will appear flat to you.

A last remark to movement: try to stand still and stare into the distance which is filled with bushes and trees from near to far. Then swing your body slowly from left to right and watch how fast the nearby bushes move compared to those far away. Now stand still again and note the difference in perciving your field of view. I find this also extreme when driving around our country side by car.

Now, did I mention lenses? Well, when considering constant sharpness as well as accuracy of exposure and color through out the entire field of view, i.e. from centre into the edges, for will most likely end up with the better optical quality of prime lenses. But this is then a prerequisite and not something that automatically makes fotos with obvious depth.

alderes

This a sample

Ironheart

@heartyfisher Here's what I have at 50mm or close:

18-55 AF-S G 11 Elements
16-80 AF-S E 17 Elements
55-200 AF-S G 15 Elements
50/1.8 AF-S G 7 Elements
50/2 F H Auto 6 Elements (no coatings from '68)
50/1.8 E Series 6 Elements (pancake, coatings? from '81)
50/1.4 F S Auto 7 Elements (no coatings from '68)

By comparison, the Sigma 50mm Art has 13 elements. I suppose I could rent that puppy for the sake of testing. My backyard has a view to infinity, so I think I can set up what you want.

@alderes @WestEndFoto @snakebunk @DaveyJ and others: You are digging into exactly what I was cooking above. The way people perceive the 3-D nature of reality is a combination of processing power, eye movement, refocusing, etc... This has got to be an individual experience with some folks having more "depth perception" than others. How we each perceive a flat image has got to be as unique as how we taste a cup of coffee (or a bottle of wine). I'm just curious to know which images have the "pop" and which don't according to others. I guess some sort of blind (pun intended) survey after we get some images cooked up.

DaveyJ

I have taken part in a whole lot of eye tests, perception etc. The military was into this stuff too, not just photographers. People in my family tend to have incredibly good eyesight for much of their lives. I do believe though that a lens designer, a camera designer, etc. better aim at sharp, good color rendition, edge to edge sharpness, fairly low distortion, etc. I did have a famous eye doctor tell me, just because you have better than 20:20 vision doesn't mean you don't need glasses. At every single focal length glasses can be used to magnify, and sharpen almost everyone's view of any object. However the advantage of the human eye, is it's ability with brain interpretation to adapt quite quickly to from near to far.

That though assumes you have good vision. Many impressionistic artists I would guess had bad vision or just liked looking at things blurred out which a person with great eyesight can do on purpose. Using filters, and various devices can greatly impact what the image will look like. Another factor in this whole presence "witch hunt" or perhaps you would prefer......inquisitive minded discussion....which I favor as the way to look at this......is focal length of the lens used. I personally feel that a wider angle lens has quite a bit more depth of field than a tele lens when you look at an object but once corrections are made for certain object sizes this difference seems to fade.

I thought the Leica lens in the one comparison with the Cooke lens was being sold very short.
One was 100mm versus 75mm. Compare similar vintage lens and same manufacturer and I find lens start to get closer in most aspects. Another subject of this initial discussion was the thought that fewer lens elements yield greater presence, maybe bigger depth of field?
I myself think make your own tests, let reviewers make their tests, consider all data, then make your selection.....like picking the lesser of two evils, or was that weevils? At least that was the line from the Master and Commander of the Far Side of the World Movie: Russel Crow, Paul Betany....et al......

Great topic, who knows what will decided. I for one tend to favor modern glass.

donaldejose

I have always wanted to have the sharpest lens, but maybe I have been making a mistake?

BVS

In addition, since it was the announcement of the new 105/1.4E (14 elements), and Angry Photographer's subsequent dissing of it, that prompted this whole discussion (I believe), I think it would be good to do a proper comparison between it and the 105/2D (6 elements).

Also, although not exactly the same focal length, comparing them to the even older 135/2.8AIS (5 elements) and 135/3.5AIS (4 elements), which AP says he loves, may be interesting as well.

heartyfisher

I think a 50mm should have the same "effect" ..... and much easier to get samples :-)

BTW @donaldejose I finally suffered through the AP youtube links you posted. I think the "depth" he is talking about is to do with the richness of tones and not the "3d" look. Also looks to me like Yanick got a lot of the terms he uses from the AP ... with no understanding of what the AP was saying ...

alderes

It is funny to watch this discussion evolving about the same way as it did a year ago on the german DSLR Forum. One aspect was about the depth perception. I did find this article quite useful: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depth_perception. Maybe 3D is misleading, but I guess that - as an opposition to flat - depth has to do with the perception or Illusion of the objects arranged at different locations in a deep room instead of pressing everything into one layer. And there are actually pictures around that have such a quality. I believe that good optical qualities are required, but mainly photographic techniques (as mentioned in my previous comment) and most important good light and color conditions. When e.g. the sun is shining in the afternoon warmly onto a wineyard and you see amazing detail of forms and colors/shades, then you can see much more detail then in the bright light at noon

MegapixelSchnitzel

donaldejose said:

I have always wanted to have the sharpest lens, but maybe I have been making a mistake?

I still want the sharpest lens I can afford. I can always unsharp it as I see fit.

WestEndFoto

MegapixelSchnitzel said:

donaldejose said:

I have always wanted to have the sharpest lens, but maybe I have been making a mistake?

I still want the sharpest lens I can afford. I can always unsharp it as I see fit.

Emphatically agree!!!

heartyfisher

:-) its the quality of the blur

heartyfisher

Its dangerous looking at hundreds of images made by various 50mm lenses ....
sigh ..

picking up a 50mm F1.4G tomorrow .....
At least I will have something appropriate to compare with my 50mm 1.4 ais .....

MegapixelSchnitzel

heartyfisher said:

:-) its the quality of the blur

That's what Photoshop is for: any lack of quality in my equipment or skill.