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

13

Comments

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    So here is a test shot with the 50/1.4 F S Auto 7 Elements (no coatings from '68)
    This is wide open at 1/4000th ISO 100 on a Df.

    image


    Before I cycle through all of my lenses, I wanted to see if this shot will capture the "pop". There are mountains at infinity, but it was a hazy day yesterday. Today may be better.
  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    Same lens, at f/16 instead of f/1.4

  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    How come the colour is different..? did you change the white balance ? or was it set at auto WB ?

    Haze is good.. Its one of the things that could play a role in the "3D"ness.

    I think F4 or f5.6 would be more relevant than F16 for a test. also did you use it with a filter ? I think for our tests we should remove the filters...

    It looks nice and sharp...


    PS: BTW I have been playing with my new 50mm 1.4g :-) Scouting out locations for my/the test.
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    edited September 2016
    Yeah, it was set to auto WB, I am going to reshoot today with more discipline, just scouting location/setup today. I was planning to shoot at all whole f-stops, just giving the extremes here. No filters.
    Post edited by Ironheart on
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    One more thing .. I have a theory that the presence of a "3D person" may help with the perception of "3d"ness. It seems to me that lots of "flat" images don't seem to have a person in it. Maybe it just helps bring more "context/perspective" ?

    Maybe we can test that in round 2? if we don't get bored of this..;-)
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • snakebunksnakebunk Posts: 993Member
    @heartyfisher: Did you get bored? Even if I am sceptical I am interested in your final judgement on this 3d thing.
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    :-) Been having fun scouting out locations and possible scenes for test photos :-) in the end decided on outside my front door LOL !! not the best, but easiest .. still had fun... :-)

    Was going to do the test shoots today but the weather didnt play ball .. so some time this coming week...

    Also in my further "research" noticed that images with small apertures definitely have more "flatness" to it, so probably why we like images with wide apertures even though we never really "see" in wide apertures... just a thought... will be more mindful of that in my future images ...
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    I'll post my images up in a few hours. Just got busy with life/work. Some interesting results...
  • snakebunksnakebunk Posts: 993Member
    Good to hear! I look forward to buying 3d lenses from Hearty & Iron in a near future :).
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    Sigh ....

    Looking at second hand photo equipment is dangerous .... Picked up a couple more "extremely good deals"

    sigh ...

    Yup .. another lense to add to the test suite .... No more... until I get the tests done :smiley:
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    edited September 2016
    Okay, what a bunch of work to shoot, download, and organize. Good thing I don't do weddings :wink:

    A couple of disclaimers:

    All shots were done on tripod, using timer, and manually focused used a zoomed in live-view

    I focused on the wick of the torchère, so the leading edge will go out of focus when wide open (kinda how a nose goes out OOF when focused on the leading eye)

    Even with that, several of the lenses are soft wide-open, either that or the focus shifted. I will reshoot this weekend.

    All whole-stop apertures were used (f/22, f/16, f/11, f/8, f/5.6, f/4, f/2.8, f/2, f/1.4)

    Exif is available for all photos, but the old lenses show up as just 50mm

    Here's the decoder ring:

    16-80 AF-S E 17 Elements DSC_3992-3998
    18-55 AF-S G 11 Elements DSC_4000-4006
    50/1.4 F S-Auto 7 Elements DSC_8373-8380
    50/1.8 E Series 6 Elements DSC_8383-8390
    50/2 F H-Auto 6 Elements DSC_8392-8398
    50/1.8 AF-S G 7 Elements DSC_8402-8409

    All photos in this directory:
    https://www.dropbox.com/sh/eeystn1a8nycq3q/AACRU-fypD1XDhPrgFYT0vVDa?dl=0

    Here are a few samples:

    16-80 @ f/3.3 (wide open) 34mm



    50/1.4 @ f/1.4 (S-Auto)



    50/1.8 @ f/1.8 (E Series)

    Post edited by Ironheart on
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    Thanks for that !!
    I have some questions... .. How come there are a couple of 105mm images(from looking at the exif) in the set but the FOV does not change ??

    That Series E lens is really quite interesting!! but each of the lenses have their own properties..
    It seems clear that the old lenses samples are .. different... maybe its using 2 different sensors? or it may be the old lenses..

    It seems to me that the 3d-ness shows itself more clearly with wider apertures say from F8 down to f2.8 with F4 being the best for FX full view. That would probably mean that the equivalent DX of 34mm F2.8 would be best... shame we dont have many lens options with those parameters.

    Nikon DX only provides the primes and the 17-55 F2.8 ..... Luckily Sigma has the 2 f1.8 zooms 18-35 and 50-100 (yay! for siggy) . The new 16-80 F2.8-F4 just manages to be within the edges of the 3d-ness.

    I am also surprised at the amount of "flatness" in the 16-80 images... It may just be the higher DOF of the DX format. But there also seems to be a uniformity of colour that is present. It may be the sensor difference?

    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    The 105mm is only in those two files that start with PHX. This was before I programmed the non-CPU lens data in the Df. Those were essentially test shots anyway, you can ignore them.

    I think the FX/DX thing has too many variables to make an accurate assessment. I threw the 16-80 and 18-55 into the mix, just to try and get some high-element lenses into the mix. What I really need is the 50mm Sigma 1.4 Art with it's ridiculous element count. I suppose I can run down to borrowlenses.com (they have a local spot) and grab the siggy and the 24-70 zoom. Anything else while I'm there?

    Yeah, the E series is an interesting beastie. Cost $50 on ebay and isn't even technically a Nikkor, just a plain old Nikon :wink: It's also a pancake. The history of the E series is that Nikon was looking to produce a set of super cheap lenses for consumer grade film SLRs at the time
    http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/hardwares/classics/emfgfg20/eserieslenses/
    I've only got the nifty-fifty, but now I'm thinking I want the whole set :naughty:
  • WestEndFotoWestEndFoto Posts: 3,742Member
    I have a 100mm Series E. Considering that it is a budget lens from that era, I am very impressed with the optics. I think that Series E lenses are to the Nikkors of their time what today's 1.8s are to 1.4s.
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited September 2016
    :-) I know the series Es. What I meant by interesting is the way the images looked.. they seem quite different from the others... especially at max aperture.

    I was thinking that you could use your lenses for the test on the same DX sensor if you wanted. Ie.. all at 75mm FOV(or 50mm)
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • donaldejosedonaldejose Posts: 3,675Member
    edited September 2016
    ironheart: thanks for doing all that work. If you are a flicker member and could put them on flicker it would be easier to view them and see the f-stop used without downloading the image.

    A bit off topic, but one of the things I see is to stop "lusting" after f1.4 glass. In a situation such as you have where there is significant distance between the subject and the background trees shooting at f4 seems best to me. It gives you sufficient depth of field on the subject and sufficient blur on the background. So that lesson for me is to move my subject as far away from the background as possible and shoot at f4 rather than shooing at f1.4 with my subject closer to the background. So why do I need an f1.4 lens? Only for situations where I cannot move my subject far from a background.
    Post edited by donaldejose on
  • AndrewzAndrewz Posts: 122Member
    This is a great topic and something I’ve pondered for sometime, with that said I really think @ironheart got it right in his first post so this might be some what repetitive but….

    3D pop is a perceptual thing, there is no actual or real 3D pop. We take visual clue from an image and perceive it as having more depth. For me the real question is why, why does this image have more depth that the other and I think it has nothing to do with the glass and mostly our brains.

    With that said different lenses will project a different image however slight on the focal plane/sensor/film and these all are flat, 2 dimensional with no actual depth. The Cooke vs Leica lens video is a great example.

    I’m going to jump forward and say I think it’s the edge distortion and out of focus blur that you get from older lenses that gives us the “3D pop”, these are the visual clues that make our brain say “wow that looks 3 dimensional!”

    @heartyfisher said it “2b) the design of the modern lenses are "too good"..” and that maybe exactly right as image sensor resolution has pushed past that of film the “need” for better optics has gotten us lenses with excellent edge to edge sharpness and thus the “flat” or perceived “flat” image.

    So my question, if I’m right that edge distortion and blur make us perceive an image as having “3D pop” (might not be right), is this something inherent in the way we process visual information or is it learned. Do I see a 3d pop because I’ve spent many years shooting with film and looking at old photographs, would someone born today who only sees image made with modern optics see it differently? Not sure how to setup this experiment but it would be interesting.

    @heartyfisher also said “Our eyes have huge DOF never this shallow DOF the lenses produce.” I don’t know that, that is correct, really our eyes only see a very small portion of our visual field in focus, however we are constantly scanning our surrounds and our brain like the best version of photoshop stitch together and image that we perceive as having great depth of field and everything in sharp focus. Try staring at something now without moving your eyes notice the whole image. You will see that focus drops off quickly.

    This makes me think that this 3D perception maybe something inherent in the way we see.

    Now this is slightly tangential but related. Tilt-shift images, I remember when these images became all the rage and you started seeing them everywhere. There was one image in particular I remember of an English double-decker bus. At a quick glance I thought it was a model of a double-decker bus but at closer examination it was real. Then I noticed that all of these tilt-shift images had this “unreal” appearance. My assumption was the short depth of field had given me the perceptual clues that this a macro picture of a model and not a real life size bus. I wondered why and the only I could come up with was that Macro photography tends to have terribly short depth of field and that my brain had learned to interpret that short DOF image of an object as macro photography, producing the illusion that the bus was a model.

    Here’s a fun experiment and it would be better if Nikon had a full frame mirror less camera. Get a hold of a Sony A7R II and some adaptors, because of the short flange to sensor distance you can mount almost anything to them. My favorites’ are some of the old Soviet lens (Jupiter 8, etc…), you get this wonderfully distorted Bokeh. I just picked up a couple of mid 80’s (I would guess) F-mount Ai lenses, a Tokina 28mm f/2.8 and a Cosina 28mm f/2.8, from a junk pile, both are super sharp in the center and wonderfully distorted at the edges.

    I’ll stop before I get to far a field and just say different lenses give you different images and I think the “3D pop” is more about perception and visual clues….





    D750, P7000, F100 80-200 f2.8 AF-S, 24-120 f4, 50 f1.8D, 85 f1.8G, 14-24 f2.8

    Old friends now gone -D200, D300, 80-200 f2.3/D, 18-200, 35 f1.8G, 180 f2.8D, F, FM2, MD-12, 50 f1.4 Ais, 50 f1.8 Ais, 105 f2.5 Ais, 24 f2.8 Ais, 180 f2.8 ED Ais
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited October 2016
    Firstly, sorry guys for still not having done the test.. As you know I got 2 new lenses.. well new to me but second-hand and I have been familiarising (playing !!) with them. They are the Nikkor 50mm F1.4 and an old Nikkor 35-135 F3.5-4.5. The 35-135 is surprisingly fun ! I guess because it covers the classical lens range (35, 50, 85, 105, 135) !! However, its got fungus I am taking it into some shops tomorrow to see if it can be fixed for a reasonable cost before I do the tests with it. also I think the 50mm may be de-centred :-( ever so slightly... still not noticeable in most photos.. I am considering putting it into nikon's service centre .. Not sure if it will effect our tests.. any suggestions ? :-)
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • IronheartIronheart Posts: 3,017Moderator
    edited October 2016
    @heartyfisher Get the lenses fixed first. Love to see some photos from the old 35-135 :smile: My E-series 50mm lens had some dust inside, so I took it apart and cleaned it myself. It's pretty easy to find teardown guides for the old lenses, and if you got them cheap anyway... Kinda fun. I'll see what I can dig up on your lens.

    I just grabbed a lensbaby composer setup (on a closeout sale) with a sweet50 optic. This is a 2 element lens! Makes photos like these

    I'm also thinking about getting the edge50 which does the miniaturization effect @Andrewz is talking about


    Gallery that includes these photos and more:
    http://lensbaby.com/gallery/

    Anyway, gotta find the time to play with all my gear!
    Post edited by Ironheart on
  • donaldejosedonaldejose Posts: 3,675Member
    As to images from low element lenses consider these photos.

    This is a three element lens: www.flickr.com/photos/68748978@N02/27907596691/in/album-72157667637718983/

    This is a seven element lens:
    www.flickr.com/photos/g_paul_marius/sets/72157670961839303/with/29272213723/
  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited October 2016
    @donaldejose Nice images .. names of the lenses ?

    @Ironheart That sweet 50 should make a nice addition to the test ! :-)

    A few days ago I got a quick play with the Petzval 85mm. Cool bokeh.. I wished I had taken more photos with it. I missed focus .. sigh .. but the bokeh was exotic :-)
    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    edited October 2016
    So pleased!! .. found a camera/lens repair guy!! my 35-135 is in his workshop and so is my 50mm f1.8 which has an oily sticky aperture. Took that lense to Nikon Australia earlier this year and they basically said bin it :-( ... I asked him if he could fix them .. he looked offended and said "Of Course" !

    Its so gratifying to see someone expertly and lovingly handle my old lenses! He loves them more than me !! Had a nice chat with him. He has been in business for almost 2 years .. in April this year he finally "retired" as a technician from Nikon Australia !! His work shop is full of old lenses and cameras !! (and not a speck of dust on them !!)

    I asked him if he had any good old lenses I could buy.. he said NO ! he is a collector he has been collecting the stuff since before he trained as a camera/lense technician decades ago in his home country !!

    While I was filling in the form that listed my gear I was letting him repair, he said "let me look at your D7200 and lense".. he then proceeded to clean the sensor and lense and filters !!( mumbling that it was so dirty ..) OMG !! I love this guy !! On the way home I used my kit with pleasure.. Its never been so sparkly !!

    Post edited by heartyfisher on
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • heartyfisherheartyfisher Posts: 3,186Member
    I am just about ready to shoot my test.. what camera settings would you like to see.. ?

    I am thinking
    * "standard" Picture Control
    * "Direct sunlight" White Balance
    * Active D-Lighting OFF
    * Colour space sRGB
    * Vignette control OFF
    * ISO 100

    Anything else ?
    Moments of Light - D610 D7K S5pro 70-200f4 18-200 150f2.8 12-24 18-70 35-70f2.8 : C&C very welcome!
    Being a photographer is a lot like being a Christian: Some people look at you funny but do not see the amazing beauty all around them - heartyfisher.

  • AndrewzAndrewz Posts: 122Member
    @heartyfisher shoot in RAW, then picture control and Active D-lighting don't matter. Adobe RGB has a wider gamut (of course out put from LR/PS should be sRGB). White balance again shooting RAW you can fiddle with it later if you want but I usually shoot auto or custom. Nikon's auto white balance is so good and of course using a gray card custom white balance is pretty easy to do. MHO - but you did ask :-)
    D750, P7000, F100 80-200 f2.8 AF-S, 24-120 f4, 50 f1.8D, 85 f1.8G, 14-24 f2.8

    Old friends now gone -D200, D300, 80-200 f2.3/D, 18-200, 35 f1.8G, 180 f2.8D, F, FM2, MD-12, 50 f1.4 Ais, 50 f1.8 Ais, 105 f2.5 Ais, 24 f2.8 Ais, 180 f2.8 ED Ais
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