1.23.2023
I dropped by Barton Springs Pool today to make some photographs to remind me of what the pool has looked like since I saw it first in 1974...
Many fast lenses from the 70s, 80s and 90s got bad raps. They were dismissed as being soft when used wide open. I'm started to think a whole lot of reviewers committed user error. Egregiously.
When I buy a used, manual lens from the time periods mentioned in the headline I'm generally impatient to see how they perform. If they work well wide open then logic suggests that they'll be even better stopped down. I recently put an old, mid-1970s, Canon FD 50mm f1.4 on a Leica SL camera body and performed one of my quick and dirty tests. I opened the lens all the way up, aimed the camera into a mirror and shot a portrait of the lens. Handheld. No IBIS. No crutches. No cheats.
To my eye the critically focused part of the image, just above (the ring on the lens with type), is nicely sharp. Good sharp. Happy sharp. And yet, looking back at articles, blog posts and even YouTube videos reviewing this lens at various points in time, you would think those reviewers and I had quite different lenses. They suggest the lens is soft wide open. I suggest user error.
I was an early proponent of mirrorless cameras. I wrote extensively about them starting back in 2009. And I've never stopped. Since I am a steady user of many manual focus lenses the top feature I like on mirrorless cameras is the ability to look at a composition through a good EVF and then punch in and magnify the image in the finder a lot so I can dial in perfectly sharp focus. By that I mean the point of sharpest focus corresponds exactly to the point I want in focus. The point at which I was aiming.
But I've had decades of experience focusing with SLR and DSLR cameras that lacked these features and I understand why reviewers keep saying that "such and such 50mm f1.4 lens from 197x is "dreamy" (meaning unsharp and lacking contrast) when used wide open but sharpens up nicely from f2.8 on up."
I think it's because, at the time these lenses were "tested" most "reviewers" were flying by the seat of their pants. Didn't spend hours everyday practicing their focusing skills on the job, and were robbed of the chance to become manual focus proficient by the almost complete acceptance of auto focus lenses. And autofocus cameras ---- which, incidentally, are not engineered to help photographer manually focus.
Today I worked with an almost new, manual focus, Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF lens, with a lens adapter to allow this Nikon F mount lens to work on my L mount Leica SL. When I went to focus I discovered just how sensitive that lens can be in respect to focusing technique. Even at the highest degree of image magnification in the 4.4 million dot EVF you have to be careful while focusing and be keenly aware of that exact focusing plane. At least you have to if you intend to use the lens at its widest aperture....
Almost every well made 50mm f1.4 MF lens from Nikon, Canon, Zeiss and Leica is capable of very good performance when used wide open. At least that is so in my experience. You might not brag about the corner sharpness or the edge acuity but they are nearly all adequately sharp where it counts. Right there in the center of the frame --- extending out and covering at least two thirds of the frame with good optical performance. The spot in which most subjects are found.
I'm beginning to sound like a broken record player playing the same groove over and over again but.... you have to test your gear yourself. The way you use it. And if you are new to manually focusing lenses please be aware that it's not a thing most people immediately master. Good, accurate manual focusing takes some learned skill as well as a good camera with the ability to assist you in getting good focus by magnifying a smart part of the overall image for you to work on.
I'm beginning to think people who review lenses in exchange for views or money are uniformly poor at the task. If you want to know about the real capabilities of a lens then test it yourself or find someone who uses the lens in which you are interested and look through their work. Seeing is the best test.
It can be frustrating when reviews are flawed but I guess the silver lining is that bad reviews damn good lenses to low prices. Oh.....Wait!....I see how that could work well for me.
1.22.2023
Weird Lenses Can Be Happy Lenses.
I went on a vacation last November and I took a deep breath and only took one camera and one lens. It was a stretch; especially for a guy who has enough lenses to outfit a camera club. I wanted to travel light, pay more attention to my best friend and partner, and really just experience the city directly. Sometimes the gear can really get in the way. It becomes a focus and then a burden.
It all sounds good, the minimalization of gear, when you are discussing it with another photographer/friend over coffee on a rainy and bleak afternoon. But then, the day before you leave, you find yourself packing and re-packing. Pulling stuff out of your luggage and replacing it with something else. I probably did five rounds of choosing the day before we were scheduled to fly out.
Zooms seemed too big and too wishy-washy. As in "make up your mind already!" And if I chose wide angles I'd spend the trip seeing nothing but long shots. If I took a short telephoto lens I'd spend the trip dreaming of normal lenses. And then there is the whole issue of cameras. If I'd had the Q2 at that point it would have easily been my camera of choice because 30+ megapixels at 35mm and 15+ megapixels at 50mm would have been fine and dandy with me.
In the end I chose the Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 lens made for Leica M mount. I used an M to L adapter to fit onto a Panasonic S5. It was all just so perfect.
Having no choice but what I had in my hands my brain stopped wishing for other focal lengths (and other camera bodies) and just got down to business. It was a good exercise in giving up control to a great extent. I'll do it again soon. But I'm still going to go through the packing decision overload trauma drama the night before we leave on the next adventure just for the hell of it. It was kind of fun; in a masochistic sort of way.
No filters on the lens. Just filter settings in the L. mono. D profile in camera. Juicy skies were my reward.
1.21.2023
Woke up in a weird mood and went eccentric on my camera and lens choices today. But it was....fun.
1.20.2023
Earlier today I showed a gallery of color images from yesterday's adventures in the neighborhood across from the UT campus....