The Online Photographer

Years ago, Pentax created a very unusual zoom lens prototype. Called the "Flexi" (said so right on the lens), it was an SMC Pentax-M lens of rather limited spec: 32–39mm.

Thirty-five millimeter lenses were at that time (1978) being increasingly used as normal lenses, but people had varying tastes—some wished it were just a tetch wider, some just a tetch narrower. So the idea was that you could get a Flexi (which, at 63x45mm and 230g, was barely bigger than a normal prime—the famous SMC Pentax-M 50mm ƒ/1.4 was 63x37mm and 235g) and tweak it yourself, to taste.

It was never put into production.

...Until now?!? Ricoh Imaging has just announced the first zoom lens in the "Limited" lens lineup for Pentax APS-C digital SLRs...and it's a mere 2X, a 20–40mm ƒ/2.8–4. The world hasn't seen much of 2X normal zooms since the old 35–70's were commonplace.

The first zoom in Pentax's acclaimed "Limited" lineup.
Also available in silver chrome.

It's small—69mm long and light at 283g. And if you think of it, with a field-of-view equivalency of 30–60mm, it replaces a 35mm, a 50mm, all of the "middlin'" focal lengths in the 40–45mm range, the odd (to me) 60mm "long normal" focal length that's not as unusual these days as it used to be, and it gets pretty close to a 28mm (Pentax has history with 30mm and 31mm lenses, too). So although at first glance it seems limited (no pun intended) as a zoom, it covers all the most-used "normal" focal lengths.

As with the other Limiteds, it features metal contruction and comes in black or silver. And as a bonus, it's weatherproof—making it the perfect normal lens for your spiffy new K-3 or trusty K-5. A zoom that doesn't feel like a zoom around your neck.

I dub it the "Pentax Flexi"—here at last.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Barnard Scharp (partial comment): "Still jealous of Pentax shooters and their lens options....  ;-)  "

Nigel Robinson: "That actually—almost—sounds like just the thing. I've been working in a winery in Austria for the last six weeks and needed something small and waterproof. Wineries are rather damp with all the cleaning that goes on all the time, not to mention all the fog that rolls in. The focal lengths sound about perfect. I do have a bias against variable-aperture zooms though. I wonder how many bottles of Riesling it will sell for."

icexe: "At first I scratched my head when I saw this lens, then I thought about how often I switch primes to get just those focal lengths. This is simply brilliant."

Typical traditional lens kit for Leica M (see full caption below)

Last week (because it's currently on sale at a reduced price) I caught up with some photographers whose main lens is the extraordinary Canon EF 24–70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM, which I agree is a superior and beautiful lens. I didn't tire of looking at images made with it, online. (If I were starting out as a pro right now, I'd probably get that lens and two 6Ds. Why the EOS 6D? Besides for the fact that it's unprecedentedly cheap right now? Because it's quiet. The last "job" I had to do was at a memorial service, and my Sony DSLR [A900] was too loud.)

As longtime readers won't need reminding, however, zooms aren't for me. I've never liked photographing with them and don't prefer them.

This is more or less natural for some photographers who cut their teeth in the film years. Medium-format film cameras used by almost all professionals (Hasselblads in this country, or Bronicas, or Mamiyas among portrait photographers) were largely used without zooms. A very few zooms existed, but they were preposterously large, expensive, and inconvenient, and you took an image-quality hit. And large-format cameras, used by many professionals and a number of artists, have never had zooms as an option. Thirty-five millimeter photography was where zooms made their early inroads, but even with 35mm, rangefinder cameras, which were a minority among 35mm cameras but had outsized "mindshare" mainly because of the Leica M, also couldn't be used with zooms, although both Leica and Konica made multi-focal-length lenses that were distant cousins of zooms.

So photographers who used any of these cameras got used to thinking—and seeing—in terms of single-focal-length lenses.

Furthermore, none of these camera types—Hasselblads, the ubiquitous 4x5s, or rangefinder Leicas—were suited to extreme focal lengths, whether extreme wide angle or extreme telephoto. (The suitability of 35mm SLRs to extremely long telephotos was part of what drove the growing acceptance of 35mm for professional work in the 1960s and '70s. For amateurs too: an impressive big long expensive telephoto was a significant status symbol for photographers when I was young, although I never aspired to own one myself.)

Finally, zooms were of much lower status in decades past. They were definitely the preference of amateurs and novices. The Leitz family, founding owners of the company that made Leicas, didn't even allow the company to make zooms for its SLRs until very late. The early zooms for the R cameras, if memory serves, were warmed-over Minoltas.

This old prejudice began to fade in the mid to late '90s, and is all but gone now.

And whether you shot Hasselblads, Leicas, or view cameras back then, by far the most typical lens complement was a trio of single-focal-length lenses. In the usual order of need, acquisition, and emphasis: a normal first, then a moderate tele, then a wide angle.

Caption to the top illustration:
Left: Seven-element "Rigid" Summicron. Although not great at its two widest apertures by today's standards, from ƒ/4 to ƒ/11 this classic lens will yield the quintessential "Leica look" that made the marque famous.
Middle: The "E46" 90mm Elmarit-M, like many short-tele Leica lenses, was particularly eye-pleasing and a great lens to use, very sharp even wide open. Visually, the Sigma 60mm ƒ/2.8 DN reminds me a lot of this lens (definitely not in build quality).
Right: A Canadian 28mm Elmarit.
Illustrations from KEH.com. These old lenses hold their value quite well today; this kit in Ex. condition from KEH would run $3,598.

All that's what formed my lens choices and my preferences, which exist to this day: a moderate-wide prime as a normal, a short tele, and a wide angle. That's all I ever need.

Of course, this "typical" median was influenced by what you did. Architectural photographers needed wide angle lenses, so a 90mm for your 4x5 was many architectural photographers' second or even first lens choice. Product and tabletop photographers as well as nature photographers often had at least one macro. And how many lenses you had for each of your formats depended not only on need, but on how heavily you used each particular format and what your budgetary constraints were. I have to say I knew relatively few pros who had all three options for a view camera, and none had as few as three options for a 35mm SLR. Most people I knew who owned Leicas had one or two lenses for them, not three. Artists might well own just one view camera lens, and, usually, just one lens for a medium-format camera if that's what they used. Medium-format cameras with single fixed taking lenses weren't uncommon, the most famous being the Rolleiflex.

I transitioned from a 50mm to a moderate wide angle 35mm in my second year of photo school. I had to shoot a lot in downtown Washington D.C.—the Corcoran, where I went to art school, is about a football field's distance from the White House—and 50mm is a little too tight for my way of seeing in the city. The 35mm had just a touch of "wide-angly" feel to it, though, which I didn't care for back then, so my favorite focal length became 40mm—a preference definitely helped along by the 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor and the Olympus OM Zuiko 40mm ƒ/2, both of which I loved. Although I've definitely used more 35mms than 40mms overall. A number of 35mm photographers went the other way and settled on 28mm as a "normal." I've also come to like 28mm more and more as the years have passed.

By the way, all along the way in photography, my method has been to just try things and make decisions visually. For instance, when I was transitioning away from the 50mm, I simply took a bunch of pictures with a 35mm lens and a 28mm lens and looked at the pictures. I tended to like the 35mm pictures better, so I went with that.

But leaving the 50mm meant that I needed a separate lens for portraits, because the 35mm was too wide. So I added an 85mm.

Portrait of Hilary Liftin as a schoolgirl, at the National Cathedral. Zeiss 85mm. Hilary is now an author who ghost-writes and co-writes celebrity autobiographies; among many others, she's written books with Tatum O'Neal and Miley Cyrus. Some of her clients' names she is contractually
not allowed to reveal.

Those are still my favorite focal lengths, because I got so used to seeing with them. It's partly psychological: I've reinforced those choices by using lenses of those focal lengths in many different systems, which means I've gotten lots of nice pictures with such lenses, which in turn reinforces all the positive feelings I associate with them. It sort of builds on itself after a while.

Patterns and habits
In the '90s, I did a survey of my own shooting and found my usage broke down as follows: 80% normal lens, 15% short tele, and 5% wide angle.

There's always been a problem with the wide angle, in that it's usually the most expensive of the three types, but it's the one I least often use. So, having been relatively resource-free during most of my life as a photographer and a bit of a tightwad as a consequence, I've often just planned to buy, but not actually bought, the wide angle in any given lens set for any given camera. In practice I tend to get away with a ~35mm normal and a ~85mm short tele, more or less.

That's the situation in which I find myself now. I've lately really taken to the Sony NEX-6 ($648 now), which I really enjoy using and find to be competent in its results. I like it so much I often grab it when I really should be using something else. (I shot all of last Sunday's "Photo Essay" with it, for instance.) So a few weeks ago I decided to complete my lens set for the NEX-6. (Before that, I really thought it was likely I'd return to Micro 4/3—I haven't gotten rid of my Micro 4/3 lenses.)

Ctein's chosen super-traditional set for Micro 4/3: The Panasonic 20mm ƒ/1.7, the Olympus 45mm ƒ/1.8, and the Panasonic 14mm ƒ/2.5. (He actually owns the Olympus 12mm ƒ/2, but doesn't care for it.) In his case, the 45mm is his most-used lens. This whole set as shown goes for $1,140 at B&H. Interestingly, this comes very close to the standard set for the old Leitz/Minolta CL.

I already have a good normal for the NEX-6—the Carl Zeiss Sonnar 24mm ƒ/1.8, an expensive lens that appears (visually) to be too large for the camera but that I find perfectly balanced and comfortable in actual use. And, optically, it suits my tastes, which isn't always easy to achieve.

The short tele choice seems obvious—the Sigma 60mm ƒ/2.8 DN. (I might have more to say about this lens in coming weeks.) In contrast to the Zeiss 24mm, it's cheaper than it should be, given its performance. (And, as always with Sigma, I'm suspicious of its build quality. I've had lots of bad experiences with Sigma—swore off the company's products for a time, even—but Lucy holds the football, and Charlie Brown can't resist.)

Choices, choices
The wide-angle is once again where I find myself stuck. (Same as always.) I just don't need a wide angle all that much. So should I get a wide to round out the super-traditional set of three, or just make do with the normal and short tele?

And if I do get a wide, which one? There are two main candidates—the Zeiss Touit 12mm, another very spendy lens but an optically pretty splendid one, or the much more practical Sony 16mm ƒ/2.8, another relative cheapie at $248, which moreover will add only 2.7 ounces to the camera bag—or slightly more than an extra lens cap. It's a decent but bland lens. It's not as wide as the Touit, but at 24mm angle-of-view equivalent, it's wide enough.

It doesn't help that Zeiss just announced a rebate on the Touits, bringing the price of the 12mm down by $251, to $999. Still an awful lot for a lens I might use only 5% of the time.

Well, I know which one I want. And I know which one I should get—to be practical. And what I'll probably do...well, one thing about getting older is that your learn your own patterns. Probably what I'll do is do what I always do, and just plan to get a wide angle for my NEX-6, without actually ever following through with actual cash.

Mike

Got a favorite "Supertraditional lens kit" of your own? Take a picture of them and send it to me! I'll publish a few of them. I need an 800-pixel-wide JPEG saved as sRGB. My email address is in the right-hand sidebar. Don't forget to tell me what the lenses are.

Alternately, you can put your image in the Comments using this code:

The image needs a URL and shouldn't exceed 470 pixels wide or it will be cut off. [Sorry! I had this number wrong at first.]

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Dave's 2-lens kit from the 1970 and '80s omits the traditional short tele. He now uses a D800e and normally works out of his car, where he keeps a variety of lenses—mostly zooms (the traitor). And by the way, Dave is on WIRED today.

Jack's M kit utilizes a Tri-Elmar as the WA, but he says it's set on 18mm almost all the time. Interestingly, his S set nearly duplicates his M set: 24mm super wide Elmar S is equivalent to 19.2mm, 35mm Summarit S is equivalent to 28mm, and 120mm Summarit S is equivalent to 96mm.

Arne shows three such sets for different cameras: top row, a particularly beautiful set for his manual-focus Olympus OM-4: Schneider 28mm ƒ/2.8mm shift lens for OM, and OM Zuiko Macro 50mm and 90mm ƒ/2's; middle row, for the Fuji X-Pro1: 18mm ƒ/2, 35mm ƒ/1.4, and 60mm ƒ/2.4; bottom row, for a 4x5 view camera: Schneider Super-Symmar XL 80mm ƒ/5.6, Rodenstock Apo-Sironar-S 150mm ƒ/5.6, and Docter Optic Apo-Germinar 300mm ƒ/9.

Moose (partial comment): "You prime shooters know I and my cohorts are out here.

"How well I remember the standard three focal lengths. Being older than Mike, they were at first 35mm, 50–58mm and 135mm for SLRs. When my Dad moved from Topcon Super D to Nikon Ftn, he went 35mm, 50mm ƒ/1.4, 55mm Micro Nikkor, 200mm.

"And how well I remember how frustrating I found them. I never have been one who 'sees' the world and potential images of it in fixed angles of view. I tend to see something I like and want my equipment to be capable of  adapting to my AOV, not to force my vision to its limitations."

[See the rest of Moose's comment in the Comments Section. —Ed.]

The thing about writing a blog is that, well, one thing leads to another. Yesterday in the post about Nikon's new 58mm lens, I called the Noct-Nikkor 58mm of 1977 "the world's first aspherical SLR lens." I think this was my mistake, based on a misreading of the materials I read prior to writing the post.

Old friend Chuck Westfall of Canon USA contacted me to partially correct this—he's the one who provided the link to the aspherical Canon FD 55mm ƒ/1.2 AL, first marketed in March of 1971. I made the change in the post.

(By the way, most of these older lenses are now collector's items.)

But wait!
Later, Chuck looked into the matter a little further, and found (no surprise) a further wrinkle to the story. The first aspherical lens for an SLR was actually a Nikon lens after all. It was the OP Fisheye-Nikkor 10mm ƒ/5.6, announced in 1968 and discontinued in 1976. Chuck wrote, "You might recall this lens; it was Nikon's third fisheye for F-mount SLRs, following the 8mm ƒ/2.8 and 7.5mm ƒ/5.6 models, but the first one to feature orthographic projection rather than the more conventional equidistant projection design of the earlier fisheye lenses." Nikon has a great web page on the history of its fisheye lenses.

So does this settle the matter? Not quite—and here comes the wrinkle. The back elements of the OP Fisheye-Nikkor 10mm ƒ/5.6 extended so far into the mirror box that the lens could only be used on SLRs with the mirror locked up! So it could be used on SLR cameras, but not when they were being used as SLRs. Also, it didn't support auto aperture stopdown.

So while the Nikon fisheye perhaps walks away with the "first ever" honors, the Canon FD 55mm ƒ/1.2 AL is really the first aspherical lens for SLR cameras that supported both reflex viewing and automatic diaphragm operation—in other words, the first one you could use on an SLR as SLR lenses are normally used.

Cross section of the Canon 55mm ƒ/1.2 AL, from the Canon Camera Museum.

Oh, and by the way—why isn't Nikon's new 58mm an ƒ/1.2 lens, if it's really intended to be an homage to the 1977 Noct-Nikkor? The answer is that to do so would make it too big, heavier, and even more expensive, with little in the way of payoff. And there's just no need. In 1977, high-speed film was ASA (as it was called then) 400, and you could squeak out E.I. (exposure index, as any departure from the rated ASA or film ISO was correctly called) 1600 if you used special developers and were willing to accept a heavy image-quality hit. Now, many digital cameras can shoot natively at ISO 3200 with quite acceptable quality. Really, even an ƒ/1.4 open aperture is primarily for viewing convenience and DoF effects, not because it's needed for exposure speed—and the half stop between ƒ/1.2 and ƒ/1.4 is largely irrelevant.

Mike
(Thanks to Chuck Westfall and Ctein)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Jeff Ralph: "Here is an interesting review of the Canon 55mm from the May 1978 issue of SLR Camera magazine."

It might not be immediately apparent to
non-lens-nuts, but Nikon is bragging in this sample image, about
its new high-speed lens's lack of flare.

One of the nicest lenses I've used in recent years was the Nikon AF-S Nikkor 35mm ƒ/1.4G, a big and heavy (but not too big, and not too heavy) full-frame 35mm lens. It struck me as a highly judicious balancing of all the parameters with which optical designers must contend, and moreover a lens of just lucious visual excellence in pictures. (I balked at the price, though.)

Now Nikon has made a new lens in the same lineage with a focal length that will resonate with lens-nut numerologists: the new AF-S Nikkor 58mm ƒ/1.4G, which has just become available for pre-order. I've always thought the ~60mm range is a particularly useless focal length, but there's no questioning the resonance of the number "58" to Nikon lens fans. Nikon is coming right out and calling the new lens "a homage to the Noct-Nikkor 58mm ƒ/1.2 lens." The Noct-Nikkor of 1977 was Nikon's first aspherical SLR lens (the world's first was Canon's FD 55mm ƒ/1.2 AL in March, 1971) and one of the most famous lenses in the now 80-year history of the Nikkor brand.

Nikon says the new lens will be highly corrected, with virtually no sagittal coma flare or light falloff throughout the entire aperture range. (They're also making a big deal out of the bokeh, but that can be taken with a chunk of salt pending further investigation.)

The new lens will have a focal length equivalent of 87mm on APS-C...perfect for portraits, at least in terms of angle of view, although I think it's unlikely to be a great portrait lens. At least to my tastes. The similar 55mm ƒ/1.4 Pentax lens was an awesome performer by the numbers, but it was simply too barbed-wire-sharp for portraits in my opinion—it was the only lens I ever had to deliberately tone down the sharpness of in Photoshop. We do not have a range of options among portrait lenses these days...the overwhelming market preference for sharpness über alles has obliterated meaningful choice. But hey, maybe that will mean lots of people will like this new Nikkor for portraits!

In either event, it would be a lens I would want to play around with and find my own applications for, whether on full-frame or APS-C cameras. Haruo Sato of Nikon says, "I hope our customers regard the AF-S Nikkor 58mm ƒ/1.4G as a...'must-have' lens." If you're collecting the beautiful new top-level Nikkor primes, that's not a bad description.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

sneye: "It might sound like heresy, but I can adjust to any focal length if the lens is nice. 58 millimeters would be quite easy to adjust to."

David Ralph: "My first lens, on my first decent camera, an Asahi Pentax SV, was a 55mm ƒ/1.8 Takumar. I loved that lens, and the whole reflex experience, thus hooking me on photography at a young age. But, I lusted after my friends' 50mm ƒ/1.4 lenses simply because those lenses were faster than mine, and because I was mainly using slide film at ASA 25.

"When I finally got my own 50mm ƒ/1.4, I was actually disappointed. The angle of view was just too wide somehow. It seemed, at the time, as if that first 55mm had the very same angle of view as my eye; how remarkable, I thought, that a lens could reproduce what one's eye saw. Maybe the truth really is that I loved that 55mm only because it was the lens which trained my eye and brain for framing and for depth of field. So, yeah, I would probably prefer the new 58mm to my current Nikkor 50mm ƒ/1.4D, and which I hardly ever use. Saggital coma in nearly everybody's 50mmm being one of the reasons; that aberration spoils one of the reasons for having a fast lens in the first place. But, there is the new price, too. Maybe not."

...Why the new Sony A7r might not be a good workhorse for your adapted Leica lenses.

Reason 1: Mechanical slop is already a bit of a crapshoot with just one interface. As an adapter adds two more to the system, the chances for slop are multiplied. See Roger Cicala's article "There Is No Free Lunch, Episode 763: Lens Adapters" at LensRentals. And thanks to Nigel for providing the link!

Reason 2: Bruno Masset wrote this next as a comment to the A7 post, not as a finished article, but I thought it was interesting enough that it deserved its own slot in the stack. What follows was...

Written by Bruno Masset

Methinks a lot of people who buy a full-frame mirrorless, hoping to use (for instance) old wide-angle rangefinder Leica lenses using mount adapters, are going to discover how mediocre the imaging performance of such lenses might be on a digital sensor.

The Leica M9 sensor's cover glass thickness is 0.8mm; this is much thicker than the M8's 0.5mm, but presumably offers much better infrared filtering, avoiding the "black synthetic fabric being imaged as dark purple" syndrome that plagued the M8.

There's little reason to expect that the optical stack (OLPF, IR filter etc.) in front of the Sony A7's sensor is thinner than the Leica M9's.

In the film era, lenses were designed to be stigmatic in air. In other words, back in the days when digital sensors didn't exist, lens designers expected the medium present between the lens' last vertex (the rearmost glass surface) and the imaging plane (the film) to have a homogeneous refractive index (RI) of one.

Leica's (and other manufacturers') wide-angle rangefinder lenses (those with a focal length shorter than approximately 35mm) tend to have a quite short exit-pupil-to-imaging-plane distance. The exit pupil is the apparent position of the diaphragm, looking at the lens from behind. Obviously, the exit pupil is where the light cone appears to emanate from, and thus determines the tilt of the light cone's principal ray—the cone's "axis," if you will.

In the center of the image, the principal ray will be perpendicular to the imaging plane. In the corners of the image, if the distance of the exit pupil to the image plane is short, the light cone (and its principal ray) will be quite tilted.

A slab of optical material—a sensor's cover glass, or an optical low-pass filter stack—has a refractive index higher than one, and will spatially shift the light rays impinging upon it—the amount of this spatial shift being dependent on the ray's incidence angle.

As a light cone is composed of rays that have varying angles, each of these rays is going to be spatially shifted by a variable amount.

The net result is that a light cone that was designed to converge to a single point—i.e., be stigmatic—in air, can have its light rays dispersed all over the place after it passes through a slab of material with refractive index larger than one.

The cone's dispersion is negligible when the incidence angle is perpendicular, at the center of the image.

With a sensor cover glass thickness of 0.8mm (800 microns) and a RI of 1.5, an exit-pupil-to-imaging-plane distance of about 30mm (a fairly typical value for wide-angle rangefinder lenses with focal lengths less than or equal to 35mm), and a cone aperture of ƒ/4 (that is, an exit pupil diameter of 30mm/4.0 = 7.5mm), one can easily calculate that in the image corners, the light cone's rays, instead of converging to a point, will be dispersed over an area of about 35 microns.

On a Leica M9, 35 microns corresponds to about five pixels!

So, what was imaged as a point when that film-era lens was used in air, could well become a fuzzy disk of a diameter of about five pixels when the lens is used with a digital sensor!

The further from the image's center (where the principal ray is perpendicular, and the cover glass has thus essentially no influence), the worse the image quality will be.

Do microlenses help?
Microlenses only address the issue of a ray's incidence angle on a single pixel, increasing the pixel's sensitivity and limiting the leakage of a tilted light ray towards adjacent pixels in a Bayer array and the resulting apparition of color shifts in the image's corners.

As microlenses cover only one pixel, they obviously have no effect on the imaging of a fuzzy disk that has a diameter of five pixels. In other words, it would be utterly naive to assume that per-pixel microlenses can address an astigmatism issue that straddles multiple pixels.

What can address the astigmatism problem to some extent, however, is digital lens correction.

The spreading of the light cone induced by the optical stack is caused by well-known physical phenomena, and its point-spread function (PSF) can be modelled as a function of the exit pupil distance, exit pupil diameter  (that is, aperture value), cover glass thickness and RI, and distance from the image center.

The appropriate PSF can then be used to deconvolve the blurriness induced by the cover glass.

I suspect that's the major technical breakthrough Leica—or its digital imaging technology partner, Jenoptik—achieved, and that allowed them to increase the sensor's size from the Leica M8's initial APS-H dimensions to the M9's full-frame format, while at the same time increasing the cover glass' thickness from 0.5mm to 0.8mm.

One way to check for the presence of an (unpublicized and hypothetical) PSF deconvolution that could be applied by Leica, even on the raw DNG files, would be to compute the autocorrelation of a pixel with its neighbors. As the PSF diameter must become larger as one moves away from the image center, one can expect the per-pixel autocorrelation measurements in Leica's raw files to also increase in diameter from the center towards the corners.

If Leica indeed performs deconvolution processing in-camera, one can expect marked image quality differences in the image corners between a Leica camera and other manufacturers' mirrorless cameras, even using the same Leica rangefinder lens.

Bruno

•     •     •

Nice explanation, seems to me, insofar as I can understand it. Me, I'm an empiricist...I'd just stick the lenses on the cameras and see what happens. However, after years of trying various adapters, I came to the same conclusion as Roger and Bruno: I pretty much just use cameras with the lenses that were designed to go with them. Using adapters can be fun, especially if you're reincarnating older, unused, or quirky lenses for modern duty, or repurposing lenses for one camera for use with another in order to expand your arsenal, but adapters are usually a roadblock on the path to optical optimization. So if that's what you're after, I don't recommend them.

Mike
(Thanks to Nigel and Bruno)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Flower: "I'm glad I don't shoot test shots for a living, as apparently my NEX body and range of MF lenses and adapters are not up to the task. However, with the exception of certain problems at infinity focus (I haven't got around to shimming all my adaptors yet) the performance of my various lenses is as would be expected, from an LTM Voigtlander 15mm ƒ/4.5 ASPH right up to an old Zeiss 135mm, and including various Leica M and R lenses, Nikkor F-mount lenses and the odd M39 lens. There are some dogs (for example, my Nikkor 105mm ƒ/2.5 Sonnar that was so good on film is lously on all my digital bodies) but in general there are no surprises.

"For those commenting on poor wide-angle results on the M9 (colour shift, corner softness), this was a known issue and has been addressed on the A7 and A7R at the sensor level (optimised micro-lenses); I can attest to the fact that no such problem was present in a number of other NEX bodies. Even the most cursory investigation of the vast source of full-size images taken using NEX bodies and quality lenses mounted on adaptors will show that in a practical sense, if you are willing to put up with the compromises inherent in this type of setup, the results can be outstanding."

Luke: "I put my Zeiss ZM 21mm ƒ/2.8 on the A7r we have here [Luke works at Imaging-Resource —Ed.]. I'm sad to report that color shifts were severe and covered most of the frame. There was also severe darkening of the image away from the center, way too much to simply call vignetting. I chose this lens carefully, based on the experience of other users, to avoid this problem with my early NEX cameras. It worked well, with visible but very minor color shifts and vignetting. It stayed glued on my NEX-3 for years. Well, I just saved myself a couple grand."

Klaus Schroiff at PhotoZone has published his review of the Canon EF 35mm ƒ/2 USM IS.

He and I have very different taste in bokeh (and it's just a matter of taste, no matter what anybody says). Ken Rockwell got that part right...according to my taste. But otherwise Klaus's review is characteristically thorough.

You know what I keep thinking about that lens? That it's the very first time you can get an image-stabilized 35mm prime on a film SLR. I hope someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

As I always say to myself when I think of such things: "must not buy. Must not buy. Must not buy lens!!!"

Sometimes works.

Mike
(Thanks to Nicolaas Maijer and Oren Grad)

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This beautemous thing, as you can see with your own two peepers, is the Fuji Super EBC XF 23mm ƒ/1.4, the [drumroll] long-promised fast lens for the Fuji X cameras that has a 35mm-equivalent angle of view. Super tasty. Finally. To call this "long-awaited" is an understatement.

Only available for pre-order at B&H (which is closed until the end of the day) and at Amazon, expected to ship in mid-October. I know a lot of people who have been waiting for this.

Some samples here (all the blown highlights appear to be the photographer's style, not evidence of some technical problem). Funny how much of a Fujinon this is; looks just like film Fujinons of yore.

(Remember, TOP won't be updating for a few days, while I take care of some necessary business. Don't forget our Archives....)

Mike

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Stephen Scharf: "Count me as one those who have been waiting a looonnng time for this baby. And it's bloody weil time, too. The 23mm has a design that is very similar to the absolutely fabulous XF 14mm ƒ/2.8, which I recently used to shoot Pro NHRA Drag Racing, of all things. With fully optical correction for distortion (the 14mm's design is the same, and has no, and I mean NO, barrel or pincushion distortion), so I have high expectations for this. Yowza!"

It's almost reassuring to see that some things never change. Zeiss (recently it dropped the "Carl" in a move I have to say I disapprove of) has announced a line of quality-no-object—and, more importantly no doubt, price-no-object—SLR lenses. (The way one of the members of the development team puts it is that that project has "no clear cost ceiling.")

The first outing, a 55mm ƒ/1.4, is a monster. You've probably read about all this already if you're interested.

The company formerly known as Carl Zeiss has a long history of not being constrained by the size and weight constraints on lens design. Its Contax 28–85mm zoom was twice the size and weight of competitors' models (that's a big camera it's mounted on in that picture). The 35–135mm Vario-Sonnar, especially, seemed to go past the frontiers—it was as big as a can of tennis balls and as heavy as brick (no, probably not literally). One of those pride-of-ownership lenses that seldom earned a place in camera bags because of the way it took it out on photographers' shoulders and backs.

A 1909 portrait by Indianapolis photographer Charles C. Pike, from an Ebay auction. Photographers back then searched for just the right blend of sharpness and unsharpness, balancing flattery and accuracy. You probably don't need to see every pore of this nice lady's skin to know what she looked like.

If I can be forgiven a smidge of social commentary, what we're seeing in product design these days is a bifurcation of markets. Wealth disparity means that the middle is being sucked out of category offerings. Many people don't have enough wealth to buy new $45,000 cars, for instance, so average car price increases in the lower tiers have been kept relatively suppressed for years; but the increase in cars that cost as much as houses has been pretty spectacular. (It keeps the overall average looking pretty constant.) Then consider that not one but two audio components in the last audio magazine I bought, a preamp and a pair of mono power amps for stereo, each retailed for $45,000. That's not a typo. It's been a long time since the 1970s, but inflation hasn't been 2000%.

So anyway, I suspect that's what's behind this. Zeiss would like a bit of that one-percenter market, please. Nothing wrong with adapting to market conditions, of course.

The old Zeiss/Contax (C/Y mount) Vario-Sonnar 35–135mm. Sorry, but the whole lens wouldn't fit into the picture—too big.

The bigger question from our perspective, I suppose, is, do we really need much better normal, portrait, and macro lenses, which Zeiss says it's going to concentrate on for the new line? The first offering in the new line, as I mentioned, will be a rather eye-wideningly large 55mm ƒ/1.4. By chance, a "portrait" lens I reviewed a few years ago, the Pentax 55mm ƒ/1.4 DA, has the exact same focal length and maximum aperture. Granted, it was an APS-C lens and just for Pentax cameras, and thus had a different project brief altogether. The new Zeiss will be a longish normal on full-frame cameras. But the Pentax lens is already too expensive, in my humble opinion, at $800, and—most importantly of all—it is just too, too blisteringly sharp for portraits. Do we really need to see skin pores defined even more crisply than they already are? I do understand it's 2013—not 1913, when portraitists searched fanatically for lenses with just the right kind and degree of unsharpness, sometimes even going to great lengths to hide the identity of their prized signature lenses from their competitors. But these lenses aren't portrait lenses in that they don't make portraits look good. It would be really nice if there could be some actual competition to make some actual portrait lenses. But there won't be, for reasons which you'll be able to read in our Comments tomorrow.

I've been studying numerous generously-sized Ctein proof prints of my "Hands" picture over the past few days. I have to say the quality is just fine, and that was taken with a Micro 4/3 camera (the Olympus OM-D, which by the way is on sale until the 17th), and its admittedly very fine quality kit zoom (the 12–50mm, and ditto).

I'm a Zeiss user, a Zeiss man, and a Zeiss fan. So of course I'll wish the team and the company well with their new project. At the same time, I'm not necessarily on board yet, "emotionally" shall we say.

But go to the link and read for yourself what they're doing—they can speak for themselves better than I can speak for them, and you can decide for yourself better than I can do that for you, too.

Mike

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KeithB: "What do you do to your prints to make them Ctein proof?"

Mike replies: Heh. That should be "Ctein proof-prints," not "Ctein-proof prints." And people say hyphens do no work.

BTW, prints cannot be made Ctein-proof. Like Superman, he sees through everything.

Ed Richards: "But will it cost more than a Leica lens? Leica moved to the 1% market years ago, and I am guessing that their lenses will be the price benchmark. Your basic 50mm ƒ/1.4 Leica is $3,995.00 at B&H. Since the Zeiss is autofocus, they could tack on a bit more, but my betting line is that they come in about Leica level."

Mike replies: I'm going out on a limb estimating something that could be researched—I haven't done so—but my sense is that Zeiss traditionally exceeds Canikon levels but pretty consistently stays below Leica levels. I could see $2,995 for this lens, but I'd bet not more than that. This is an idle thought, not an expert prediction.  :-)

Also, the new lenses are manual focus, not AF.

Bernd Reinhardt: "I watched the video interview with Dr. Hubert Nase about this lens, and what he is showing here is enough to make any discerning photo geek drool over this lens."

...And should you want a sweet portrait lens for your new GX7, Panasonic has just announced the Leica DG Nocticron 42.5mm (85mm-e) ƒ/1.2.

The nomenclature is a little screwy. In traditional Leica-ese, "-cron" signifies ƒ/2, not ƒ/1.2. However, "Nocticron" is a registered trademark of Leica Camera AG.

But a) people who complained about the old 45mm Macro's slow ƒ/2.8 speed will certainly be happy; b) traditionalists who like manual aperture rings will be happy (it has one); and c) owners of non-stabilized older Panasonic Micro 4/3 bodies will be happy, because the lens has O.I.S. of its own.

Vaporware for now. Coming. Sure to be pricey, but who wants it any other way?

Mike

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B. R. George: "For me, the most interesting aspect of both of today's Panasonic announcements is the direction they suggest. I'm not especially in the market for this particular camera (although it looks delightful) or for this particular lens (although that's more of a temptation), but these announcements tell me that Panaonic now does IBIS and aperture rings, and I'm quite interested in both of those features."

You gotta see this. Note the start date of the funding period. Zowie.

Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad)

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Josef: "Less than 24 hours and it's already pushing $400,000 (as of 6 p.m. Central Time).

"I thought it was a pretty cool idea. Seems like a lot of other people thought so, too. I bought one for myself this morning. It just happens to come along right when I am diving into a photo history book for the first time in a few years and find myself fascinated by some of the mid-19th century imagery."

Jim: "Oh, great. In a few months we'll see a billion photos on FB and Flickr shot with this thing. 'Art,' they'll call it."

Mike replies: Well, they might call some of it that. But you know, this might mark the first time we actually were able to see a visual fad coming before it arrived! Except insofar as Petzval Swirl is already a fad. We've written about it here on TOP, even.

Greg Roberts: "I saw that earlier today and was quite tempted, but in looking at the example photos taken with the first prototype lens I don't see the swirls I expect to see. I hope they are successful and get it right. In their examples they include images taken with a 5D with both an old Petzval and with the prototype lens, and to my eye they are not at all similar:

Canon 5D + old lens

Canon 5D + prototype lens

"I think they should have made a second prototype before launching their Kickstarter. I for one would have been a lot more tempted to join in if the examples were better. In any case, items like this put a smile on my face, and inspire me to be creative."

bill: "Maybe if they could get it to produce the Petzval look. Sorry, this is pretty lame to invest in right now. I would rather pay full price than get a discount on the hope they can pull it off. But good luck."

Wjcstp: "I love stuff like this, and given that even at their current nearly $600,000 they haven't sold much more than 1,000 lenses, it's unlikely the world will be saturated with Petzval photos. Unless Instagram emulates a filter for it, of course. It's too bad one of the stretch goals wasn't a nice-looking brass adapter for Micro 4/3 cameras. I'd hate to put such a nice lens on my nice Olympus Pen with an ugly, chunky adapter in the middle."

Michael Perini: "The LENS DADDY."

...I would say no.

There are numerous properties of lenses I care about. Color transmission seems important for digital; microcontrast never hurts. Bokeh matters to me, although whether it matters generally is always an open question. There are a number of properties that contribute to a lens being "well behaved"—for instance, you generally want the rendering to be fairly even from the center to the corners, and reasonably consistent up and down the aperture range as well as from close to far focus.

A number of properties that were crucial to film lenses have become elastic with digital processing, so they're not as critical any more. Barrel distortion, for example. Physical vignetting for another. These flaws can be adequately minimized (if not strictly completely "corrected") in post, so they're just not really that important to pictorial photography any more. Your lens vignettes a little bit wide open? Well, who cares? Just correct it if you don't like it. (I actually add vignetting more than I subtract it.)

This just in: The Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 17mm ƒ/1.8

But sharpness? I can't say I've used a lens for years that I thought was distractingly or frustratingly unsharp...if I'm just looking at pictures. I know, I know, guys online love to minutely examine lenses and triumphantly proclaim detectable differences. Big deal. Those  vanishing distinctions don't make any difference when you're just looking at pictures.

Granted, I tend to own, and use, and try, lenses that are "good," and often expensive, rather than lenses that are cheap and bad; maybe unsharp lenses are out there, but they're just invisible to my view. Cellphone pictures are often inadequate, yes. Ebay pictures frequently suck. Decent lenses owned by committed enthusiasts for good cameras, though, are just almost always good enough.

I do have to say that sensors still seem to matter. I'm happier with smaller (Micro 4/3, APS-C) sensors when I'm not also shooting high-MP "full frame" sensors at the same time (D800, A900). The latter make the former look...not "bad," but let's say "less good," whereas the former look great to me as long as I don't have anything to compare them to. So that's one "cliché" that does still seem to make a bit of difference. (I was a little dismayed when I shot the NEX-6 and the A900 in tandem recently. The big dog makes the little dog look like it ain't all that.) But my opinion is that "high resolution" lenses (i.e., lenses that strive for more and more detail) just as often look a little worse than the ordinary run-o'-the-mill, as opposed to just a little better. That fussy "hi-rez" look just doesn't do anything for me.

(Note that my underlying aesthetic is that I don't like to have anything distracting me from the image. There was once a lens I got rid of because its sharpness/contrast was too upfront and in-your-face. It distracted viewers from just looking at the picture.)

Good lenses are still better than average or not-so-good lenses. But rarely because of "sharpness."

I still like lenses, and I can still talk about them all day long. But as to whether most of the lenses we can buy today are sharp enough...if we're being honest with ourselves, and looking at pictures rather than happily fussing over tests and trials...it's a solved problem, really.

My advice? If you like sharp lenses, go for it—won't hurt anything. Whatever's fun. But If you're more interested in pictures, I wouldn't worry about it too much. Find something that looks good to you and don't sweat it. It's probably plenty sharp enough.

Mike

P.S. I've just received an Olympus E-P5 for testing, in a kit with the VF-4 viewfinder and M.Zuiko Digital 17mm ƒ/1.8 (shipping soon to the GP) and I have another new lens in house to do a comparo with. More thoughts on this subject as we go forward.

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Colin Work: "This general obsession with 'sharpness' both in the lens image itself and in post processing is I think really harming photography. Sharpness seems to be almost the sole criteria in judging the quality of an image in the various photo forums around the 'Net. My theory is this is because it's an easy way to compare images objectively—things like bokeh and color are perhaps more subjective. If you look at most of the great images of the pre-digital era shot on 35mm, very few would pass a sharpness test in today's hyper-critical internet forums. Very much a case of not seeing the wood [i.e., forest —Ed.] for the trees."

One of the ten sharpest camera lenses?

The Swedish magazine FOTO does a lot of lens testing, and for more than 20 years has published MTF results of the lenses it reviews. Its database of lenses is available only to subscribers. However, recently FOTO published a list of the ten lenses that scored the highest all-time in their MTF ratings. 

It's in Swedish, but you'll be able to see what the lenses are at the link. Included are three Canons, four Nikkors, a Sigma, a Voigtländer, and Zeiss. I can only attest personally to two of their choices, but they've got those right.

Curiously, there are no 50mm lenses, and no Leica lenses.

Mike
(Thanks to Lars K. Christensen)

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Jack Martin: "Not surprisingly, my beloved Olympus Micro 4/3 body cap lens just missed the list.  :-)  2,872th on the DxO mark list, but there were other things besides sharpness pulling it down."

Ctein: "One shouldn't be surprised to see zooms on the list. The old generalization that zoom lenses are inferior to fixed focal length lenses has long been wrong. Once upon a time it was true; advances in optical design have negated it. The only way  in which prime lenses can be counted on to be superior is that they will be smaller.

"By way of example, last year I tested a mixed bag of zooms against a mixed bag of prime lenses for my micro four thirds system. There was no pattern to the results. Some zoom lenses were superior to some fixed focal length lenses. Others were not. The very best fixed focal length lens blew away everything at its focal length, but the very best zoom lens blew away all the fixed focal length lenses over its zoom range and it was as fast as the fixed focal length lenses, to boot. It was the size of a small cannon and very expensive, but if you wanted one single lens with superior optical quality, it was the one.

"In that same vein, the absence of Leica from the list may not be as surprising as it seems. For one thing, Leica may not be optimizing for sharpness, which is what this test was about. For another, most Leica designs are pretty old; they may have been the superior designs of their day, but that was then.

"About 25 years ago I tested all the top-end enlarger lenses made. Only one Leica lens came close to making the 'best of' list—their (then) relatively new 100mm Focotar II.  All the venerable classic Focotars and Focotar II's, much lauded (properly) in times past, had been surpassed by newer designs in every measurable characteristic of image quality.

"Things change.

"It's like the folks who, up to the very end, were talking about Kodachrome 25's unsurpassed sharpness and fine grain. True, once upon a time, but that time had passed 20 years earlier."

Gordon: "Is it just me? I find, generally, that ultra-sharp, optically perfect lenses are just...well, boring. I'll take a lens with a bit of character any day over any of these."

These are the world's top camera lens makers, albeit in the opinion of only one aficionado: moi. I'm going to make a guess—a wild leap of a guess—and predict that probably not everybody in every forum everywhere will agree with me 100%.

1. Zeiss
2. Olympus
3. Leica
4. Pentax
5. Rodenstock
6. all the rest

That isn't to slag your favorite lensmaker, though, no matter who you choose or what what you use, because:

• Virtually every lensmaker markets successful and not-so-successful designs;
• "Every lens gives its gifts"—that is, a great picture can be made with any lens*, including plastic lenses and toy lenses—all that's required is that the look of the lens be appropriate to the picture;
• There's sample variation and sensor/film matching to consider; and
• It's a matter of taste. In the end (assuming clients can't tell the difference), the only person your lenses have to please is you.

...And note that the bulleted points are a lot more important than the numbered ones.

Mike

*And the corollary, you can take a perfectly crappy picture with the best lens ever made

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Rowan Lamb: "Crikey, you're asking for trouble ;-) . I've only ever really used Canon and Sigma lenses, so therefore I am foaming at the mouth with fury."

Richard Tugwell: "Chicken! You omitted Canon and Nikon so you didn't have to specify a preference! (Even if it was 6th/7th)."

Mike replies: I'd pick Nikon. No, Canon. No...BAWWWK bawk bawk bawk bawk bawk

Keith B [not specifically in answer to Richard —Ed.]: "Way back in the 1970s at Popular Photography, Norm Goldberg wrote a test report on one of the then-current Nikon cameras, the Nikkormat FT2. His concluding line was, as I remember it, an absolute classic of Golbergian understatement: 'A solidly made film-exposing box for one of the world's more important lens systems.' He didn't write 'best' or 'greatest' or 'highest quality' lens system. Nikon, and also now Canon, are still important because their product ranges are large, not because they're 'the best.'"

Sareesh Sudhakaran:

Arri-Zeiss Master Primes
Cooke S5i
Angenieux
Schneider
Nikon
Hasselblad
Mamiya.

Crabby Umbo: "I've shot virtually everything in my career, and I mean everything, and I have to say, aside from being a Zeiss guy, which I love (but, which isn't always the sharpest), I'm always amazed at the quality of the Pentax stuff in the olden days...not unusual to be thrust into a situation where I'd go from shooting Nikon or Canon stuff, and have to shoot multi-coated, screwmount Pentax stuff, and it was just much better...it was so good, I've even thought of buying an old Pentax screw mount body and getting the last generation multicoated screw mounted lenses, just to have a film 35mm hanging around....

"Olympus? Hmmm...OK.

"Leica? Meh (don't even get me started, there's more 'religion' and 'Kool-aid' drinking in that bunch than lens quality). Proof positive that if it costs enough, it's great!

"Rodenstock? You've got to be kidding me! As a guy who made most of his money in sheet film, I have to say I don't get it. Either something happened to that stuff in the '90s to improve it, or no one knows what they're talking about! In the '70s and '80s, I never tested a Rodenstock view camera lens that didn't have horrendous color fringing, and questionable sharpness (possibly decentering). Never knew a studio rat in Chicago (or Milwaukee) that wanted to shoot with one, either! Fully willing to believe that they got better in the '90s (didn't they merge with Schneider? [no —Ed.]), but in most of my shooting era, they were dogs! Even Schneiders were hitting one good one out of three tested. We all thought Rodenstock's darkroom stuff was for crap too, compared to Schneider and Nikon....

"I'm amazed every day...."

Mike replies: You should try an Apo-Sironar-S. Best darkroom lens I ever used was a Rodenstock, too, and I've used a whole lot of those. I don't think Ctein thinks too highly of them, though.

Killer app to the manner born: the M.Zuiko 75mm wide open (ƒ/1.8) in very low light (ISO 2000, 1/60th sec.). Photo by Kent Phelan.

In our last installment, "Which Lenses?," I confessed that I'm not exactly sure any more how new photographers are supposed to go about choosing their lenses. I was talking mainly about "spec," that is, specification—what focal length(s), what speed, what size, operability, etc. Another aspect of lens choice—related, but only intersecting with specification and not identical to it—is lens quality.

There are two foundations to my love of photographic technique, and neither one is as sound as it used to be. The first is something Frank DiPerna said at a museum talk at the Corcoran just before I became a student there—"show me the print on the wall." You can rap all you want, but the work—in print form—is where the rubber meets the road.

That can legitimately be called into question now. (It could then, too, but not so much.)

The other basic principle is respecting the integrity of the lens image. That's always been key, the way I see it. The lens is the basis of photography in my opinion—the lens image taught us to see photographically for 160 years. Now we're back to imposing our conceptions on its image, or, at least, we can segue much more effortlessly between the lens image (photography) and invented creativity (illustration) now.

That spills into technique as well. In optical/chemical (O/C) photography—what I privately think of as "photography" as opposed to "digital imaging" which is what most of us practice now—craftspeople did have some control over the look of the result. But you were most often—most easily—largely, or for the most part—stuck with what the lens saw and the way it saw.

Thus, lens properties were of fundamental importance. When I say "properties" I mean "qualities," but that word is too loaded. What I mean is that whether you chose a single-element plastic lens or the finest German optics, the lens image very often contributed to the look of the result. Not always, but very often.

And I used to say things like "you can never spend too much money on your lens."

You know, proselytizing. I was a lens nutter.

Strictly speaking, though, lens quality isn't objectively as important as it used to be. The lens image—burned into the film in O/C photography—becomes infinitely malleable in DI photography. To some extent, it still has an influence on the result...but it's certainly not as clear-cut as it used to be.

Complicating a complicated issue still further is that modern computerized lens design and ongoing strides in manufacturing capabilities and quality control have meant that, in practice, even relatively modest lenses can be extremely good these days. And that's not even considering the whole issue of deliberately designing lenses to take advantage of post-exposure software corrections, a sensible but very modern approach. So even the concept of "lens image quality" isn't as clear as it used to be, not by a long shot. 

(A friend just completed some tests on his own equipment and told me that a $7,000 Leica 24mm ƒ/1.4 Summilux-M produces visibly inferior results to a $1,100 Sony/Zeiss 24mm ƒ/1.8 E-Mount on a NEX. Made me feel good, since I just got the latter lens, but his point was that the world isn't what it used to be and that traditional hierarchies have in some ways been turned topsy-turvy.)

Ever the empiricist, for years I've been paying attention to what people actually think of lens quality when looking at prints ("at prints"...see above!). And in point of fact, a lot of times when photographers get all fetishy about their awesome lenses, other people just plain don't notice. Various lenses I've owned have gotten compliments here and there. But the only lenses I've ever owned—and brothers and sisters, I've owned lots—that have consistently drawn compliments have been the humble Minolta 40mm ƒ/2 M-Rokkor for the CLE, an even humbler Konica Hexanon AR 40mm ƒ/1.8 (which however suffered from considerable sample variation, and did have some optical flaws—bad bokeh close up, for one thing), a "slow" Zeiss Contax 85mm ƒ/2.8, and the Leitz Summicron-R 35mm ƒ/2. All my fancy Zeisses, Leitzes, Pentaxes, Nikkors and Zuikos might have swept me off my feet, but viewers just looked at the pictures. But those four lenses would get compliments on sharpness and clarity even from non-photographers.

In digital, there still seem to be a few of those out there. I'm convinced that I can see old-fashionedy Zeiss qualities of the type that float my boat in the 24mm E-Sonnar. But maybe that's just fantasizing. And I do know several people who say that the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital 75mm ƒ/1.8 is a killer app to the manner born, able to draw those rare compliments from general viewers.

I still think it's worth it to find a lens that you love the quality of; but at the same time, I'm not so sure any more. I'm getting middle-aged and I admit I might be getting behind the times, too.

So the question for today is: how important is the optical quality—the look in pictures—of lenses now? Does it still matter, or not so much?

Mike
(Thanks to Kent)

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Eric Rose: "The signature of a lens is of utmost importance to my photography. I utilize it as a painter uses different brush strokes to mold the look he/she wants.  I have differing photographic styles (portraiture, landscape and still life) that require different lens signatures to fulfill my vision.

"A lens I love for landscape probably will not be my first choice for portraiture. All my personal photography is done with film as I find the type of film used and how it is developed just as integral to my vision as the lens signature. Please note I am not saying film is superior, it just works better for what I want to accomplish.

"I strive to create photographs that are true to my vision, not technically perfect photographs.  MTF charts, pixel counts, resolution etc. mean nothing to me. Like Frank DiPerna said, 'show me the print on the wall.' That's all that matters to me when I choose the tools I need to create the image I have in my mind. Today it might be a lens with smooth bokeh, tomorrow a lens that is razor-sharp and contrasty.

"While putting my kit together I spent a lot of time viewing as many photographs as possible. If a photograph had a 'look' that I resonated with, I would find out what was used to create it if at all possible. My intent was not to copy but to learn which lens and what capture media produced what results. For 35mm I ended up with two systems, Leica and Nikon. Each system had lenses that 'worked' for me. Please note they were not always the latest version of a lens but sometimes a golden oldie. I am not saying Leica and Nikon are better lenses than Canon or Olympus etc., just that they gave me a look I wanted.  So for me what worked was first determining the lenses I wanted to use, then the capture media.

"Not surprisingly I also have a preference for enlarging lenses but that is a whole different story  :-) "

David Saxe: "Personally, I know of no great or near-great photograph that is considered so because of the quality of the lens the photographer used. What we think of as 'classic' photographs were, in most cases made with lenses that we would feel are inferior by today's standards. Great photographs are usually considered great because of his skills as it relates to his/her vision, timing, and in some cases, his processing skills. The quality of their equipment is always secondary."

Mike replies: Okay, although I don't know how you'd know, because you're always looking at the photograph made with the equipment the photographer chose. But even given your point, part of what I'm asking is how important the quality of your lenses is to you. That is, when you're choosing which one(s) to buy.

David Stock: "Great question. I'd say it depends partly on how much time you spend processing RAW files, and how much you shoot wide open.

"Shooting film, in formats from 35mm to 4x5, I was slightly fanatical about lenses. And highly partial to Zeiss glass. But I've learned over the years that careful post-processing of digital files allows even clinical lenses to shine and gain character.

"Micro-contrast control, deconvolution sharpening, mid-tone contrast filtration, local adjustments, filtered black and white conversion—it's amazing what can be done today to arrive at a particular 'look.' So for an overall sharp image, only lenses with extreme characteristics stand out from the pack, and only if you let them.

"This makes me a little nostalgic for the past, but also gives me a sense of freedom at times. These days I use boringly sharp, well-corrected macro lenses for a lot of my landscape work. I'm able to get the final look I want from RAW processing and Photoshop. Although I demand technical excellence from them, I treat my landscape lenses less as the key decider of image quality and more as the provider of solid image data for the whole photographic process.

"The situation is different in the case of selective focus. Bokeh and other out-of-focus qualities are much harder to control in processing, and why would we do that, anyhow? When I do portraits or street photography, I still rely on my lenses for most of the final image character."

Hugh Crawford: "I'm liking a Leitz Focotar on my NEX a lot right now. I miss the days when what photographers got all exercised about was the light sources in their enlargers. Opal bulb and condensers vs. point source and condensers vs, diffuse white light vs, diffuse narrow band light vs, Aristo V54 with two spikes."

Taran Morgan: "In the last three years I have done my best work with two lenses that cost $50 combined. With respect to the article, it cost me about $10,000 in lenses to find them."

Ed (partial comment): "Every lens has 'a way of seeing things' whether you use a lensbaby or an Olympus 75mm ƒ/1.8. Personally I do not really want to 'see' the lens. Neither positive nor negative. So the lenses that do their work without screaming 'I'm a Summiluxcron' work best (and are dirt cheap) for me."

MarkR: "As a data point, Jay Maisel's lens of choice is apparently the Nikon 28–300mm: a lens that has never had stunning reviews and that lens snobs wouldn't think twice about. Photozone I believe rated it at 1.5 stars out of 4. Mr. Maisel is also (in)famous for eschewing post processing, Photoshop, etc., even for croppping. So his images aren't filtered, pun intended, by any third party. Conclusion: lenses don't matter, as long as you're Jay Maisel."

Sherwood McLernon: "All of the conversations listed are for short lenses. My favourite lens for killer bokeh, crisp, accurate colours, great sharpness, nicely balanced contrast, unbelievable speed of focus and light weight for its size, is my Canon 400mm ƒ/5.6L lens. Of course the bulk of my photography is birds, so I am certainly prejudiced in a direction different to most of your readers."

Rob: "I have been shooting with Pentax digital cameras for a number of years and have collected all three of the FA Limited series of lenses—31mm ƒ/1.8, 43mm ƒ/1.9, and 77mm ƒ/1.8. These lenses were designed for use on 35mm film cameras, but they perform splendidly on APS-C cameras. Many Pentaxians long for the day when they can be used on a Pentax FF camera.

"The FA Limiteds are prized for their rendering characteristics, which are often described as 'pixie dust.' There may be other lenses that are closer to 'perfect' in lab tests, but few that can match the FA Limiteds for what I like to describe as silky smooth sharpness, by which I mean extreme sharpness with fluid transition to unsharpness and beautiful bokeh. I have never had other lenses that deliver the same look."

I've done surveys on "lens kittery" at various points in my career as a writer about photography. The first one, done for the old Camera & Darkroom magazine, has proven surprisingly robust. We surveyed hundreds of photographers in the early '90s when most photographers used film SLRs. I sought out photojournalists and gave extra weight to their opinions, in that they were essentially the ultimate generalists, who needed to be ready for anything. The result of that survey was that a generalist photographer needed three or four lenses:

Touit 12mm wide open

There's a gallery of Touit pictures here.

Whoops, no picture there.

Here's the gallery of Zeiss Touit pictures [Whoops again—see updates below. —Ed.]. You can see 'em at many sizes. Just going by these samples, I'd be more interested in the 12mm, myself. Of course you can't go by just a few samples.

Taken on a Fuji X-Pro1.

Hey, the funky name worked. I downloaded this picture and then couldn't find where it went, so I did a Spotlight search on "Touit" and there it was. "Nikon 35mm f/2," by contrast, brought up about 400 files.

Mike

UPDATE: Apparently some readers are having problems accessing the image page (and some readers aren't). I'm afraid I don't know why, or what the fix is, but I wrote to my contact at Zeiss suggesting they look into it. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

UPDATE #2: I heard back; apparently "the factory" (Zeiss Germany) has made the decision to keep the samples images un-viewable until after the press event in mid-May. Seems...allow me to remain polite...counter-productive to me, but then, what do I know about the photo community on the Internet? I guess this post is now pointless, for which, apologies.

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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