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That's a remarkable lens. One thing that I think has been lost in photography today thanks to the smartphone is the value of high quality lenses. You simply can

That's a remarkable lens. One thing that I think has been lost in photography today thanks to the smartphone is the value of high quality lenses. You simply can't replace great optics with software (at least, not yet). I've got a few higher end cameras, and my favourite is probably my Leica Q2. It has a fixed prime lens (28mm), and the photos are just astounding.

anfractuosity 7y ago
Re. great optics, I think that's especially the case with telephoto lenses, I don't think there's any workarounds to make them highly portable? I'd not heard of that Leica before, but it does look amazing.
- sosuke 7y ago
  I've been looking for some magic workaround. The closest thing you can find at the moment is a mirror telephoto lens. You can get them pretty cheap but often standard telephoto lenses that have the images cropped get better results.
  - acomjean 7y ago
    I had a mirrored lens (400mm). It worked ok, but I had it for a film camera and you can't adjust the aperture. This was more of an issue on the film camera I had, but long focal length lenses have a very small depth of focus and stopping down the aperture helps that. Canon tried a fresnel lenes there "DO" series. Not quite as good quality at about half the size and way more money. Its interesting technology. You can see the lens size comparisons near the bottom of this article. https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-400mm-f-4.0-DO-IS-II-USM-Lens.aspx https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-400mm-f... One of the main things driving larger optics/ is the amount of light the lens lets in. EG: max aperture (a lower f number) means bigger lens, more money. The availability of digital sensors means often you can shoot with higher film speed and might not require as large a max aperture..
  - brudgers 7y ago
    I picked up a Tamron Adaptall 55B 500mm f8 two and a half years ago. They were produced from 1979-1983 and sold new for about $400 as best I can tell. The big difference from contemporary Samyang and Rokkinon catadioptrics is it's really long focus throw. It's about 350 degrees from 1.5m to infinity. At 500mm even f8 is shallow. Hyper-focal distance is over a kilometer on a crop sensor. Even with a 2x teleconverter (1000mm f16/t22) it's less than a kilogram so it's easy to walk around hand holding and throwing it in the bag is not a major commitment. Like any other lens it's a compromise. I live with it's technical shortcomings because it provides a specific capability to make images I would not make otherwise. In theory, it's a choice between lenses based on technical specifications. In practice it's a choice between making image with the catadioptric and no image at all. The images that would not exist otherwise exist because I can see in 500mm prime before I raise the camera and when my eye hits the viewfinder I'm not making a "well maybe I can crop it" compromise.
- fooker 7y ago
  One workaround is the use of Fresnel lenses. This is featured in Canon's DO (Diffractive Optics) line of lenses. Another 'workaround' is the use of a mirror, but these lenses are only useful for very specific tasks and are usually not designed for the high end market.
  - anfractuosity 7y ago
    Interesting, will have to look at Canons DO lenses, not heard of them before.
    - petepete 7y ago
      Nikon's PF lenses, of which there are only 2 (300mm f4 PF and 500mm f5.6 PF) are worth a look too. I have the 300PF and it's smaller and lighter than a 24-70mm and plenty sharp. The 500PF has been sold out since launch. https://i.imgur.com/o4kNzNy.jpg https://i.imgur.com/o4kNzNy.jpg
    - Wistar 7y ago
      I have had the 70-300 DO for about 12 years and find it to be a lackluster lens and seldom use it (never). https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/70-300mm-do-is.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/70-300mm-do-is.htm I agree with Ken Rockwell's review of the lens except I add that it just doesn't have the color and contrast "pop" of equivalent lenses such as the 100-400 L II zoom. One thing, though, the used price for the DO lens is low.
  - m463 7y ago
    You can always identify photos taken with mirror lenses because out-of-focus highlights look like donuts.
- tomchuk 7y ago
  Canon has their DO (Diffractive Optics) technology[1] which I think only ever made it into a 70-300[2]. Mirror lenses have been around for a long time. They fold the length of larger telephotos into about a third with some trade-offs in speed and image quality. [1] https://global.canon/en/v-square/34.html https://global.canon/en/v-square/34.html [2] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/lenses/ef/telephoto-zoom/ef-70-300mm-f-4-5-5-6-do-is-usm https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...
  - ip26 7y ago
    There's the 400 f/4 DO II - fantastic lens. The DO tech turns a mainly tripod lens into something you can easily hand hold.
- arethuza 7y ago
  There is the option of reducing sensor size which allows very long focal length equivalents but at the cost of reduced image quality - I have Nikon P1000 which has a 24-3000 zoom in a package which is fairly large but still pretty portable. Is the image quality as good as my full sized Nikon gear - definitely not. Can I take more pictures that I couldn't even attempt before (wildlife and landscapes) - definitely.
  - jungletime 7y ago
    There's this Polish guy that climbs buildings, and he uses the P1000 from time to time, for very dramatic zoom effect. Like in this video https://youtu.be/1fP4UArArNg?t=104 https://youtu.be/1fP4UArArNg?t=104 Well, this specific video was on April fools, and him standing on top of the mast was masked in (faked), but that background footage of the zoom out was from P1000 camera.
eropple 7y ago
Even cheap lenses have gotten really, really good. One of my favorite lenses of all time is the Panasonic 25mm f/1.8 I have on one of my video cameras. Plenty sharp for 4K and looks great--for $150.
- geokon 7y ago
  auto-focus is horrendous though. It's often quite frustrating to use. Wish I'd gone with the Olympus..
  - eropple 7y ago
    I'm video-first, so the AF is adequate, but I definitely get that. Sony would be my next stop on that front rather than MFT, mostly 'cause their full-frame lineup is better than Panasonic's right now. Sony lenses, though? Not cheap.
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      Honestly, I'm having tons of fun with really old viewfinder or DSLR lenses. If I had a bit more motivation I'd figure out the electronic lens protocol of my Sony camera, and program a microcontroller to drive an extension tubes and make autofocus lenses out of them. So yeah, if you're willing to do without AF, and especially if you're doing video, it's difficult to beat a fairly sharp 50 1.4 for 50$
      - eropple 7y ago
        Makes total sense. I'm a video shooter, though, not a film shooter, if the distinction makes sense. I'm shooting events, so autofocus is life. :)
nicoburns 7y ago
> One thing that I think has been lost in photography today thanks to the smartphone is the value of high quality lenses Indeed, I have a Lumix LX3 from 2008. The sensor in my smartphone is better, as are the quality of the photos in low-light, and the autofocus is much faster. But in good lighting conditions, the photos from the LX3 are much higher quality.
- slantyyz 7y ago
  I have an LX3 too. It's still a great camera. If you shoot RAW and use a fairly recent Lightroom equivalent application that has good noise reduction, etc., you can still get the LX3 to shoot above its weight. One thing in particular that I like about the LX3 is that the black and white mode is a surprisingly fun mode to shoot in. In fact, one novel way of using the LX3 in 2020 would be as a dedicated black and white camera.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    I sometimes use my Canon 100D in BW, just to not cheat, and commit to a look beforehand. Makes you think of the subject slightly differently, just like when you shot on BW film.
- ashtonkem 7y ago
  Off camera, smart phones produce better photos; the on board software is much better. But once in the hands of someone who knows how to process their photos, dedicated cameras win every single time.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    But composition is step #0. :-) I have taken some of my best shots on my iPhone 7. But there's no joy, maybe because of shutter lag. And also the good image to bad image ratio for me is horrible. Maybe 2000 deliberate shots per year and a handful keepers.
    - ashtonkem 7y ago
mmmBacon 7y ago
A thing I have with photography is this obsession with very low F#’s as being better A low F# is hard to produce but it doesn’t always make for a high quality image. These lenses have large ROC and allow very high angle rays to enter the system. So there is often significant aberrations in these lenses.
- anta40 7y ago
  Kinda reminds me to the legendary Canon 50mm f/0.95. Manual focusing at f/0.95 is not that easy and with that reaaallly shallow depth-of-field, making interesting composition is hard.
  - geerlingguy 7y ago
    The 'NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct' is Nikon's answer to that, and yeah, it is difficult to nail focus when you have a depth of field for close subjects that's in fractions of millimeters!
  - jungletime 7y ago
    You might like this video on ultra fast lenses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5E7iXxeQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5E7iXxeQE At the end they compare budget lenses like the Canon 50mm f/0.95 and find that the SLR Magic 25mm T0.95, seems to work better in low light.
- xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
  Why is this strange? A low f-stop IS better because it let's more light in, meaning I can record more information using my sensor in less (shutter) time, resulting in sharper images (less shakiness/improved stabilization). There are lots of things that can remedy higher f-stops to some extent, but nothing really substitutes that big aperature. The big appeal if low f-stop lenses from high end lensmakers is that they have reduced aberrations/distortions because they use a shit ton of glass to improve the image, which in turn is why they can be so incredibly expensive. A $50 f/1.6 is going to be dogshit. The $5000 lens is going to have additional optics to remedy the large ROC and high-angle rays. The trade-offs are often worth it.
scottlamb 7y ago
> You simply can't replace great optics with software (at least, not yet). The lens quality and software quality should be complementary ways to improve the image. My DSLR has much better lenses than my phone. My phone has Night Sight, which is an amazing software solution for getting the best out of its relatively poor optics. (IIUC, it aligns multiple short exposures to minimize motion blue in an overall long exposure, as well as denoising/color-enhancing/stuff with ML.) I'd love to use them together.
- mikepurvis 7y ago
  You'd think there'd be an opportunity for a disruptive newcomer here, but I guess there are enormous barriers to entry on both sides. Perhaps the watershed will be when one of the major camera manufacturers offers a device with good optics that is also capable of running user-installed software, whether that device is a conventional form-factor camera, or perhaps a sensor/optics-only box that works in conjunction with a phone. EDIT: Nevermind, it looks like this has happened— Sony released some lens-only cameras in 2013 and it doesn't seem like too much has come of it: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-your-smartphone-to-get-better-pictures-with-1447446839 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-your-smartphone-to-get-bet...
  - ska 7y ago
    Fundamentally, phones just give bad workflow for photo processing and organizing. The more you care about this, the harder it is to justify this approach as your primary workflow.
    - mikepurvis 7y ago
      Sure, but no one's doing processing or organizing on the back of a DSLR either. Maybe the real problem here is that 13 years after the original iPhone, iCloud and Google Photos are still the least-bad solutions for archiving a family photo stream from multiple devices— there's a missing middle option between those and the prosumer solutions like Lightroom and Aperture (which in turn have their own issues, like the fact that AFAIK they mostly tackle organizing a local library; you're largely still on your own when it comes to things like collaboration and managing backups). Anyway, I would have thought the dealbreaking issues with an augmented phone/camera would more be around the dearth of tactile controls, but that can be at least partially addressed by moving some of them to the strap-on accessory.
zip1234 7y ago
Still have a Nikon D70 from ~2004 that has only about 6 megapixels but will take better photos than any phone made today even using lenses that were made in the 1970s. It is hard to describe to people without showing them but the sharpness of photos is amazing with high quality lenses.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  I still shot (for still life images, mostly, with external flash) with a D60 until I upgraded that to an used, beat-up D700. You can definitely get much better images if you have a good lens, and on older cameras good lighting or very good form. But more modern smartphone lenses and software are plenty good for certain types of photography (and especially video). I shoot less and less with my D750 and D700 (in non-studio / non-low-light-event situations), and more and more with my iPhone, because of the convenience and portability. But there are definitely types of pictures that can't be taken without good glass and a larger sensor size. No software can simulate the physics that makes a longer focal length make a great portrait. (You just can't stuff that quality of glass into such a small lens, and the sensor can't physically gather enough photons to compete.)
  - fock 7y ago
    basically I can agree on the basic premise of shooting holiday pictures with an iphone. it works well, as long as there is lots of light. If there's less (and even just rain), quality get's wonky. Today not "can't put into a family-album"-wonky but more like "won't make a magazine cover or desktop background or simple posterprint"-wonky. Which is perfectly fine for everyone of course, but given that you have to buy high-end (my very own 150$ Android One device has no such camera) and a central theme of this high-end innovation is that you buy a new device every 2 years (nowadays mainly advertised through the camera) and then throw the old one away, I just decided to buy a small ILC (EOS M10 on sale) and use that for taking pictures until the shutter dies (at times where my main camera is too big (and thus most would use a mobile)). Works fine for me and with 12mm/2 and 22mm/2 lenses I can (the 2010ish sensor notwithstanding) still only grin at the nightmode of the newest iPhone or the star mode of Google...
  - 7y ago
mc32 7y ago
One other thing is the perspective when taking pictures of wide architecture or natural formations, small cameras, even 35mm tend to distort what a scene looks like, say compared to a medium format camera. Though PC lenses for 35mm fix that too.
aikinai 7y ago
I don’t think that’s lost in photography today; more people than ever know that and get to experience it thanks to the amazing DSLR and mirrorless ecosystems available. The people that think smartphone photos are good enough are the people that never would have taken photos with cameras anyway.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  I don't think that's true somehow: https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments/ https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments... Sales aren't necessarily always a decent proxy to usage (and high end cameras are probably less replaceable than phones), but it'd take a brave person to argue that large swathes of the digital camera userbase haven't jumped ship to phones. I've got an interchangeable lens camera (nothing high end, but a decent MFT offering), and my iPhone 11 smacks it for everyday usage.
  - djKianoosh 7y ago
    It's just one datapoint, but for example the Nikon D750 is the most used Nikon camera on flickr (yeah I know, it hasn't died) and that camera is a few years old now. https://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/ https://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/
    - seppin 7y ago
      Judging an outdated format (DSLR) with an outdated website perhaps isn't the best way to go about it. Instagram would be a better data set.
tiffanyh 7y ago
NASA came to the same conclusion. For the Mars Rover, they are extremely bandwidth constrained to send photos home. They found that a super high quality lens, greatly outweighs the megapixels (which becomes a bandwidth problem when you’re millions of miles away) Most cameras are only 2 megapixels on the Mars Curiosity Rover, yet it produces unbelievable detail due to the high quality lenses. https://www.wired.com/2012/08/curiosity-mars-rover-cameras/amp https://www.wired.com/2012/08/curiosity-mars-rover-cameras/a...
- azhenley 7y ago
  I find it interesting that the lens matters much on a 2 megapixel sensor. On a lot of the photography forums, people talk about how much a lens "out resolves the camera's sensor", meaning that any improvement in the lens will go unnoticed until they upgrade the sensor. They often use the DXOMARK score (perceived megapixels?) as a metric of this. It seems to make sense but I really have no idea how much truth is behind this!
  - epx 7y ago
    When someone says a lens, or an optical system, resolves 2MP, it is 2MP @ 50% MTF (maximum contrast between adjacent pixels). 50% is the "good enough" of photography, but digital sensors and screens can be 100% MTF. Lenses can't do 100% but can get asymptotically near, so yes, using an "8MP" lens with 2MP sensor will show. And, even considering 50% MTF, many professional lenses struggle to go beyond 3MP.
m463 7y ago
Over the years I only slowly came to realize something. When I was purchasing a camera, the body was what you were spec'ing out, and would determine what you could do. The lens to me seemed to be the accessory. Turns out cameras (bodies) are transient, and lenses persist. It was as surprising to me as if tires+wheels turned out to be more important than the car. That said, when it comes to ultra-long lenses, your best bet might be to buy a camera+lens all-in-one like the nikon p1000 / canon sx70hs (focal length + small sensor makes things more achiavable than large DSLR sensors)
- sudosysgen 7y ago
  There is the alternative for ultra-long lenses of an a6000 + a soviet mirror lens. Just goes to show the flexibility of an ILC.
  - m463 7y ago
    That's an interesting thought. All those old mirror lenses with 35mm seemed to be f/8 or f/16 (and manual focus), but I assume the idea is to have a smaller sensor + make up for the aperture with the ISO boost. Thank you for your perspective.
    - sudosysgen 7y ago
      Yep. But the big part is that even with a smaller than full-frame sensor, you still end up with a higher effective aperture and better noise at a given luminosity than say a Nikon P1000, for less cost. You give up zoom and IS (unless you go for an a6500, still cheaper than a P1000), though.
freepor 7y ago
And what has been lost even above the value of high quality lenses is the value of high quality lighting. Most people are completely clueless about light and especially flash. But lighting is a million times more important than lens.
ur-whale 7y ago
>You simply can't replace great optics with software (at least, not yet). And even if you could, applying the same software to the output of big high-quality lenses would likely yield better outcomes :)

anfractuosity 7y ago

Re. great optics, I think that's especially the case with telephoto lenses, I don't think there's any workarounds to make them highly portable? I'd not heard of that Leica before, but it does look amazing.

sosuke 7y ago
I've been looking for some magic workaround. The closest thing you can find at the moment is a mirror telephoto lens. You can get them pretty cheap but often standard telephoto lenses that have the images cropped get better results.
- acomjean 7y ago
  I had a mirrored lens (400mm). It worked ok, but I had it for a film camera and you can't adjust the aperture. This was more of an issue on the film camera I had, but long focal length lenses have a very small depth of focus and stopping down the aperture helps that. Canon tried a fresnel lenes there "DO" series. Not quite as good quality at about half the size and way more money. Its interesting technology. You can see the lens size comparisons near the bottom of this article. https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-400mm-f-4.0-DO-IS-II-USM-Lens.aspx https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Canon-EF-400mm-f... One of the main things driving larger optics/ is the amount of light the lens lets in. EG: max aperture (a lower f number) means bigger lens, more money. The availability of digital sensors means often you can shoot with higher film speed and might not require as large a max aperture..
- brudgers 7y ago
  I picked up a Tamron Adaptall 55B 500mm f8 two and a half years ago. They were produced from 1979-1983 and sold new for about $400 as best I can tell. The big difference from contemporary Samyang and Rokkinon catadioptrics is it's really long focus throw. It's about 350 degrees from 1.5m to infinity. At 500mm even f8 is shallow. Hyper-focal distance is over a kilometer on a crop sensor. Even with a 2x teleconverter (1000mm f16/t22) it's less than a kilogram so it's easy to walk around hand holding and throwing it in the bag is not a major commitment. Like any other lens it's a compromise. I live with it's technical shortcomings because it provides a specific capability to make images I would not make otherwise. In theory, it's a choice between lenses based on technical specifications. In practice it's a choice between making image with the catadioptric and no image at all. The images that would not exist otherwise exist because I can see in 500mm prime before I raise the camera and when my eye hits the viewfinder I'm not making a "well maybe I can crop it" compromise.
fooker 7y ago
One workaround is the use of Fresnel lenses. This is featured in Canon's DO (Diffractive Optics) line of lenses. Another 'workaround' is the use of a mirror, but these lenses are only useful for very specific tasks and are usually not designed for the high end market.
- anfractuosity 7y ago
  Interesting, will have to look at Canons DO lenses, not heard of them before.
  - petepete 7y ago
    Nikon's PF lenses, of which there are only 2 (300mm f4 PF and 500mm f5.6 PF) are worth a look too. I have the 300PF and it's smaller and lighter than a 24-70mm and plenty sharp. The 500PF has been sold out since launch. https://i.imgur.com/o4kNzNy.jpg https://i.imgur.com/o4kNzNy.jpg
  - Wistar 7y ago
    I have had the 70-300 DO for about 12 years and find it to be a lackluster lens and seldom use it (never). https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/70-300mm-do-is.htm https://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/lenses/70-300mm-do-is.htm I agree with Ken Rockwell's review of the lens except I add that it just doesn't have the color and contrast "pop" of equivalent lenses such as the 100-400 L II zoom. One thing, though, the used price for the DO lens is low.
- m463 7y ago
  You can always identify photos taken with mirror lenses because out-of-focus highlights look like donuts.
tomchuk 7y ago
Canon has their DO (Diffractive Optics) technology[1] which I think only ever made it into a 70-300[2]. Mirror lenses have been around for a long time. They fold the length of larger telephotos into about a third with some trade-offs in speed and image quality. [1] https://global.canon/en/v-square/34.html https://global.canon/en/v-square/34.html [2] https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/details/lenses/ef/telephoto-zoom/ef-70-300mm-f-4-5-5-6-do-is-usm https://www.usa.canon.com/internet/portal/us/home/products/d...
- ip26 7y ago
  There's the 400 f/4 DO II - fantastic lens. The DO tech turns a mainly tripod lens into something you can easily hand hold.
arethuza 7y ago
There is the option of reducing sensor size which allows very long focal length equivalents but at the cost of reduced image quality - I have Nikon P1000 which has a 24-3000 zoom in a package which is fairly large but still pretty portable. Is the image quality as good as my full sized Nikon gear - definitely not. Can I take more pictures that I couldn't even attempt before (wildlife and landscapes) - definitely.
- jungletime 7y ago
  There's this Polish guy that climbs buildings, and he uses the P1000 from time to time, for very dramatic zoom effect. Like in this video https://youtu.be/1fP4UArArNg?t=104 https://youtu.be/1fP4UArArNg?t=104 Well, this specific video was on April fools, and him standing on top of the mast was masked in (faked), but that background footage of the zoom out was from P1000 camera.

eropple 7y ago

Even cheap lenses have gotten really, really good. One of my favorite lenses of all time is the Panasonic 25mm f/1.8 I have on one of my video cameras. Plenty sharp for 4K and looks great--for $150.

geokon 7y ago
auto-focus is horrendous though. It's often quite frustrating to use. Wish I'd gone with the Olympus..
- eropple 7y ago
  I'm video-first, so the AF is adequate, but I definitely get that. Sony would be my next stop on that front rather than MFT, mostly 'cause their full-frame lineup is better than Panasonic's right now. Sony lenses, though? Not cheap.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Honestly, I'm having tons of fun with really old viewfinder or DSLR lenses. If I had a bit more motivation I'd figure out the electronic lens protocol of my Sony camera, and program a microcontroller to drive an extension tubes and make autofocus lenses out of them. So yeah, if you're willing to do without AF, and especially if you're doing video, it's difficult to beat a fairly sharp 50 1.4 for 50$
    - eropple 7y ago
      Makes total sense. I'm a video shooter, though, not a film shooter, if the distinction makes sense. I'm shooting events, so autofocus is life. :)

nicoburns 7y ago

> One thing that I think has been lost in photography today thanks to the smartphone is the value of high quality lenses Indeed, I have a Lumix LX3 from 2008. The sensor in my smartphone is better, as are the quality of the photos in low-light, and the autofocus is much faster. But in good lighting conditions, the photos from the LX3 are much higher quality.

slantyyz 7y ago
I have an LX3 too. It's still a great camera. If you shoot RAW and use a fairly recent Lightroom equivalent application that has good noise reduction, etc., you can still get the LX3 to shoot above its weight. One thing in particular that I like about the LX3 is that the black and white mode is a surprisingly fun mode to shoot in. In fact, one novel way of using the LX3 in 2020 would be as a dedicated black and white camera.
- jacobush 7y ago
  I sometimes use my Canon 100D in BW, just to not cheat, and commit to a look beforehand. Makes you think of the subject slightly differently, just like when you shot on BW film.
ashtonkem 7y ago
Off camera, smart phones produce better photos; the on board software is much better. But once in the hands of someone who knows how to process their photos, dedicated cameras win every single time.
- jacobush 7y ago
  But composition is step #0. :-) I have taken some of my best shots on my iPhone 7. But there's no joy, maybe because of shutter lag. And also the good image to bad image ratio for me is horrible. Maybe 2000 deliberate shots per year and a handful keepers.
  - ashtonkem 7y ago

mmmBacon 7y ago

A thing I have with photography is this obsession with very low F#’s as being better A low F# is hard to produce but it doesn’t always make for a high quality image. These lenses have large ROC and allow very high angle rays to enter the system. So there is often significant aberrations in these lenses.

anta40 7y ago
Kinda reminds me to the legendary Canon 50mm f/0.95. Manual focusing at f/0.95 is not that easy and with that reaaallly shallow depth-of-field, making interesting composition is hard.
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  The 'NIKKOR Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct' is Nikon's answer to that, and yeah, it is difficult to nail focus when you have a depth of field for close subjects that's in fractions of millimeters!
- jungletime 7y ago
  You might like this video on ultra fast lenses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5E7iXxeQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p5E7iXxeQE At the end they compare budget lenses like the Canon 50mm f/0.95 and find that the SLR Magic 25mm T0.95, seems to work better in low light.
xyzzy_plugh 7y ago
Why is this strange? A low f-stop IS better because it let's more light in, meaning I can record more information using my sensor in less (shutter) time, resulting in sharper images (less shakiness/improved stabilization). There are lots of things that can remedy higher f-stops to some extent, but nothing really substitutes that big aperature. The big appeal if low f-stop lenses from high end lensmakers is that they have reduced aberrations/distortions because they use a shit ton of glass to improve the image, which in turn is why they can be so incredibly expensive. A $50 f/1.6 is going to be dogshit. The $5000 lens is going to have additional optics to remedy the large ROC and high-angle rays. The trade-offs are often worth it.

scottlamb 7y ago

> You simply can't replace great optics with software (at least, not yet). The lens quality and software quality should be complementary ways to improve the image. My DSLR has much better lenses than my phone. My phone has Night Sight, which is an amazing software solution for getting the best out of its relatively poor optics. (IIUC, it aligns multiple short exposures to minimize motion blue in an overall long exposure, as well as denoising/color-enhancing/stuff with ML.) I'd love to use them together.

mikepurvis 7y ago
You'd think there'd be an opportunity for a disruptive newcomer here, but I guess there are enormous barriers to entry on both sides. Perhaps the watershed will be when one of the major camera manufacturers offers a device with good optics that is also capable of running user-installed software, whether that device is a conventional form-factor camera, or perhaps a sensor/optics-only box that works in conjunction with a phone. EDIT: Nevermind, it looks like this has happened— Sony released some lens-only cameras in 2013 and it doesn't seem like too much has come of it: https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-your-smartphone-to-get-better-pictures-with-1447446839 https://lifehacker.com/how-to-use-your-smartphone-to-get-bet...
- ska 7y ago
  Fundamentally, phones just give bad workflow for photo processing and organizing. The more you care about this, the harder it is to justify this approach as your primary workflow.
  - mikepurvis 7y ago
    Sure, but no one's doing processing or organizing on the back of a DSLR either. Maybe the real problem here is that 13 years after the original iPhone, iCloud and Google Photos are still the least-bad solutions for archiving a family photo stream from multiple devices— there's a missing middle option between those and the prosumer solutions like Lightroom and Aperture (which in turn have their own issues, like the fact that AFAIK they mostly tackle organizing a local library; you're largely still on your own when it comes to things like collaboration and managing backups). Anyway, I would have thought the dealbreaking issues with an augmented phone/camera would more be around the dearth of tactile controls, but that can be at least partially addressed by moving some of them to the strap-on accessory.

zip1234 7y ago

Still have a Nikon D70 from ~2004 that has only about 6 megapixels but will take better photos than any phone made today even using lenses that were made in the 1970s. It is hard to describe to people without showing them but the sharpness of photos is amazing with high quality lenses.

geerlingguy 7y ago
I still shot (for still life images, mostly, with external flash) with a D60 until I upgraded that to an used, beat-up D700. You can definitely get much better images if you have a good lens, and on older cameras good lighting or very good form. But more modern smartphone lenses and software are plenty good for certain types of photography (and especially video). I shoot less and less with my D750 and D700 (in non-studio / non-low-light-event situations), and more and more with my iPhone, because of the convenience and portability. But there are definitely types of pictures that can't be taken without good glass and a larger sensor size. No software can simulate the physics that makes a longer focal length make a great portrait. (You just can't stuff that quality of glass into such a small lens, and the sensor can't physically gather enough photons to compete.)
- fock 7y ago
  basically I can agree on the basic premise of shooting holiday pictures with an iphone. it works well, as long as there is lots of light. If there's less (and even just rain), quality get's wonky. Today not "can't put into a family-album"-wonky but more like "won't make a magazine cover or desktop background or simple posterprint"-wonky. Which is perfectly fine for everyone of course, but given that you have to buy high-end (my very own 150$ Android One device has no such camera) and a central theme of this high-end innovation is that you buy a new device every 2 years (nowadays mainly advertised through the camera) and then throw the old one away, I just decided to buy a small ILC (EOS M10 on sale) and use that for taking pictures until the shutter dies (at times where my main camera is too big (and thus most would use a mobile)). Works fine for me and with 12mm/2 and 22mm/2 lenses I can (the 2010ish sensor notwithstanding) still only grin at the nightmode of the newest iPhone or the star mode of Google...
- 7y ago

mc32 7y ago

One other thing is the perspective when taking pictures of wide architecture or natural formations, small cameras, even 35mm tend to distort what a scene looks like, say compared to a medium format camera. Though PC lenses for 35mm fix that too.

aikinai 7y ago

I don’t think that’s lost in photography today; more people than ever know that and get to experience it thanks to the amazing DSLR and mirrorless ecosystems available. The people that think smartphone photos are good enough are the people that never would have taken photos with cameras anyway.

wastedhours 7y ago
I don't think that's true somehow: https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments/ https://www.statista.com/chart/5782/digital-camera-shipments... Sales aren't necessarily always a decent proxy to usage (and high end cameras are probably less replaceable than phones), but it'd take a brave person to argue that large swathes of the digital camera userbase haven't jumped ship to phones. I've got an interchangeable lens camera (nothing high end, but a decent MFT offering), and my iPhone 11 smacks it for everyday usage.
- djKianoosh 7y ago
  It's just one datapoint, but for example the Nikon D750 is the most used Nikon camera on flickr (yeah I know, it hasn't died) and that camera is a few years old now. https://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/ https://www.flickr.com/cameras/nikon/
  - seppin 7y ago
    Judging an outdated format (DSLR) with an outdated website perhaps isn't the best way to go about it. Instagram would be a better data set.

tiffanyh 7y ago

NASA came to the same conclusion. For the Mars Rover, they are extremely bandwidth constrained to send photos home. They found that a super high quality lens, greatly outweighs the megapixels (which becomes a bandwidth problem when you’re millions of miles away) Most cameras are only 2 megapixels on the Mars Curiosity Rover, yet it produces unbelievable detail due to the high quality lenses. https://www.wired.com/2012/08/curiosity-mars-rover-cameras/amp https://www.wired.com/2012/08/curiosity-mars-rover-cameras/a...

azhenley 7y ago
I find it interesting that the lens matters much on a 2 megapixel sensor. On a lot of the photography forums, people talk about how much a lens "out resolves the camera's sensor", meaning that any improvement in the lens will go unnoticed until they upgrade the sensor. They often use the DXOMARK score (perceived megapixels?) as a metric of this. It seems to make sense but I really have no idea how much truth is behind this!
- epx 7y ago
  When someone says a lens, or an optical system, resolves 2MP, it is 2MP @ 50% MTF (maximum contrast between adjacent pixels). 50% is the "good enough" of photography, but digital sensors and screens can be 100% MTF. Lenses can't do 100% but can get asymptotically near, so yes, using an "8MP" lens with 2MP sensor will show. And, even considering 50% MTF, many professional lenses struggle to go beyond 3MP.

m463 7y ago

Over the years I only slowly came to realize something. When I was purchasing a camera, the body was what you were spec'ing out, and would determine what you could do. The lens to me seemed to be the accessory. Turns out cameras (bodies) are transient, and lenses persist. It was as surprising to me as if tires+wheels turned out to be more important than the car. That said, when it comes to ultra-long lenses, your best bet might be to buy a camera+lens all-in-one like the nikon p1000 / canon sx70hs (focal length + small sensor makes things more achiavable than large DSLR sensors)

sudosysgen 7y ago
There is the alternative for ultra-long lenses of an a6000 + a soviet mirror lens. Just goes to show the flexibility of an ILC.
- m463 7y ago
  That's an interesting thought. All those old mirror lenses with 35mm seemed to be f/8 or f/16 (and manual focus), but I assume the idea is to have a smaller sensor + make up for the aperture with the ISO boost. Thank you for your perspective.
  - sudosysgen 7y ago
    Yep. But the big part is that even with a smaller than full-frame sensor, you still end up with a higher effective aperture and better noise at a given luminosity than say a Nikon P1000, for less cost. You give up zoom and IS (unless you go for an a6500, still cheaper than a P1000), though.

freepor 7y ago

And what has been lost even above the value of high quality lenses is the value of high quality lighting. Most people are completely clueless about light and especially flash. But lighting is a million times more important than lens.

ur-whale 7y ago

>You simply can't replace great optics with software (at least, not yet). And even if you could, applying the same software to the output of big high-quality lenses would likely yield better outcomes :)