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With the cleareyed understanding that this article is photographic clickbait/comment-bait... Use gear that achieves the task at hand. Sometimes that needs an o

by ISL 4y ago

With the cleareyed understanding that this article is photographic clickbait/comment-bait... Use gear that achieves the task at hand. Sometimes that needs an optically-correct lens, sometimes it doesn't. When Frank Thorp brings a Speed Graphic or a disposable camera carrying black-and-white film to the halls of Congress, it achieves a different way of seeing. The rest of the press corps brings us high-quality versions of more traditional images with modern cameras and glass. They all have important places. For my photographic work, I'll generally prefer to work with lenses of higher optical-correctness, but understand when others don't. Bresson's “sharpness is a bourgeois concept" echoes in my mind at times as I work, reminding me that message trumps image quality most of the time. Photography lends itself well to writing analogies -- you can write on paper with a crayon, a Sharpie, a Rotring, a word processor, a typewriter, fingerpaint, a Bic, LaTeX, a #2, a calligraphic brush, or chalk. They'll all write, perhaps even the same characters, in different ways. A master with any one of them will find ways to evoke the message they intend. So it is with lenses.

aaronbrethorst 4y ago
I came here to say “meh,” but I appreciate the way you expanded that into four paragraphs of an utterly brutal take down of this thesis.
- flyinglizard 4y ago
  They haven’t taken that down. On the contrary; in their writing instrument analogy, what would happen if all pens produced the very same “perfect output”?
  - smitty1e 4y ago
    I submit that a better analogy is AI churning out endlesy fungible stories, or AutoTune delivering infinite croon. Humanity is in the tiny flaws. This is why Adele blew away the music charts.
ISL 4y ago
To agree with the article author a little: A modern $150 50mm f/1.8 at f/8 will out-resolve an older $1300 50mm f/1.2 at f/8, but holy poops, can that older design produce a rendering quality that is simply smooth and beautiful in an intangible way due to the lens designers' intentional tradeoffs. If you find yourself making comparisons like this one, you're almost to the part of your photographic career where you may be about to start reducing the amount of gear you use, as you begin to find the tools that resonate for you.
- emkoemko 4y ago
  $150 50mm f1.8 from all camera systems are fairly sharp but have soo much chromatic aberrations
  - ISL 4y ago
    Wide open, they have some flaws, but stopped down a little, the aberrations are generally well-controlled. Here's the Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM compared with the Sigma 50mm f/1.4, both at f/4: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=989&Camera=979&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=3&LensComp=941&CameraComp=979&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=4 https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample... The Sigma still wins in the corners, but chromatic aberrations are largely absent for both lenses. With new photographers, I often try to get them to take a 50mm f/1.8 through its paces early in their careers. One of the key milestones in the proposed shot-list is a series of images at f/8. It is eye-opening to see an inexpensive lens deliver top-notch results on even the least-expensive cameras. Beginners are often drawn to the selective depth of field of the wide aperture primes, but to me, the greatest joy of these timeless (and lightweight) double-gauss designs is their ability to render superlative quality at their diffraction-limited apertures.
- FrozenVoid 4y ago
  > beautiful in an intangible way Perhaps the older lens has more pleasing colors: normally absorbing a bit more of hi-freq(blue/violet) lens a comfy "orange sunset" effect and warm atmosphere. Modern digital cameras tend to be "colder" in color, with sharp blue/violet.
darkteflon 4y ago
What a lovely comment - a real joy to read. Always enjoy listening to an artist meditate on the tools of their chosen craft.
bitwize 4y ago
I think that this article is an example of a phenomenon wherein we subconsciously associate the flaws and artifacts of the medium with the medium itself -- and once those flaws and artifacts are removed, yielding a more accurate reproduction of the world or the artist's vision, we get the sense that something is missing and consider the result to be of lower quality rather than higher. Examples abound: * You will never, ever get an old rockist audiophile to admit that digital formats yield better results than vinyl. To them, vinyl sounds better -- "richer, warmer", more like you're actually there listening to the band. One such person of my acquaintance went on about "fat synths" that CDs couldn't reproduce. Let alone the fact that physical properties of vinyl prevent records from having the dynamic range of uncompressed digital music on the first playthrough, let alone after the needle has worn imprecisions into those grooves. Let alone the fact that almost no band sounds live the way they do in a recording because you can't control the acoustic properties of a concert hall the way you can in a studio, or mix tracks or adjust the relative mix of various parts in quite the same way. * In cinema, someone else mentioned the idea, beloved among cinemaphiles and even directors like Quentin Tarantino, that only 24fps celluloid with grain and scratches counts as "real film" and everything else looks "lifeless". * In video games, there is the phenomenon of CRT purism. Some of this is justified; developers have been able to achieve color and transparency effects on CRTs that haven't translated well to LCDs without additional filtering. I also understand that the lower latency of CRTs improved the situation for e.g. fighting or light gun games. But mostly, the "truer image" people associate with CRTs were artifacts of grotty TVs and, specifically, NTSC composite video signals. A new arcade machine of the era would use a top-quality CRT engineered to deliver the crispest possible image -- closer to the LCD or OLED displays of today than to the smearfests of home systems played on spare TVs. And if you lived in Europe and could play on a PAL or, better yet, SCART set, many of those artifacts went away there as well. * Oddly enough, no one seems to miss VHS tracking artifacts. But they are used for effect, to signify an aesthetic associated with a particular time and place, as in for example the game Katana Zero or the Local 58 YouTube channel. I guess that's what we should be aiming for here: the "richer sound", the NTSC color effects, the film grain, and the camera aberration can be used as tools to shape the audience's experience and evoke a time or mood. I just wish that people were honest about what they were doing, and not be all like "old good, new bad". I like having high-quality Opus rips and sharp LCD monitors.
ReptileMan 4y ago
Don't forget that photography flow also changed - with cheap and powerful postprocessing and whatnot. And it will only get better. So the gear changed into catching maximum information and deal with it later. And entropy goes one way. You can always blur or add creative touches on the clinical picture. The other way is harder. I feel that focusing on one piece of the flow and not looking at the whole could lead to somewhat off conclusions.

by ISL 4y ago

aaronbrethorst 4y ago

I came here to say “meh,” but I appreciate the way you expanded that into four paragraphs of an utterly brutal take down of this thesis.

flyinglizard 4y ago
They haven’t taken that down. On the contrary; in their writing instrument analogy, what would happen if all pens produced the very same “perfect output”?
- smitty1e 4y ago
  I submit that a better analogy is AI churning out endlesy fungible stories, or AutoTune delivering infinite croon. Humanity is in the tiny flaws. This is why Adele blew away the music charts.

ISL 4y ago

To agree with the article author a little: A modern $150 50mm f/1.8 at f/8 will out-resolve an older $1300 50mm f/1.2 at f/8, but holy poops, can that older design produce a rendering quality that is simply smooth and beautiful in an intangible way due to the lens designers' intentional tradeoffs. If you find yourself making comparisons like this one, you're almost to the part of your photographic career where you may be about to start reducing the amount of gear you use, as you begin to find the tools that resonate for you.

emkoemko 4y ago
$150 50mm f1.8 from all camera systems are fairly sharp but have soo much chromatic aberrations
- ISL 4y ago
  Wide open, they have some flaws, but stopped down a little, the aberrations are generally well-controlled. Here's the Canon 50mm f/1.8 STM compared with the Sigma 50mm f/1.4, both at f/4: https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample-Crops.aspx?Lens=989&Camera=979&Sample=0&FLI=0&API=3&LensComp=941&CameraComp=979&SampleComp=0&FLIComp=0&APIComp=4 https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/ISO-12233-Sample... The Sigma still wins in the corners, but chromatic aberrations are largely absent for both lenses. With new photographers, I often try to get them to take a 50mm f/1.8 through its paces early in their careers. One of the key milestones in the proposed shot-list is a series of images at f/8. It is eye-opening to see an inexpensive lens deliver top-notch results on even the least-expensive cameras. Beginners are often drawn to the selective depth of field of the wide aperture primes, but to me, the greatest joy of these timeless (and lightweight) double-gauss designs is their ability to render superlative quality at their diffraction-limited apertures.
FrozenVoid 4y ago
> beautiful in an intangible way Perhaps the older lens has more pleasing colors: normally absorbing a bit more of hi-freq(blue/violet) lens a comfy "orange sunset" effect and warm atmosphere. Modern digital cameras tend to be "colder" in color, with sharp blue/violet.

darkteflon 4y ago

What a lovely comment - a real joy to read. Always enjoy listening to an artist meditate on the tools of their chosen craft.

bitwize 4y ago

I think that this article is an example of a phenomenon wherein we subconsciously associate the flaws and artifacts of the medium with the medium itself -- and once those flaws and artifacts are removed, yielding a more accurate reproduction of the world or the artist's vision, we get the sense that something is missing and consider the result to be of lower quality rather than higher. Examples abound: * You will never, ever get an old rockist audiophile to admit that digital formats yield better results than vinyl. To them, vinyl sounds better -- "richer, warmer", more like you're actually there listening to the band. One such person of my acquaintance went on about "fat synths" that CDs couldn't reproduce. Let alone the fact that physical properties of vinyl prevent records from having the dynamic range of uncompressed digital music on the first playthrough, let alone after the needle has worn imprecisions into those grooves. Let alone the fact that almost no band sounds live the way they do in a recording because you can't control the acoustic properties of a concert hall the way you can in a studio, or mix tracks or adjust the relative mix of various parts in quite the same way. * In cinema, someone else mentioned the idea, beloved among cinemaphiles and even directors like Quentin Tarantino, that only 24fps celluloid with grain and scratches counts as "real film" and everything else looks "lifeless". * In video games, there is the phenomenon of CRT purism. Some of this is justified; developers have been able to achieve color and transparency effects on CRTs that haven't translated well to LCDs without additional filtering. I also understand that the lower latency of CRTs improved the situation for e.g. fighting or light gun games. But mostly, the "truer image" people associate with CRTs were artifacts of grotty TVs and, specifically, NTSC composite video signals. A new arcade machine of the era would use a top-quality CRT engineered to deliver the crispest possible image -- closer to the LCD or OLED displays of today than to the smearfests of home systems played on spare TVs. And if you lived in Europe and could play on a PAL or, better yet, SCART set, many of those artifacts went away there as well. * Oddly enough, no one seems to miss VHS tracking artifacts. But they are used for effect, to signify an aesthetic associated with a particular time and place, as in for example the game Katana Zero or the Local 58 YouTube channel. I guess that's what we should be aiming for here: the "richer sound", the NTSC color effects, the film grain, and the camera aberration can be used as tools to shape the audience's experience and evoke a time or mood. I just wish that people were honest about what they were doing, and not be all like "old good, new bad". I like having high-quality Opus rips and sharp LCD monitors.

ReptileMan 4y ago

Don't forget that photography flow also changed - with cheap and powerful postprocessing and whatnot. And it will only get better. So the gear changed into catching maximum information and deal with it later. And entropy goes one way. You can always blur or add creative touches on the clinical picture. The other way is harder. I feel that focusing on one piece of the flow and not looking at the whole could lead to somewhat off conclusions.