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Zeiss f/0.7: You Can Now Rent Two of the Largest Aperture Lenses Ever Made
- cuu508 13y agoA list of fast lenses on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_speed#Fast_lenses http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_speed#Fast_lenses There are several lenses around 0.7, and some with even lower f-numbers.
- nknighthb 13y agoThey don't appear to be commercially available, and some of them seem rather special-purpose.
- mjb 13y agoIt's a real pity about the distractingly strange bokeh in the example shots. Narrow depth of field (when desired) is a great strength of large-aperture lenses, but if the out-of-focus part is ugly they lose a lot of value for that.
- sliverstorm 13y agoNot a professional art critic or anything, but they honestly just look like pretty bad shots.
- coldtea 13y agoI agree, you are not an art critic.
- sliverstorm 13y agoDo you contest they are good?
- qq66 13y agof/0.7 is way past the range of usefully thin depth of field, although this look is somewhat in vogue right now as a way of distinguishing "professional" photography from cameraphone photography. The reason Kubrick used them was not for their depth of field, but because he was shooting on far slower film than the digital sensors available today. They're relatively pointless today except for their historical/curiosity value.
- VLM 13y ago"he was shooting on far slower film than the digital sensors available today. " My guess is the hype engine will focus on the idea that if 48 FPS is "twice as good" as 24 FPS then 96 FPS is even better. In true Hollywood style I bet they'll be post processing to make scenes look like they were filmed with standard lens.
- devindotcom 13y agoNot "slow" in frames per second, but "slow as in film speed. At the time they could maybe reliably shoot at the equivalent of ISO 800? (some historically informed cinematographer, please feel free to correct me. On the topic of FPS, though, that's definitely an ongoing issue. I wrote up some of the most salient points a while back here, if you're interested: http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/frame-wars/ http://techcrunch.com/2011/04/08/frame-wars/
- sbierwagen 13y agoNote that the Zeiss f/0.7 casts a pretty small image circle: the camera it's paired with uses a 21.1 x 11.9mm sensor. (75% as big as a Canon APS-C sensor)
- devindotcom 13y agoYes, off the top of my head it seems that an F/1.2 lens made for full frame cameras these days would actually offer superior light gathering ability, though the quality of the final image compared with Kubrick's film stills would be doubtless a matter for discussion. That said, of course, these lenses are marvels and any photographer would be delighted to give them a try — we do value novelty and and uniqueness in this sort of thing.
- twic 13y ago21.1 mm x 11.9 mm? So a 24.2 mm diagonal. Micro Four Thirds (and the non-Micro type) uses a sensor which is 18 mm x 13.5 mm, with a 22.5 mm diagonal. And MFT has no mirror, so the rear element can get as close to the sensor as it likes. Perfect match if you ask me!
- bbayer 13y agoAs a complete noob about this matter, what is the challenge of building this kind of lens and what makes it special?
- jd007 13y agoSimply put, a bigger aperture means you can let more light in, which means better image quality in low light conditions (don't need to increase film/sensor ISO level as much), and shorter minimum exposure time (for taking photos of super fast actions without blurring). It also gives you a much shallower depth of field which cannot be achieved with something of a smaller aperture. It is of course more expensive to build a lens like this, because the larger the aperture, the larger your lens cross section has to be (to actually let the light in), and the harder it is to design such a big lens that minimizes optical aberrations. With glass, the maximum aperture size theoretically achievable is around f/0.5, anything bigger and you will have to use something with a higher index of refraction than glass. So f/0.7 is very impressive.
- ams6110 13y agoYou'll see synthetic depth of field effects in a lot of stock photography intended for websites. The subject is sharp and the rest of the image is blurred, like shallow depth of field but it's faked in photoshop.
- ars 13y ago> that minimizes optical aberrations There is an interesting idea to simply let the lens have its aberrations and correct for them in software. i.e. customize the sensor to match the exact aberrations of the lens so the end result is normal.
- pervycreeper 13y agoBit of a waste to couple those lenses with anything but the most exceptional of sensors
- sirkneeland 13y agoCool, so it'll be on the Nokia 1030, right?