Lens analysis: true COLOR v. sharpness

[astroNikon]

When I was researching my old 150-500 Sigma (Bigma) lens I ran across an article that stated that it's colors were off even after trying to bring them back in PP.

But I bought one anyways. And, as the article stated, the colors were off. I think at that time Sigma was using a different type of glass than Nikon, Tamron, Tokina which made the colors look faded, flattish in nature.

I wish I could find that one article .. can't find it in a quick check.
Luckily I quickly went to a Tamron 150-600

oh yeah, that lens drew power even with the camera turned off. Don't ask, I don't know, But anytime it was attached the rear led light would light on every so often even with the camera off, and the battery would discharge quicker over time. Without the lens on, no problem.

but that was one particular lens. That was the only Sigma I think I've ever owned.

 

[Drive-By-Shooter]

Derrel, thanks for the insightful article. will read.
many cars' gears are selected by the designers to minimize 0-60 times. ugh
being new to digital cameras, i fell for pixel peeping. lost the forest in the trees.
while my nikkor 85 1.8 was nice, the 1.4 was better. wow, still commanding $900+. that says something..
found The Angry Photographer videos. thanks

 

[Drive-By-Shooter]

so the angry photog had a interesting list of lenses:
and he mentioned the one old nikkor lens i did not and will not sell, the one i took on probably 50 trips in the ocean, the 60 2.8 micro. so now that i've already been not working this morning as i need to be, i took two shots out the front door with it and the sigma 50, same 5.6 1/250 iso 100 with the only thing done post is -.5ev to cure the washed out areas. (I prefer my N90s' matrix metering to the D600's) of course, also reduced the size to make a jpg.
second pair of pictures is a 100% crop.

you tell me if color has been lost as manufacturers added more elements to attempt more sharpness and large apertures.
(the nikon pics are first and third)

 

[astroNikon]

nice lawn

 

[unpopular]

@Derrel are you still stuck thinking that I am suggesting that all lenses are the same?

Because I pretty much only use 50mm and 35mm lenses, of which I have multiple, and which lens I choose from that selection of two focal lengths really depends on what I'm going for.

In fact, I had a couple of "modern-ish" maxxum lenses and ended up not being too crazy about them.

So yeah. I know there is a difference between a plastic fantatic 50mm and my 50/2.8 CZJ Tessar from 1950-something. That was never my point at all.

And 'a little more magenta' is still not what I'd call a technical discussion (though more precise than the vague terms of '3D' or'reality'); but at the same time that article never gave any pretenses to being scientific either.

 

[Drive-By-Shooter]

perhaps i should have adjusted the sigma pics darker to match the nikkor. apparently their f5.6 are not the same. darkening the sigma pics another half stop, the color is richer. however, the dynamic range is less with the sig than the nikkor. perhaps this is the real compromise. but, with my limited post processing experience (mostly with nx-d), this seems fixable:

 

[Dave442]

After watching Lesson 4 of the Marc Levoy series, where he discusses most common photographic lens issues, it seems to me that an advancement in sensor design could bring about a huge change in lens configuration.

I thought about a spherical sensor, goggle led me to this MIT article so its already out there:
A Spherical Camera Sensor

Now if a company like Nikon took this and developed a sensor that has the ability adjust itself for every lens they have ever made, it could improve old lenses and make it possible for new lenses that required fewer elements to achieve sharpness. That could let them focus more on color rendition and would allow for cheaper and currently unavailable optics.

Also, sensors with three dimensional array of collection points to collect the different wavelengths at their actual focus point is another boost that could come from the sensor side and not the lens side.

In the end though we are just on the taking pictures side of all this, so I'm just going to use the lenses I have

 

[astroNikon]

After watching Lesson 4 of the Marc Levoy series, where he discusses most common photographic lens issues, it seems to me that an advancement in sensor design could bring about a huge change in lens configuration.

I thought about a spherical sensor, goggle led me to this MIT article so its already out there:
A Spherical Camera Sensor

Now if a company like Nikon took this and developed a sensor that has the ability adjust itself for every lens they have ever made, it could improve old lenses and make it possible for new lenses that required fewer elements to achieve sharpness. That could let them focus more on color rendition and would allow for cheaper and currently unavailable optics.

Also, sensors with three dimensional array of collection points to collect the different wavelengths at their actual focus point is another boost that could come from the sensor side and not the lens side.

In the end though we are just on the taking pictures side of all this, so I'm just going to use the lenses I have

The problem is, what if the color when it exits the lens is skewed and not "true" anymore. The sensor (and expeed processor, etc) would need a 2nd high quality lens to see the true colors that you are pointing the other lens towards. Ooh, imagine a camera with 2 lenses. might as well put it into a square box with a optical viewfinder pointed off the top.

 

[Derrel]

Derrel, thanks for the insightful article. will
many cars' gears are selected by the designers to minimize 0-60 times. ugh
being new to digital cameras, i fell for pixel peeping. lost the forest in the trees.
while my nikkor 85 1.8 was nice, the 1.4 was better. wow, still commanding $900+. that says something..
found The Angry Photographer videos. thanks

Yes, the 85mm f/1.8 AF and AF-D lenses were good, but the f/1.4 AF-D model is truly a superior lens for portraiture.

Your 60mm Micro-Nikko AF-D test versus the Sigma 50/1.4 ART does show deeper color saturation on the 60mm Nikon lens. I have a 60-D myself...I think it has good, rich color. A lot of people seem perplexed at the idea of color richness. But, if we consider that each uncoated air-to-glass surface loses 1% of the light that hits it...and coating drives that down to 0.4% or 0.5% loss at each air-to-glass surface...when we add up 13 elements, and perhaps 26 to 20 air-to-glass surfaces, we could be losing up to 13 percent of the TOTAL light.

In my experience, the 60mm f/2.8 AF-D Micro-Nikkor is an exceptionally rich color producing lens. I've shot it a fair bit on the D3x mostly, but also on earlier cameras, D70, S2 Pro, Canon 5D with adapter: it produces VERY rich, saturated color. When you take it out for a day and shoot a bunch of different primes, the 60mm images stand out as being vibant, rich, sharp, clear.

There is a balance between "too many" elements, and just enough to get the job done. A great example: Nikkor 45mm f/2.8 AI-P; the 1902-era Zeiss Tessar 4-element lens, but made with 2000-era Nikon computer redesign and 2000-era Nikon multi-integrated coating. Since 45mm and f/2.8 are easy,moderate designs, the 45-P is one of the most exquisite imagers ever made. VERY high contrast, because it has not lost hardly anything to air to glass reflections.

When I was a kid, people RAVED about old Tessar lens cameras; but at that time, many were 40,50 years old, uncoated, and fungus-filled, and all scratched up since pre-1960's glass was quite soft in many cases. I never understood why people raved about the Tessar design until the Rollei mini 35 hit.

 

[Dave442]

Yes, Galen Rowell often used a 45mm prime, a great little lens. One of the reasons I had one for my Pentax ME Super.

 

[fmw]

YOUR WORRIES HAVE been addressed, in The Problem With Modern Optics, (The Problem with Modern Optics) and deep inside the YouTube channel of "The Angry photographer".

YES, the huge 17- to 24-element lenses do not render the same as simple, 5,6,7,8 element primes. Some believe the primes have vastly superior imaging nature, with more round, full, and "realistic" ,more three-dimensional renderings, where the newer, more perfectly-corrected lenses suffer from "FLAT" image renderings.

I believe there is a real issue here.

The videos The Angry Photographer has are offputting at first, and then you'll find the ones where he waxes rhapsoidc about th 135/3.5 and 2.8 AI-S,etc.

A modern zoom lens will always underperform a 40 year old fixed focal length lens. But most consider the results from modern zoom lenses to be pretty good, including me. Any time I forget how crisp and contrasty the fixed lenses, I mount my 24mm f2.8 AIS lens or my 180 F2.8 AI. The results are simply stunning.

 

[greybeard35 7]

Regardless of what the lens does, digital cameras do not record colour. All the pixels in a Raw image are monochrome and stay that way until the Raw converter demosaics the Raw file. Any details of colour rendition by the lens is going to be compromised in that process, if not completely lost.

Absolutely, all a digital camera does is produce a digital description of the image that has to be reconstructed by a computer. If you want to see something special, look at some Kodachrome 25 slides from 50 years ago.

 

[Derrel]

Kodachrome: shooting a Black and White film, where the color is ADDED, in steps, during the processing stage. Crazy-complicated, and unique. One of the reasons Kodachrome images always looked so cool!

 

[Drive-By-Shooter]

thanks for the post about a spherical sensor and article; very nice. surely, many of us realized the limitations of a flat sensor dictated by lenses that had to compromise their best to focus on a plane instead of a sphere! that's a good plan to stop buying lenses as a spherical sensor will make all of these history. like this article says, which i look forward to reading, the human eye is amazing. what would it take with a flat sensor to have 85mm focal length with a 20mm field of view?! fun times ahead. now to live to 300 years old...

I thought about a spherical sensor, goggle led me to this MIT article so its already out there: A Spherical Camera Sensor

 

[Drive-By-Shooter]

i never knew that. processed my own ektachrome, fujichrome, but never kodachrome. printed them on cibachrome.
i could not process it either because i could not get the chemicals or it too temperature restrictive, requiring a constant flow water supply to keep it in the narrow range. (I don't remember, but i have forgotten other things from the '70's too).
i just read wiki that said it was manufactured for 74 years, yikes.
i still have some in the deep freeze and still love my lp from paul simon about it.

Kodachrome: shooting a Black and White film, where the color is ADDED, in steps, during the processing stage. Crazy-complicated, and unique. One of the reasons Kodachrome images always looked so cool!