In looking at lenses and cameras, in doing these tests and comparisons I've always taken the simplest, most direct approach possible. No fancy, often very expensive, test and measurement gear. Just a standard USAF military test chart, newspaper, or "interesting" subject, cameras, lenses, film, and, more recently, digital sensors, a lot of research, more than a few conversations with scientists, and a bit of experience.
Anyone can duplicate what I've done. Which is partly the point. If there are any questions about what I've written, people can have a look for themselves to see what's true, correct, or not.
I thought perhaps was now the time to share and sum up a few things that I've learned over the past quarter century of poking and prodding.
Lenses, unless otherwise designed and with very few exceptions, are sharp. Period.
Fixed focal length lenses are sharp, at least. Zoom lenses? It's a bit more complicated.
I've been fortunate enough to have been able to enjoy a vast variety of lenses over the years. How many hundreds and hundreds of lenses have I owned, tried, tested, compared, considered, shot with, and written about? Everything from very large format film down through APS-C digital have spent time in my Closet of Goodies.
In my youth I shot primarily 35mm. A Pentax H1A was my very first "serious" camera. Then came a Canon FTb QL, Pentax MX and MV, a Nikon FM, a Canon F1 (first of the series), several Canon AE-1/AV-1/AE-1 Program, and two Leica M3.
I had access to a Mamiya C220 for some years as well. It was a wonderful camera.
One year I had a tax rebate large enough to allow me to buy a new Sinar F with extension rail, and what turned out to be a very nice, borderline fabulous 210mm f/5.6 Schneider Symmar-S MC. I owned that setup for many many years and have more than a few wonderful negatives from that setup.
In my early 35mm and 120 format days I didn't have many thoughts about optics. I didn't know enough then to form an opinion and I wasn't curious enough to have a look. All I wanted to do was "find some magic", shoot a few good photos, become famous, and lead the Life of Riley.
After realizing the world wasn't exactly coming to my doorstep and that I needed to put my head down, apply some effort, and simply get to work, I became curious all kinds of thing, including looking at what was really going on with cameras and lenses and such. The Sinar F 4x5, Schneider Symmar-S MC 210mm kit was the first to fed that curiosity.
It started with the aid of a USAF Resolution Test Chart back in 1998.
I shared some of my first test results with folks on-line in the then still the academic implementation of what would soon become the "internet". Those were the days of UUnet, modems, newsgroups, and the East/West communications link that stretched between MIT and Tektronix.
Kerry Thalmann (an engineer from Intel) contacted me (I was working at Tektronix at the time) and suggested we look at a bunch of his lenses too. The mossy rock was soon scooting unflappably down the hill. Here I am 24 years later, still looking at photography things, asking questions, and generally poking around to see whatever there is to see.
I quickly learned that old lenses could be as good as new while looking at a pair of turn of the century Protar lenses and compared them against something quite modern. Yes, the modern lens looked very so slightly "sharper", but there was certainly nothing wrong with the Protar images. It took extreme magnification to see any difference between lenses from the early and late 20th century. This was an important learning for me because this was the first time I experienced something that would frequently ran counter to whatever marketing literature came my way.
Of course I found I preferred some lenses more than others. Often it more than anything else came down to whichever lenses had the most reliable shutters. Here is a list of Large Format Favorites.
- Schneider Super Symmar XL 110mm f/5.6 on 4x5inch
- Schneider Symmar-S MC 210mm f/5.6 on 4x5inch and 5x7inch
- Kodak Commercial Ektar 300mm f/6.3 on 8x10inch
- Kodak Wide Field Ektar 250mm f/6.7 on 7x17inch
- Fuji Fujinon C 450mm f/12.5 on 12x20inch
I also found joy in shooting Schneider's "Angulon" series of optics, too. They are small, light, and covered large pieces of film quite well. Other small, light optics that were wonderful to use were the rare and difficult to find Zeiss Jena Germinar lenses.
My favorite medium format lenses were Schneider Xenotar on Rolleiflex TLRs. They were slightly less sharp than the glorious Mamiya 7 optics, but they had contrast, those Schneiders did. Why on Gawds Green Earth I ever sold those Rollei's? Well, I couldn't bring them with me when we moved to Europe. It was a simple as that. So I sold them.
For a short time I owned a cosmetically pristine Hasselblad 500CM. It was one of those classic "dream cameras" that seemed too often just out of reach financially. I had a couple film backs, a 45 degree finder, 50mm, 80mm, 120mm, and 150mm Zeiss lenses. I wanted to love the setup. I really did. But it spent as much time in the shop getting repaired as it did on a tripod getting used.
It was always the little niggling things. In-body light-trap barn door springs were prone to bending. The light-trap materials used on film backs were prone to leaking light after just a couple months of use. The whole plot felt weak and under-engineered. I'd learned how to replace the film-back light trap materials. But after the camera body went to the shop for it's third light-trap spring replacement I was done. No more. It was more of a pain in the arse than it was worth.
Looking for a replacement to the recalcitrant Hasselblad led me to discover a wonderful Mamiya 7. The 50mm, 80mm, and 150mm lenses were all demonstrably sharper than anything I'd ever "tested" at 120 line-pair per mm, baby! (which, BTW, was the absolute resolution limit of TMax 100 in D76). The camera was light, handy, and gave a nice, large, useable 6x7cm negative. Along with the Rolleis, I think that if I ever get back into film (which I never will) I'd sure like to have another Mamiya 7.
My arrival to the New Age of digital photography was at first a horror show.
Canon EOS APS-C format lenses and 40D and 50D in-camera jpg processing were absolute cr*p. Images are visibly soft. Even now I can't believe just how bad some of that work was. I had to keep the final image sizes small to give the illusion of them being acceptable. This is why at first I still hung on to my medium format cameras.
Convinced "better" lenses would do the trick, I sold the first couple of Canon optics and went with hugely expensive L-glass.
After seeing that even the L-glass looked "soft" under a wide variety of circumstances on a brand new Canon 5D MkII, I dug around the 'net and found an answer. The in-camera jpg processor was junk. Hence the switch to RAW, which helped, but wasn't the complete answer.
I learned that Canon sensors are "soft" due to the heavy AA filter they use over the sensor. I could lean heavily on USM to get something semi-decent out of the 7D and 5D MkII RAW images. I didn't know just how strong that AA filter is until, one day, I shot a 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 Canon L adapted to Sony APS-C A6000. It was like the clouds had parted and everything was now clear. The difference was dramatic.
In the end, my Canon Drama of visibly soft image came down to three things. Lenses were, in fact, just barely "good enough", but they weren't the primary source of my problems. The in-camera jpg processor cranked out soft images... and... Canon's use of heavy AA filtering softened all output, RAW and JPG.
Recently I read Thom Hogan's comments on early zoom lenses being designed for adequacy, not optical perfection. Here's what he said.
"...As film SLRs developed and gained in popularity, a number of things started to happen with optics. In particular, autofocus and zoom focal ranges added convenience that drove much of the designs in the 70's, 80's, and 90's. The original Tamron 28-200mm lens in the early 90's also started a trend that was much imitated: "good enough" across a wide range of things..."
Looking at this with nearly perfect 20/20 hindsight I have the strongest impression that Canon was doing everything just "good enough" but no better. While I have no direct knowledge of this, M.Hogan indicates Canon's old design approach may still be in play here in the Mirrorless Age.
"... It took Sony awhile to get on board, but Olympus and Nikon have done this from the beginning of their mirrorless endeavors: simply design better lenses. Far better lenses. Lenses with a near complete lack of negative attributes. Canon, unfortunately, seems to be going to take a while to get fully up to speed with this..." [the bold is my emphasis]
It bears repeating that Canon lenses for me looked substantially better when used on Sony cameras. The jpg-processor and the strong AA filters of Canon cameras often masked optical performance.
Having moved on from Canon is probably the best thing I've done since switching to digital. Really good Canon EOS to Sony E AF adapter performance was not at first to be found. In frustration I sold all my L-glass.
As a consequence, I'm most familiar with Sigma and Sony lenses on crisp, clean, clear Sony sensor'd bodies. In general I love them. They are spectacular. And, yes, I'm still very much in love with my old "filled with character when shot wide open" manual focus Nikon Nikkors. There is lots for me to appreciate and enjoy on both old and new optics.
Lenses are seldom the determining factor in whether an image is "sharp"
or not. It turns out, film and sensors limit resolution. Lenses most of the time just come along for the ride.
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