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gdanmitchell wrote:
Yup. I remember it. In it I'm describing about actual conversations with actual photographers with whom I shoot, a good number of who are fairly well-regarded and successful and several of whom have authored books that some of you may have read. You could well have taken some of their workshops as well, or perhaps seen their work in galleries. I'm not playing the name dropping game nor am I dragging their names into this sort of thread out of respect and friendship.
I stand completely behind what I wrote here. If you read it for what it actually says rather than for what you would like to twist it into, I don't see what is wrong or insulting about it. My friends and I are concerned about the performance of lenses (and cameras and printers and papers and much else) and we talk about these things. Sometimes we disagree and sometimes we change our minds, but in the end we are interested in understanding all of the things that go into making effective photographs.
Just as a later poster in this thread was, we are interested in issues such as resolution, contrast, performance across the image circle, how the lens performs at various apertures, focal lengths, and focus distances. We take this stuff seriously, to the extent that it has an effect on the quality of our photographs, and we go to great lengths to understand these things and their role in the production of photographs. Among these people, I cannot think of an occasion when the term "rendering" was used - I've only seen it in photography forums, where terms such as "3D effect" and "drawing" and all the rest seem to reside. Now I can accept that "rendering" has some very general and subjective meaning - which is pretty much what I wrote near the start of this thread - but it does not have an independent, concrete, and objective meaning, which is what I tried to briefly convey to the OP in my initial message. Saying "rendering" is roughly like saying "colorful" or "lovely" or "appealing" or "pop" or "three dimensional" rather than speaking of the things that might feed into or cause us to refer to these subjective qualities.
Two things in the present discussion tend to support my point of view, and I can locate these things in the posts of rendering believers and non-believers. First, all attempts to define what "rendering" is (in the photography context) have ended up describing a lot of other things rather than substantively defining something called "rendering." It might have something to do with contrast, or it might be color, or it might be resolution, or it might be something else, or perhaps some combination of some or all of these. Regardless, it is not one thing. Second, even if we accept that these things somehow might comprise the notion of "rendering" in the mind of one person, another person has a different idea of what the balance among the components that constitutes "rendering" might be.
As a definitive reference to anything concrete, "rendering" has a lot of problems. It may be something, but it certainly is hard to make the case that it is a definable, meaningful, single thing. Now /that does leave room for the notion that it is a subjective term that describes something personal and general/ like "how much I like the quality of the image the lens can produce."
In addition to being a photographer, I am, by academic training and profession, a person with background in music, a subject that I have taught at the college level for several decades. We have terms like this in music, too. For example, I can say that your instrument produces a "rich tone quality." That term may have some meaning, but it is extraordinarily subjective and contextual and cannot be attributed do a single characteristic. In fact, we disagree about what constitutes a "rich tone quality." In one context, a wonderful tone quality might be just right, but in another that "tone quality" might be regarded as entirely inappropriate.
Lens "quality" is a similar thing. Some want a lens that approaches some imagined ideal of specification "perfection" in some ways - high resolution, ability to resist halation even across small dimensions, uniform light transmission into the corners, absence of various sorts of optical distortion, etc. However, for others the very "distortions" that are seen as negatives in the first case are seen to produce "character," and one might like the "rendering" of a "flawed" lens. I can say that I think a lens produces a wonderful quality, but another photographer might well regard that quality as not so swell.
And, frankly, it is not a wild and crazy or offensive idea to note the photography is one of those endeavors in which the appeal of fancy gear can become overpowering. Now I most certainly do not hold that gear is unimportant, nor do I hold that getting the good and/or the right gear is a poor idea. If I thought that I would shoot with crap gear - and I don't. But I think that gear is only important in the context of how it enables me to produce these things called photographs. (If you are interested in gear for its own sake, fine. But be honest about that and understand the difference between a fixation on what you might regard as the gear with the best specifications and gear that is measured by its ability to produce photographs.)
I'll end by mentioning one of my photographer friends - one of the folks I was alluding to above. This person is highly regarded for his work in a particular and quite famous US location, associated with a very well known gallery in that location (and other galleries as well), has published books that I'm certain some readers of this forum have read, teaches individual and group workshops that I'm certain some at FM have attended, and is, all in all, a highly regarded and very successful photographer. (Heck, he's also a nice guy!) He uses two lenses, a Canon 17-40mm f/4 and a 70-200mm f/4.
Now, if you disagree with me, fine. And if you want to debate this, fine, too. But please try to do so on the basis of the actual issues rather than trying to find ways to portray me as some sort of horrible person, OK?
Take care,
Dan...Show more →
Insightful post!
Here are a bunch of photographs taken with a variety of lenses. Only the last couple were taken by me, the rest are from FM, I am posting only for the sake of discussion.
At least 4 from the set are from Canon lenses.
Each lens clearly has a character, that is repeatable under similar conditions for that lens. This character consists of elements (to paraphrase Jman) including: "bokeh, color accuracy, sharpness, macro and micro contrast, smoothness of transition from in-focus areas to out of focus areas. Smoothness and color of skin tones, etc.".
For some of these lenses the character is so strong it can uniquely identify the lens, almost forming a visual signature from the lens.
This is obviously subjective, but it goes beyond the idea of "colourful" or "appealing".
How do you and your knowledgeable friends discuss this concept holistically?
Thanks.
http://tswen.smugmug.com/Landscapes/Norwegian-Countryside/i-NT97RXF/0/XL/IMG4991-XL.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7280/7450543304_0e8a5e4596_h.jpg
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7276/7653146352_0d7e3c84d1_b.jpg
http://www.pbase.com/larsjohnsson/image/134908241/original.jpg
http://www.addictedtobeauty.ca/images/20110519-cherry_blossom_dreams.jpg
http://www.robert-chisholm.com/fred_miranda/IMG_2643_50_10.jpg
http://refers.florianbuetow.de/fm/canonef50mm10l/_MG_4400.jpg
http://www.lotuscreativeworks.com/photos/1007454638_meS9Z-L.jpg
http://www.lotuscreativeworks.com/photos/832173619_evGUG-L.jpg
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