p.6 #2 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
mortyb wrote:
Can't really explain why, but I much prefer the Hasselblad shot.
Probably in large part because it has a heck of a lot more detail/sharpness/contrast than a 35/1.2, wide open, struggling against typical ultra-fast lens aberrations to resolve the image at all. Even though most of the image is strongly blurred outside DOF, one thin patch of solidly rendered detail anchors the whole shot to an almost tangible reality.
p.6 #4 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
mortyb wrote:
Can't really explain why, but I much prefer the Hasselblad shot.
I think the 'bokeh' looks more natural or less artificial. On the sony, the circles in the background are far more prevalent. But maybe it's just differences in the background.
p.6 #5 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
mpmendenhall wrote:
Even though most of the image is strongly blurred outside DOF, one thin patch of solidly rendered detail anchors the whole shot to an almost tangible reality.
I think this is much of the explanation. Unfortunately, film isn't an option for me, so stitching it is.
p.6 #6 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
Access wrote:
I think the 'bokeh' looks more natural or less artificial. On the sony, the circles in the background are far more prevalent. But maybe it's just differences in the background.
That's interesting, because I think the bokeh of the Voigtländer is much better. I don't think I've seen any 35 mm lens for 24x36 that renders more beautiful, but unfortunately sharpness is terrible wide open. By the way, it shares many rendering properties with the Zeiss 50/1.5 Sonnar.
p.6 #7 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
I am not a fan of the rendering with that Hasselblad lens, but there are others which are brilliant. I have the CF version of the same lens you have, and will attempt something like this at some point to see if it might be better, although I doubt it. My Hasselblad happens to be an F model, so I might have to pick up a 110/2 again...
p.6 #9 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
I have been shooting m43 exclusively for the last 3 years... that was preceded by 30 years of mostly 35mm FF... thinking in equivalence will probably the least confusing approach for me until I die. Quibbling about the fine points of what exactly is equivalent is not useful when you actually understand how two systems compare...
mpmendenhall wrote:
When DSLRs were first being introduced, expensive and in crop-frame formats, "equivalence" comparison to the 24x36mm format was a useful concept --- every photographer would be intimately familiar with the ubiquitous "full frame" format, from disposable point-and-shoots to high end SLRs. These days, far fewer people "learning the ropes" with a first DSLR have much (if any) familiarity with the 24x36mm format; coming from cellphone and P&S cameras, it only adds confusion to expect people to first imagine an unfamiliar, mythical 24x36mm frame before "cropping" to common sensor formats.
I think the least confusing way to refer to lenses today would be by angular field of view (for their "native" mount) and entrance pupil diameter (instead of focal length and f-stop). A lens with equivalent numbers for these will "behave" the same regardless of format --- same image framing, depth of field, background blur, and noise limits in final image....Show more →
p.6 #10 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
I am a fan of MF b&w film!
carstenw wrote:
I am not a fan of the rendering with that Hasselblad lens, but there are others which are brilliant. I have the CF version of the same lens you have, and will attempt something like this at some point to see if it might be better, although I doubt it. My Hasselblad happens to be an F model, so I might have to pick up a 110/2 again...
p.6 #11 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
mh2000 wrote:
I have been shooting m43 exclusively for the last 3 years... that was preceded by 30 years of mostly 35mm FF... thinking in equivalence will probably the least confusing approach for me until I die.
For photographers with 30+ years of experience, it's a great idea to keep thinking in the terms that work for you. I'm not after changing anyone's established methods/understandings. My suggestions for terminology are aimed at how one describes lens parameters to new photographers, starting out with no firm understanding of what's actually going on --- I think that some particular ways to describe lenses can be a lot more intuitive, and avoid common beginner's misunderstandings, than the language typically used.
p.6 #12 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
--- Begin late-night rant mode ---
I think most of our common camera pedagogy dates back to the view camera era.
Playing around with a view camera is a wonderful experience. All the image-plane features of photography are right at your fingertips, at intuitive human scales. You can almost see the 3D image hanging in the air (upside-down) that the ground-glass focal plane captures slices of. Focal length is how far the lens is racked out in front of the camera. You can see the light rays being cut off as you open/close the aperture iris. Circles of confusion shrink and grow under the focus loupe. It's immediately obvious how angular field of view connects to focal length, following the lines of the tapered bellows from the ground glass out through the lens and into the world. There's no uncertainty about what happens when you put a bigger or smaller sheet of film in the camera.
For better and for worse, modern cameras are hermetically sealed black boxes that hide away all the functions that are laid bare to one's fingertips in a large format camera. You twiddle a knob or push a button, and the image gets sharper or blurrier, brighter or dimmer, without the obvious mechanical immediacy of sliding a ground-glass plate through a light cone. What goes on at the image plane is shrouded in mystery.
Our photography mentors' mentors' mentor probably used a view camera, and so the understanding handed down to us still mirrors this mindset. But all the things that were hands-on intuitive with a view camera are now abstract technicalities that we can at best sketch out with paper and trigonometry (or, at worst, memorize as magical incantations without underlying understanding).
I think we (as a community of people passing on our photographic knowledge to newcomers) should carefully re-think how to present photographic fundamentals in new ways that promote hands-on, intuitive understanding with present-day camera systems. What happens at the image plane is deeply buried inside modern compact cameras, understandable only theoretically; it's useful to shift emphasis to object-side descriptions of photography (things we can easily see/touch from outside the sealed camera). Replacing focal length and f-stop with field-of-view and entrance pupil size as primary lens descriptors is one example of this. Also, notions about exposure and ISO need to be re-thought in an era where massive linear dynamic range means we aren't chemically locking in fixed density values at the moment of capture (moving towards an ISO-less approach emphasizing quantum efficiency, photon counting noise, and well depth / dynamic range).
p.6 #13 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
I agree with both. For us old-dogs fist coming to a smaller than film format speaking in 35mm terms seems the way. For folks brand new to it that's a bit misleading and pupil & aov is easier and more accurate.
Either way however, after a person has experienced the length and aperture effects of a given model neither are needed - to know from seeing so-to-speak works best at that point...
p.6 #14 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
mpmendenhall wrote:
I think we (as a community of people passing on our photographic knowledge to newcomers) should carefully re-think how to present photographic fundamentals in new ways that promote hands-on, intuitive understanding with present-day camera systems.
You might as well try convincing the US to go Metric
For all that you are correct, i think the inertia built up over a hundred years is too great for any change. Maybe if light field imaging takes off and we all have no choice but to completely relearn how photos come about, but without some sort of disruptive step change like this i can't see us throwing out the existing terminology.
p.6 #16 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
thrice wrote:
I think we (as a community of photographers) should hoard our secrets and let the naive look upon us with awe. (just kidding of course... kinda)
Much as you are joking, in a sense thats what we do when we invent new terminolgy. The same happens in all trades of course - much "specialist knowledge" associated with a trade is just knowing and understanding the specific terminology that folk in the trade use. Sometimes this language is of course specific to a trade, but often it seems to me it is used to obfuscate obvious concepts and things that are already perfectly well described in common language in order to both hide how "non-specialist" the trade really is, and to create a hurdle to the ordinary person doing it without expensive training.
p.6 #18 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
Jabberwockt wrote:
Technical semantics aside, the "look" is just different between formats. I use to know a pair of identical twins, they look identical by any measure, but for some reason, after knowing them for some time, I instantly was able to recognize who was who. I don't know what it is about formats, but the same sort of logic applies, there are some small differences in larger formats that go beyond angles and DOF that aren't replicated in the smaller formats and the "look" isn't there. Not to say that it is bad, but just different.
p.6 #19 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
theSuede wrote:
I mean, most people don't even know the difference between exposure and "amount of light" - or why the difference is very important.
That situation isn't helped very much when poeple wanting to learn can read in Jordan's article today:
"What IS true is that the 75mm f/1.8 is not capable of the same ultra shallow depth of field as, say, something like the Canon 135mm f/2L on full frame. However, this is essentially the ONLY way that it is inferior. It passes the same amount of light, and it exposes as an f/1.8 lens because it IS an f/1.8 lens"
It really hurts for an engineer to see another engineer writing that.
p.6 #20 · “Full Frame Equivalence” and Why It Doesn’t Matter
Come on...you don't think it's MORE confusing to have people think of entrance pupils and the image circle than simply knowing that f/1.8 = f/1.8 regardless of lens, and that exposure is the same? You have to know that 'passes the same amount of light' in this instance is referring to light/area. If not, you're being intentionally obtuse. Plus, even though the image circle is larger and technically more light is gathered by a full frame 85/1.8 vs m4/3 75/1.8, the amount being captured by the image sensor is the same if both lenses are used on the same camera. Start going into the weeds with your suggestion and the audience will be completely lost. I probably should have chosen the Sony 135/1.8, and I might go back and change that to make it consistent, but come one...
Earlier in the article I already explain that a larger format captures more total light for the same exposure. There is no need to go deeper in depth. I'm not writing this as a technical article for publication in a physics journal. I'm writing an article to help newer photographers somewhat understand how their lenses work.
(just kidding of course... kinda)