well, I can ask Per and se what he's meaning is about infinity.

Can't believe this test is causing such heated debate before I've even done it haha

mpmendenhall wrote:
macrobild wrote:
NO , the lenses from Hasselblad/Fujinon is better regarding to Per Nordlund when I talked to him at Photokina in Cologne , Per is lens designer at Hasselblad Göteborg Sweden

You were expecting a company representative at a trade show to tell you his new lens designs were worse?


"The optics we're making today are inferior to our previous line. Honestly, if it weren't for brand loyalty and AF, I don't know that anyone would buy this crap." That's what I'd call signing off in style, since, if you're uttering those words, you no longer want to be a lens designer at Hasselblad.

I do believe that the Fuji lenses made for Hasselblad now are generally technically superior to the older Zeiss Hasselblad lenses, I just find them a bit sterile, except maybe the 100/2.2.

It's the Voigtlander Apo-Lanthar 180/4 that I would be most interested in being compared, but I suppose its both too rare and too expensive to include?

I hereby politely request that you not include the aforementioned Mamiya 200mm APO in the shootout, I want that lens and you will drive up the price.

freaklikeme wrote:
mpmendenhall wrote:
macrobild wrote:
NO , the lenses from Hasselblad/Fujinon is better regarding to Per Nordlund when I talked to him at Photokina in Cologne , Per is lens designer at Hasselblad Göteborg Sweden

You were expecting a company representative at a trade show to tell you his new lens designs were worse?


"The optics we're making today are inferior to our previous line. Honestly, if it weren't for brand loyalty and AF, I don't know that anyone would buy this crap." That's what I'd call signing off in style, since, if you're uttering those words, you no longer want to be a lens designer at Hasselblad.

You have talked to the lens designers from Hasselblad ? Seen the measurements and test results?

HMMM Lars Kjellberg and I have talked to Hasselblad many times about the new lenses .Lars is the person with the world largest real MTF tests made by Hasselblads MTF lab in Gothenburg
If you do not know who Lars is and what kind of experience he has and all the data Lars created using Hasselblad's optical bench in Sweden and tested several 100 of different lenses from 1990 and forward. I think you shall google the subject.
Lars , and also me are two persons who are not listen to different companies sails persons!! And Lars have been my mentor since 1978

http://www.photodo.com/topic_110.html
http://www.photodo.com/topic_138.html

1950 Born in Lund, Sweden
1968 Seriously started to take photographs
1969 Built his first darkroom
1974-79 Travelled with a camera to about 50 countries, including India, China, Papua New Guinea, New Zeeland and Haiti
1978 Taught photography for the first time
1979 Started to write about photography
1981-84 Wrote articles for the magazine Foto
1982-84 Worked as a professional photographer
1983 Wrote and published Materiallära för fotografer
1984-88 Taught photography at University of Göteborg, Sweden
1985-89 Wrote articles for the magazine Aktuell Fotografi
1988 Wrote and published Advanced B & W Technique 1
1989 Produced a video about the Zone System
1989 Wrote the manual about the Zone System for Hasselblad 205 TCC
1990 Produced a video about the Hasselblad 205TCC and the Zone System
1990-97 Wrote photo-technical articles for the Swedish National Encyclopedia
1990-92 Became technical editor of magazine Aktuell Fotografi
1992-97 Founded and worked as chief editor of Fotografi magazine
2000-present Co-founder and part owner of QPcard

carstenw wrote:
I do believe that the Fuji lenses made for Hasselblad now are generally technically superior to the older Zeiss Hasselblad lenses, I just find them a bit sterile, except maybe the 100/2.2.

Today lenses can be built with many more glass varieties than before, progress has been made both in the glass industry and Computational Models

While true, I don't see how it connects to what I wrote?

timballic wrote:
It's the Voigtlander Apo-Lanthar 180/4 that I would be most interested in being compared, but I suppose its both too rare and too expensive to include?

I have a copy, but I am having trouble getting more. I prefer to have at least 2-3 (for sample variation) as I do for the rest of the lenses in the test (well, I don't have multiple Leica 180/3.4's yet, but they're easy to find so I definitely will).

I've experimented with it some in the field and so far I can tell you it's a a great, sharp lens which seems to actually be apochromatic or nearly so (some manufacturers play fast and loose with that APO designation).

Thanks Lee. Looking forward to seeing some results.

A specific Hasselblad brochure that I was referring to is here: "The Evolution of Lenses", comparing the new HC 100/2.2 and 210/4 to the best-in-class of the much older generation Zeiss lenses 100/3.5 and 250/5.6 SA. A central theme of the brochure is trading slightly lower performance at infinity for higher performance at basically all other distances. Also mentioned is that the best performance with the new lenses is achieved with the help of software distortion, vignetting, and CA corrections (options not available for older lenses that needed to precisely correct these "in hardware"). It's not dishonest to say the new lenses are generally better; but not by the sweeping margins that 40 years of technology development sometimes brings.

and how will you then express the lens developments during the years?

Lee Saxon wrote:
(well, I don't have multiple Leica 180/3.4's yet, but they're easy to find so I definitely will).

I've experimented with it some in the field and so far I can tell you it's a a great, sharp lens which seems to actually be apochromatic or nearly so (some manufacturers play fast and loose with that APO designation).

+1 on the APO.

It would be cool if you could get a Pentax Q and an adapter EOS-Q and also test for resolving power in the center. It is a bit difficult to get critical focus with only 4x magnification in LV, but it is doable. I have done that with the Leica 180/3.4 vs Canon 70-200 F4 IS, and the Canon zoom had more resolving power in the center near infinity.

I have done it with a Nikon V1 and Nikon prime lenses , translated into 70Mp, at 24x36mm I think the border is about 60-70Mp which means no AA-filter needs with the most lenses and motive frequency/lines

Most of my good lenses exceed 200 lp/mm in resolving power at low MTF with the Q. My Canon 70-200 2.8 L IS II does at least 350 lp/mm, corresponding to about 400 MP. That is not even possible to measure directly with the Q sensor, I had to use a teleconverter.

Rayleigh at F2.8 leaves 0.15 in MTF. A resolution just 5% higher than Rayleigh leaves 0.00, i.e 0% contrast.
The best (commercial) lens I've ever measured was the Coastal 60mm UVIR, and even that had a loss-factor of about 1.05, meaning that it could (just barely) resolve detail at Rayleigh (<0.05 contrast, barely sharp enough to sharpen into visibility). Anything above this is physically impossible unless you use phased information like in a telescope array (a combination of multiple telescopes to get one image).

So lets say the Canon 70-200IS2 is as good (aberration free) as the CO lens, then you get a resulting limiting aperture of F2.8*1.05 = F2.94.

Rayleigh for F2.94 green >>> 1.22*0.550µm*2.94 = 1.97µm
1.97µm = 253lp/mm

It is physically impossible for that lens to resolve anything above ~250lp/mm.
If you want some hard proof of this, look into high-end microscopy or astro, where they take their resolutions seriously. In those fields you cannot wave resolution figures around without verifying them.

The 63X Zeiss LD Plan Neofluar® microscopy objective combined with a really, really good tube lens BARELY resolves the 1.5µm target at an MRS-5 Geller standard at an NA of 0.19 (~F2.6). The resulting MTF is 0.07 @ 1.5µm (the Pentax Q has a pixel pitch of 1.55µm). That LD Plan lens has aberrations at least an order of magnitude smaller than the 70-200...

I don't doubt that you get very good detail out of a good lens with the Q, but the Bayer system only needs 1.4x pixel pitch to start creating fictitious detail. To get reality-related detail you have to stay above this, no matter how good your interpolation algorithm is.

1.4*1.55µm = 2.17µm = 230lp/mm = the testing limit for the Pentax Q.

I would actually think that a medium-quality F2.0 lens would resolve more than that (at very low contrasts, but still possible to sharpen). F2.8? at very low contrast. F2.8 with 1.4x TC = F4.0? Definitely not. The image might look sharp, but the real detail resolution at real pixel level isn't there. It might be close, but not there.

Determining the resolution limit with a bayer-based sensor is really hard when you approach the upper limit of the system, so the error margins for "visual inspection" gets up into the "not really reliable at any level" when you try.

Lee, I would not be too fussed on the multiple sample front, if your aim is not purely a 'sharpness' derby. Though admittedly the thread is bending off in that general direction. I am much more interested in the overall perceivable photographic quality of images of the sort that regular photographers take, which looks to place me in the small niche of photographers down at the end of the distribution.

Michael, many thanks for the very informative paper at the end of that link, one well worth reading and the sentiments expressed (I feel) are also something of a response to how many people in this field view progress. As a landscape/travel guy who shoots in the world's clearest air - clean views of 40-50km are a given - infinity is often important.

Interesting the observation about using software as a crutch (my words) for aberrations to gain the better results at 'shorter than infinity' trade-off, in light of the spectacular performance of the RX1 lens despite its distortion which appears easily and effectively correctable in s/w.

theSuede, the recent edition of c't digital photography would be of some interest to you, if you have not seen it as yet, given carstens above comments re 'sterility'. Their magazine includes a DVD with images as well.

That's a fantastic quote, eh, FLM ;-)

theSuede,
there is a factor 2 between us. I will try to find out what it is. Maybe you can do it faster than me.

I agree about the testing limit of the Q at 230 lp/mm. So it is probably not in my resolution calculations.

Your Rayleigh -> lp/mm calculation would give 44 lp/mm at f/16. Is that correct?
Also there are claims of up to 400 lp/mm (from Zeiss)? That was surely not with a diffraction limited f/1.67 lens.

On the Q, I actually did measure 176 lp/mm from the 2.8 zoom with 2X, at aperture f/5.6.

I think it is in how we map the Rayleigh criterion into lines or line pairs.

When two airy disks intersect as the Rayleigh criterion, the maiximum of one coincides with the first null of the second. The distance between the maxima is then equal to the radius of the airy disc. The point is, these two maxima represent a line pair when they represent two bright lines with a dark line between them. So the Rayleigh criterion maps directly into line pairs per mm, not lines per mm.

Edit:

Yes, that is how it is.

Rayleigh for green at F2.95 is 500 lp/mm not 250 lp/mm.

Scroll down to diffraction:

http://www.normankoren.com/Tutorials/MTF1A.html