p.2 #1 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
The curse of 36...56...? 100 MP 35mm sensors? Precious few present-day lenses will be "good enough" and as diffraction sets in earlier and earlier with these conventional sensors as MP count rises all the while photosite size shrinks, ƒ/4 will be all the stopping-down you get until non-Bayer sensors might change the game.
Hence, Zeiss and the 55/1.4 as precursor to another stratum of highly corrected glass few will be able to afford.
In Lloyd Chambers' recent excursions on the D800E, even the vaunted Leica R APO's show their weaknesses (and the Sigma 180 APO Macro made quite the showing against the Leica R 180 Elmarit APO).
The Coastal's cost is so crazy as unjustifiable for anything but specialized scientific applications. ...Show more →
Yeah one has to wonder how much more we can push it, till it's just not feasible to squeeze any more resolution out of a 35mm sized frame. So what's next, alternative sensor technologies, or just larger sensors.... or will we finally stop our resolution lust?
p.2 #3 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
andyjaggy82 wrote:
Yeah one has to wonder how much more we can push it, till it's just not feasible to squeeze any more resolution out of a 35mm sized frame. So what's next, alternative sensor technologies, or just larger sensors.... or will we finally stop our resolution lust?
Like the Rev. Malthus and his theory on population growth and food production, unanticipated technological advances resets the paradigm.
p.2 #4 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
The curse of 36...56...? 100 MP 35mm sensors? Precious few present-day lenses will be "good enough" and as diffraction sets in earlier and earlier with these conventional sensors as MP count rises all the while photosite size shrinks, ƒ/4 will be all the stopping-down you get until non-Bayer sensors might change the game.
Here you can see the "curse" of using a 360 Megapixels equivalent pixel density sensor with a lens that is only about average good quality among a large selection of available, reasonably priced lenses:
p.2 #5 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
Having a tiny chip utilize the best 15-20% central sharpness of a lens is no magical trick . The trick is doing so across the high rez frame (like a Leica S lens). The 'curse' referred to is buying into a high MP camera as many did with the D800, only to discover that half their lenses aren't up to the task.
p.2 #6 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
My experience with the D800 is that it resolves more with ALL my lenses, even out to the corners, than lower res cameras with the same lenses. I don't see it as a curse that the improvement isn't quite proportional to the sensor resolution difference in all cases.
p.2 #7 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
alundeb wrote:
My experience with the D800 is that it resolves more with ALL my lenses, even out to the corners, than lower res cameras with the same lenses. I don't see it as a curse that the improvement isn't quite proportional to the sensor resolution difference in all cases.
Perhaps so but you are likely shooting with decent lenses already. Doubtful they will all endure the next major MP jump.
Here is where I agree with Lloyd Chambers about the moaning re: high MP cameras; downsampling to ~18 MP results is wonderfully clean files with negligible noise. For the non-pro who doesn't require these large files for a shoot, down-sampling a 56 or 75 MP image will result in astounding 24 MP's worth of images.
p.2 #8 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
Alundeb, for reference, what lenses aren't meeting the abilities of the 800? Is it possible if all of them aren't doing well then your camera's sensor and mounting plane aren't inline?
What about lenses that DXO or Lens Rentals has confirmed as high performers on the 800 - are these working for you?
The Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G should give a good result.
p.2 #9 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
MaxBerlin wrote:
Alundeb, for reference, what lenses aren't meeting the abilities of the 800? Is it possible if all of them aren't doing well then your camera's sensor and mounting plane aren't inline?
What about lenses that DXO or Lens Rentals has confirmed as high performers on the 800 - are these working for you?
The Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm f/1.4G should give a good result.
Sorry, I wasn't clear enough. I have no issues with lenses on my D800. It is just the general observation that with lenses that are weak on a low-res sensor, we get only slightly higher system resolution on a high-res sensor.
p.2 #11 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
Perhaps so but you are likely shooting with decent lenses already. Doubtful they will all endure the next major MP jump.
Here is where I agree with Lloyd Chambers about the moaning re: high MP cameras; downsampling to ~18 MP results is wonderfully clean files with negligible noise. For the non-pro who doesn't require these large files for a shoot, down-sampling a 56 or 75 MP image will result in astounding 24 MP's worth of images.
Yes, they are decent lenses. It is the least of my concerns that they will reach diminishing return between 100 and 200 MP for central performance, and between 50 and 100 MP for corner performance. It is a while until we get there, and new lenses with raw performance above the Coastal Optics (in the visible spectrum) are arriving each year.
My concern is that such high res 35 mm sensors will not be made in the near future, and the only options for > 100 MP will be MF sensors in systems costing as much as a small house.
p.2 #12 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
I doubt you will wait that long. Canon has been lagging behind in sheer resolution with the intro of the 5DIII (though in real-life, the differences between it and the D800 were far less than expected according to a recent DxO comparison). On the contrary, I suspect that MF will suffer the most as the gap of resolution and DR narrows. Look at the Pentax 645D; the lenses available for it don't really allow that sensor to fully prove itself.
p.2 #13 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
There's always a tradeoff.
Like many I'd be willing to pay big $$ to get the best lenses and equipment. Maybe buy some Hassy Zeiss glass and overflow a D800e or medium format digital. But probably as as soon as I have that setup, I'll find it too heavy to lug and be willing to compromise for the rangefinder sized travel kit that can weigh and size less than just one of those Hasselblad lenses.
If you've been carrying a NEX7 the Nikon and Canon DSLRs seem pretty overwhelming at first glance.
p.2 #14 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
I doubt you will wait that long. Canon has been lagging behind in sheer resolution with the intro of the 5DIII (though in real-life, the differences between it and the D800 were far less than expected according to a recent DxO comparison). On the contrary, I suspect that MF will suffer the most as the gap of resolution and DR narrows. Look at the Pentax 645D; the lenses available for it don't really allow that sensor to fully prove itself.
For once, I have to put some flack on DxO, in their comparison they totally fail to state the premises they used. If their "information quality" metric was used, then they're using an MTF50 threshold on a light-starved target scenario - kind of like testing for resolution in a normal living room with a set shutter speed of 1/60s. To counter the lack of light, they increase ISO accordingly, to keep shutter speed the same. Then the noise is the limiting factor, not lens resolution.
In that scenario, the D3s (12MP) would actually have more resolution than both the 5Dmk3 and the D800 (if you lowered the lighting conditions another full stop).
In good light, daylight or in studio conditions, the resolution difference is very close to what the MP numbers indicate.
p.2 #15 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
I doubt you will wait that long. Canon has been lagging behind in sheer resolution with the intro of the 5DIII (though in real-life, the differences between it and the D800 were far less than expected according to a recent DxO
I am almost certain that the D800 has *greater* per pixel sharpness than the 5DIII. Where is the test which said this? There must be something else going on.
p.2 #17 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
I downloaded raw files from imaging-resource.com and opened them in CaptureOne 7. In some areas (like the fabric patches), the D800 resolves a bit more detail over the 5D3 than the numerical difference would suggest, especially in the red patches. Nothing in those images suggest that the D800 suffers in per-pixel sharpness.
p.2 #18 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
Here is the DxO report (scroll down for the comparative findings) and an additional commentary on the topic as a blog entry on Lloyd Chambers' site.
Greater per-pixel sharpness on the D800 but not to the extent one would naturally expect given the absolute numerical difference.
It is almost impossible to find out what the DXO metric actually is. But it seems to be based on actuance. When you want resolution, actuance is not a substitute for megapixels. You can sharpen a high res image with low actuance, but you cannot bring back fine detail that was not sampled in a high actuance low res image. The metric of P-mpix is misleading if you are looking for resolved image detail.
p.2 #19 · The greatest lens ever??? Coastal Optics 60mm f/4 UV-VIS-IR APO macro
j.liam wrote:
Here is the DxO report (scroll down for the comparative findings) and an additional commentary on the topic as a blog entry on Lloyd Chambers' site.
Greater per-pixel sharpness on the D800 but not to the extent one would naturally expect given the absolute numerical difference.
Erm, per-pixel means per pixel, and has nothing to do with total resolution.
