philip_pj wrote:
We kind of need a parallel thread - 'which lens has the least 3D Pop?'
Step well back and watch the flood of entries, all scrabblling to be next at the turnstile. They do not need a Judas Goat.
Anyway, I had this Damascene realisation a little while back, and haven't picked up any APO lens since. I'll stick with the lovely little Voigtlander 50/3.5, and an old one, the 75/2.5 Heliar.
Anyway, I did this rugged walk in Tas in mid-winter and could not believe how flat this CV APO went. It would be a rough favorite for the title of flattest APO lens. I have scores like these below, different light, subjects.
This kind of photography is where I need my lenses to do well with depth perception, clarity and vitality, if not to actually shine. A few for your 'pleasure', and they were very tough to process to this stage. Never again. One of the problems is that until you see something better in your working environment, you don't know if it even exists. ...Show more →
With respect, I think the issue with these shots is the light and the composition and has nothing to do with the lens. I don't think any lens would produce something better. Until you can show two lenses shot at the same time with the same perspective and light, I will remain skeptical it is the lens.
philip_pj wrote:
We kind of need a parallel thread - 'which lens has the least 3D Pop?'
[...]
A few for your 'pleasure', and they were very tough to process to this stage. Never again. One of the problems is that until you see something better in your working environment, you don't know if it even exists.
This is like ads for dishwashers. "Hey, look how clean and nice everything is, also when using the wrong program!" I'm sorry Philip but this is too much.
Several members here have now asked you to post A/B test images. As you even haven't commented on these wises one have to assume you either are demonstrating integrity or don't care/dare.
philip_pj wrote:
We kind of need a parallel thread - 'which lens has the least 3D Pop?'
Step well back and watch the flood of entries, all scrabblling to be next at the turnstile. They do not need a Judas Goat.
Anyway, I had this Damascene realisation a little while back, and haven't picked up any APO lens since. I'll stick with the lovely little Voigtlander 50/3.5, and an old one, the 75/2.5 Heliar.
Anyway, I did this rugged walk in Tas in mid-winter and could not believe how flat this CV APO went. It would be a rough favorite for the title of flattest APO lens. I have scores like these below, different light, subjects.
This kind of photography is where I need my lenses to do well with depth perception, clarity and vitality, if not to actually shine. A few for your 'pleasure', and they were very tough to process to this stage. Never again. One of the problems is that until you see something better in your working environment, you don't know if it even exists. ...Show more →
Philip, I like your poetic and inspired writing style but the fact that you took these photos makes me think lesser of you. These are photos that are lacking any interst to a viewer, displaying ugly compositions, a mockery of landscape photography. I know you are a smart person thus I keep wondering if you took these photos deliberately (to support some of your ideas about "flat" lenses).
The photos you posted can be used as textbook examples of photos that shouldn't have been taken.
Unrelated, but how much time do you spend, on average, on processing the better photos you take, from raw? My guess, no longer than 5 min, correct?
Steve Spencer wrote:
With respect, I think the issue with these shots is the light and the composition and has nothing to do with the lens. I don't think any lens would produce something better. Until you can show two lenses shot at the same time with the same perspective and light, I will remain skeptical it is the lens.
I think you hit the nail on the head here. That's my biggest struggle - to find ways to make nice photos in bad light. So far, I have not found that unicorn lens though ... I'd say some are better than others though.
philip_pj wrote:
I did this rugged walk in Tas in mid-winter and could not believe how flat this CV APO went. It would be a rough favorite for the title of flattest APO lens.
I’m afraid that the difference between the lens you used and whatever lens you think is the Most Poppy-est Lens In The Entire Universe would not turn these photographs into something significantly different. (That's not a criticism of your photography — we've all encountered those situations in which the Photography Gods are not on our side.;-) )
These are simply tough conditions and subjects, and photographing them effectively takes some significant time and imagination and technique.The same photos made with a different lens would look largely the same.
I once heard someone relate a story about a photographer who was also a teacher. (It may have been Vincent Versace, but I’'m not certain.) To paraphrase as best as I can. The plot was that a student or workshop participant, using somewhat less sophisticated gear, remarked, essentially, that “if I could afford the gear you use my photographs could look as good as yours.” So the photographer replied, “I’ll switch gear with you and we’ll go make photographs.” It turned out at the end of the experiment that the gear was not what made the difference…
To be clear — because I can anticipate the response after having these discussions for decades — I am not saying that “gear does not matter,” nor am I saying that crappy gear is fine or that all gear is equal. That would be an absurdity in a medium that relies on equipment for its very existence. I am saying that it often doesn’t matter in the ways some think or with the magnitude that some hope.
Totally agree with what others on this page have expressed. Those photos (look terrible from a lighting and composition standpoint and) would look largely the same with another lens. I find some of his claims absurd. He's a Thypoch fanboy. I get the feeling he's probably getting incentivized to go on a voigtlander / Zeiss / Leica bashing spree. If you go read the Thypoch thread, you'll see what I mean. He posts mis-focussed portraits from the ZM 35/1.4 shot in terrible light and claims the lens is terrible and folks that like it are not seeing right. Several people have asked him to post some A-B comparisions and he simply won't. Don't talk the talk, if you can't walk the walk.
j4nu wrote:
I think you hit the nail on the head here. That's my biggest struggle - to find ways to make nice photos in bad light. So far, I have not found that unicorn lens though ... I'd say some are better than others though.
Jan, I am a great believer in the transformative power of PP.
Here is a random example, a photo before and after processing in Capture One.
Like others said this before, a lens can make a difference, and there are lenses that I personally came to like, and there are others that I don't like using, but the PP is way more important than that.
OM-1MarkII OLYMPUS M.300mm F4.0 lens300mmf/4.01/1250s200 ISO0.0 EV
OM-1MarkIIOLYMPUS M.300mm F4.0 lens300mmf/4.01/1250s200 ISO0.0 EV
ruthenium wrote:
Jan, I am a great believer in the transformative power of PP.
Here is a random example, a photo before and after processing in Capture One.
Like others said this before, a lens can make a difference, and there are lenses that I personally came to like, and there are others that I don't like using, but the PP is way more important than that.
And then there's personal taste. I, for example, much prefer the unedited image.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
And then there's personal taste. I, for example, much prefer the unedited image.
In general, and not specific to this particular bird image one way or another, photographers and viewers of photography prefer images that have been perfected during a post-processing stage, whether that involved processing time, dodging and burning, color correction, and film/paper choices in optical chemical photography or their analogs in digital photography.
And, of course, the above reaction to this photograph once again reminds that there is no agreement about what the “best” thing looks like, at least not beyond generally understood principles about color, focus, perspective, and many other aspects of composition.
ruthenium wrote:
Jan, I am a great believer in the transformative power of PP.
Here is a random example, a photo before and after processing in Capture One.
Like others said this before, a lens can make a difference, and there are lenses that I personally came to like, and there are others that I don't like using, but the PP is way more important than that.
Yeh, the PP’d image is exactly what your eyes seen. Why not add a big full moon as well?
If you want to show me an image that is exactly what your eyes have seen it had better be a three-dimensional one, not a two-dimensional one.
84 pages of blah, blah on the OP's question when everyone should know that the bottom of a pop bottle has the most 3D pop. Coke or Pepsi, take your pick.
Nifty Fifty wrote:
And then there's personal taste. I, for example, much prefer the unedited image.
This was only a technical example of how a flat image could be changed through post-processing. To me, it was an interesting exercise in PP, no more, no less - a random example, as I said. I am not a birder; this was a chance shot that I took, but the techniques are there that can be useful in general.
Regarding the colors - I am not interested in being faithful to the original. I don't do documental photography where realism can be important. However, in photography art, one is neither bound to reality, nor is restricted in manipulating and enchancing the colors to one's delight. Having said this, one thing that I don't do is adding moons, and I am not interested in similar AI additions, sky replacements, etc. (except occasional removing a "foreign" object from a scene, if this should work to improve the composition).
This seems like sort of an odd (absurd?) topic to warrant 84 pages of comments. Can someone summarize the decisions that have been reached after all this analyses? The last three pages don’t seem to conclude much.
Imagemaster wrote:
If you want to show me an image that is exactly what your eyes have seen it had better be a three-dimensional one, not a two-dimensional one.
84 pages of blah, blah on the OP's question when everyone should know that the bottom of a pop bottle has the most 3D pop. Coke or Pepsi, take your pick.
Yeh, but you know what I meant…yet you have to spout off. Your calling card.
@philip_pj even as someone who does feel strongly about different lens brands having different rendering styles, and I do feel that some lenses have more of a pop factor than others, those conditions would be hard for almost any lens. If I had to make photos in such a situation work I would definitely be in HDR territory and doing some serious post processing, probably well over an hour of editing per image. I would have also changed the framing or, ideally, used a wider focal length, which I have found helps in such harsh situations, if the situation allowed.
As for the color cast, which camera did you take these photos on? It reminds me of the Sony UV color cast, which is helped by adding a Zeiss UV filter. This seems to be related to the camera, not the lens.
If you do find a lens that can handle such situations better, it would be great to see an exact comparison because I would probably be adding it to my kit.
Basically 3D pop is combination of lighting gradient ratios and color/luminance/frequency contrast of subject/surroundings. This can be exaggerated by proper distancing or depth of field wrap of the subject. And as ruthenium noted, all of these can be created and modified in post now. I see the transformation all the time in cine-grading sessions.
About 90% of the examples in this thread don't have all three components listed above but only one. So everyone seems to have different standards, mostly likely factoring in an emotional component.
And yes, bigger sensor is always better. Cause physics and stuff.
ruthenium wrote:
I am a great believer in the transformative power of PP.
I would humbly suggest that post-processing belongs in a separate thread. This particular thread about lenses can be incredibly useful to photographers who shoot in JPEG mode and/or want superior results out-of-camera with little or no post-processing.
Rainbow Chaser wrote:
I would humbly suggest that post-processing belongs in a separate thread. This particular thread about lenses can be incredibly useful to photographers who shoot in JPEG mode and/or want superior results out-of-camera with little or no post-processing.
I know what you mean, and you are quite right, except that threads on FM have this seemingly inevitable and natural tendency to turn into a lovely exchange on totally irrelevant topics. Thus, this is quite normal in a way, because many of the FMers are here to socialize and have a pleasant chat and a pleasant time.
The idea of spending thousands and thousands of dollars on photography equipment while being not interested in processing the raw images is incomprehensible to me. To me, the time of taking the photos is like hunting, yet without the subsequent development this is like making the killing shot and then abandoning the game. I think that people who propagate the idea that one can do photography with minimal post-processing by acquiring a few exotic lenses do real harm on photography forums.
ruthenium wrote:
I know what you mean, and you are quite right, except that threads on FM have this seemingly inevitable and natural tendency to turn into a lovely exchange on totally irrelevant topics. Thus, this is quite normal in a way, because many of the FMers are here to socialize and have a pleasant chat and a pleasant time.
The idea of spending thousands and thousands of dollars on photography equipment while being not interested in processing the raw images is incomprehensible to me. To me, the time of taking the photos is like hunting, yet without the subsequent development this is like making the killing shot and then abandoning the game. I think that people who propagate the idea that one can do photography with minimal post-processing by acquiring a few exotic lenses do real harm on photography forums....Show more →
People all have different priorities. In the film days, many shot slide without any darkroom work, yet many shot film and lived in their darkrooms, One is not more “real photography” than the other…just differing needs. We surely can accommodate both here on FM.
... I'd say some are better than others though.
