gdanmitchell
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 Re: which lens has the most 3D POP? | |
jcolwell wrote:
Speaking of 3D POP, it looks like there's something fermenting in my Canon EF 500/4L IS. It's gonna blow!!  
That lens may or may not have actual “3D POP,” but it does look like it is about to pop!
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Garmadon wrote:
In my opinion contrast is as important as all other ingredients. You will not get depth in an image without taking care of composition light and subject placement , but also without good contrast. and in good I mean big range between white and black and also as many tones as you can have.
And going back into art and paintings , I believe contrast and tones in textures are a huge part of making it dimensional.
Do you think all lenses resolve contrast the same?
gdanmitchell wrote:
I’m glad to see yet another contributor recognizing that a) the non-lens factors are far more important than any lens-related factors and b) the lens-related factors are not about betting the one “best 3D pop” lens model but about basic things like using aperture and focal length. It isn’t that using the SummiZeissLeicagon X500B (1945 edition) 39.7mm ChromaSexAGon f/1.1 lens will do it — just that sometimes any f/1.4 lens will give you narrower DOF if that’s what you need.
(Narrow DOF is not _the_ definitive producer of dimensionality, but it can be one element in the photographer’s arsenal.)
The “less clinical lens” thing is less convincing to me. Compared to the other factors that suggest differences in distance (or “depth”) in an image — color, light, haze, perspective, etc. — the contribution of one particular imperfect lens over another is minimal.
Let’s take an example from this thread. Above someone posted a photograph made with the classic Holga. The Holga‘s attraction has been its “imperfections on steroids” quality from its cheap, funky optics.The example illustrates that, with a tone of softness around the edges and plentiful vignetting, plus a slightly wide angle.
What are we to make of that?
Is the conclusion that using super cheap, funky Holga optics is “the way” to reduce dimensionality? Really? If os, that would sort of put to death the notion that one needs to seek out some super-expensive and exotic lens in order to produce the effect, right?
Or, if sing a slightly wide lens, very soft edges, and a bunch of vignetting does the trick (and all of those are among the visual techniques that can work), then we just soften the edges in post, add some controlled vignetting, and maybe shoot wide open.
:-)
JD07 wrote:
I'm definitely on the team which says that whether a photo conveys a sense of three dimensionality is primarily due to things such as light and composition and colour/contrast, not the lens. It is all about the image having things in it which prompt the brain to "see" where items in the scene are relative to other items (whether it is one person in front of another or a person's nose in front of their ear, or whatever).
To the exent the lens is relevant, I think shallow depth of field can sometimes be useful, as the blurring of objects at different distances from the camera can provide prompts to interpret where things are relative to other things in the scene. To be clear though, I am not saying that a shallow depth of field is necessary to create 3D "pop". And in fact, I think it can be counter productive at times, eg a sharp lens with a subject in focus and a shallow depth of field can, at least if the background is the "right" (wrong!) distance away and especially if the light on the background is also different from the light on the subject, can (I believe) make it look as though the subject is something like a sticker stuck on in front of an image of the background (almost the opposite of "3D pop"!)
Another lens factor which I think possibly might be relevant is that (it seems to me) lenses which are perceived as less "clinical" tend to have more abberations, and I speculate that some types of abberations, perhaps thinks like LoCA and halation, tend to give objects slightly less well defined edges, and that may help prompt our brains to "see" an object as extending away or towards us, encouraging us to see a 3D object and helping to avoid the sticker look. So, I do wonder if you need to be a touch more careful / thoughtful with other factors such as lighting and composition if using some of the newer lenses which are very sharp and well corrected.
I'm unsure if what I have said about the potential contributions of a lens to 3D pop is correct, but that is how it seems to me. However, I think any contribution from the lens is relatively minor. As I have said, I think 3D pop is primarily determined by other factors, not the lens.
My 2 cents.
Trogir, Croatia:
I do not think that all lenses produce “identical” contrast… or identical much of anything else. ;-)
However, their contribution to contrast in the final image is extremely small, especially by comparison to the manipulation of contrast by the camera’s software (especially for those who shoot jpg) and even more so on the post-processing stage (for the rest of us who shoot raw).
And beyond that, contrast is just one aspect of what creates whatever quality it is we are looking for in finished photograph.
Again, I think a fine test of the real contribution of any factor to producing the effect of “dimensionality” is to ask whether a factor’s contribution is fundamental. For example, if we looked at 1000 images by 100 photographers who used some specific lens, would all of those iamges have this dimensional quality? I’d say no. (In fact, as a photographer I understand that only a small percentage of the exposures I make with achieve the quality I desire.) On the other hand, if we looked at 1000 photographs by 100 photographers who effectively used, say, lighting in ways that produce the desired effect we would find that they were made with scores of different lenses.
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