Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Medium Format / Film / Digital Backs – and Large Sensor Photography => Topic started by: avelpavel on May 28, 2012, 05:56:48 am
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Has anyone tested the 55mm and 110mm Schneider lenses about their bokeh quality? Lot of people cares only baout how razor sharp they are but I'm a bit disappointed with the general rendition of the image. I have made a test with a friend's 80mm LS and the highlights shape had come back to the Hasselblad V pentagrams (see the example). I would like to know if the other LS lenses are the same. By the way I love the RZ lenses bokeh so I would like to know it before investing so much money on the new Phase One lenses.
Many thanks
Rob
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I agree. RZ glass rendering > LS glass rendering. The LS (I have the 80) might be somewhat sharper wide open but as you say, its not all about sharpness. Having said that I'm happy with the 80LS! Its a very nice lens and I would sure miss it. I look at it as a complement to the RZ system, not a replacement. I think it more depends on your shooting style. In any case, don't sell the RZ :)
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Thanks Marko
I will stay with my RZ for a while, let's see what Photokina will bring!
Rob
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I think any lens with six blades or more will give better bokeh than say five and less...
I guess everyone has their own criteria for quality in lenses.
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(http://www.wentbackward.com/img/s2/v53/p533097081-5.jpg)
110 LS wide open if that helps at all.
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That's great bokeh for sure, but the lens blades are not visible. Let's try with f4 anf f5.6, this will tell the difference between good and bad one. The 80 LS costs about 2000€ and the 110 LS about 3290€, too much I think for 5 blades only.
Rob
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I think its more an issue of whether you want the conveniences afforded to you in a LS Digital lens. It has autofocus, it has a leaf shutter, these are the things you are paying for. Sharpness certainly is key for a lot of people, and I think that if it has all of these things going for it, bokeh can become less of an issue, especially considering medium formats large sensor effects on DOF already.
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Those of you using a LS Phase lens should do a focus-test with a Lens allign or alike.
You might be supriced..
I tested 2 80mm LS lenses, and they were both way off. Phase will adjust them.
What I don't understand is why not every lens is tested before they are sold.
These are expensive lenses and a minimum is correct focus?
Henrik
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Having shot many years with Schneider lenses on my 8x10 I was hoping for good bokeh with
Schneider LS lenses. Bokeh is nothing special wide open and stop down just one stop and it's not nice at all.
One of several reasons I dropped MFD.
That said the Mamiya 150mm 2.8 IF is really quite nice if you don't mind significant vignetting when wide open.
Pleasant vignetting actually for portraits.
IF you are looking for beautiful Bokeh the D800 with the 85mm 1.4g is the perfect combination.
Very accurate focusing with focusing points well spread out over the screen or even right in the corners in live view.
This makes it far more feasible to shoot dynamically with very shallow depth of field.
The Bokeh on the 85mm 1.4G is unmatched. It is also very smooth as you stop down thanks to the 9 blade rounded iris.
Here are a couple of images I found on flickr that shows this....
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7223/7216036158_636a0394f2_b.jpg)
(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7197/6923636574_dbb7c07809_b.jpg)
A lot more with this combo on his flickr pages:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-451/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/-451/)
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Those of you using a LS Phase lens should do a focus-test with a Lens allign or alike.
You might be supriced..
I tested 2 80mm LS lenses, and they were both way off. Phase will adjust them.
What I don't understand is why not every lens is tested before they are sold.
These are expensive lenses and a minimum is correct focus?
Henrik
Interesting, Henrik. "Way off" in what sense? Wrong "infinity" point?
Ray
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Interesting, Henrik. "Way off" in what sense? Wrong "infinity" point?
Ray
Hi Ray!
Mine was front-focusing. Most of he time the eyes were out of focus and the eyebrowns were in perfect focus.
I thought I was just missing a lot of shots, but after testing it I found the error. Phase one is adjusting it.
Hope to get it back soon.
Henrik
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I think that I have observed a difference between bokeh on film and bokeh with the same lens on digital.
My explanation? Digital can't handle gradation on highlights in the same way: it has a sharp cut-off point where it no longer looks smooth, and I believe that this effect affects the look of the lens's bokeh. Most of the bokeh that seems to appeal to people happens in the fairly burned out areas of backlighting, so there are problems if you work in strong light, even backlight, which formerly used to make for beautiful peope shots.
Rob C
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Not to hijack this thread, but with reference to my post above, you can see differences in bokeh on the same camera with the same lens at the same aperture with the only difference being the strength of the backlight. It makes the lens look like two different ones.
In both shots, the camera was a D700, the lens a manual 2.8/135 Nikkor, hand-held, with the ISO at 400. Lens was wide open at f2.8 in both shots.
Rob C
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I think any lens with six blades or more will give better bokeh than say five and less...
Yes indeed. I never use a lens with less than 8 blades for that reason (and very specially since I left stills for motion). I had many super sharp primes I sold with 5 blades, or even six ( 6 would be the minimum imo) and never found the bokeh pleasant.
I still have for ex an old Alco of 14 blades. The lens sharpness is so so but the defocuss is truly amazing. It's easy to had sharpness in post, but getting a beautifull bokeh no.
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Hi Ray!
Mine was front-focusing. Most of he time the eyes were out of focus and the eyebrowns were in perfect focus.
I thought I was just missing a lot of shots, but after testing it I found the error. Phase one is adjusting it.
Hope to get it back soon.
Henrik
I don't think this will solve your problem. The problem is the rather large size of the auto focusing area.
It is difficult to place it right on the eye only, it will nearly always include the eyebrow too. The sensor will
focus on the nearest object included in the focusing area.
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I don't think this will solve your problem. The problem is the rather large size of the auto focusing area.
It is difficult to place it right on the eye only, it will nearly always include the eyebrow too. The sensor will
focus on the nearest object included in the focusing area.
I think you have a point, but all tests we did confirmed the lens was frontfocusing.
I hope this will help some.
So what do you propose to solve these kind of problems with a high res back?
Manual focus is not an option on f.2,8 with a non-static object.
Is there any way to close the focus point down to a smaller point?
Henrik
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I best you use either the Mamiya RZ or the Fuji GX680 with a digital back for shallow depth of field work, best with a brightscreen focusing screen
I find the low magnification of the prism on the DF body to be inadequate for shooting wide open with very shallow depth of field.
The auto focusing is also inadequate due to the limited focusing points. Recomposition will shift the focus enough to be a problem
with the shallow depth of field of a MF lens at 2.8
A Fuji GX680 is a great side kick for a MF digital system. Kapture group makes adapters for digital backs.
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It's high time they came out with batman logo iris ;)
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It's a very different look I've grown accustom to.
I agree the Nikon 85 1.4 is legendary, so I use that when I want that look.
However, the 55mm LS and 80MM LS do different jobs.
Here's a glimpse with off-camera flash:
http://www.kern-photo.com/index.php/2012/08/einstein-640-vs-profoto-d1-w-phaseone-iq-head-to-head
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(http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7223/7216036158_636a0394f2_b.jpg)
There's something about this image that absolutely freaks me out.
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There's something about this image that absolutely freaks me out.
Actually, good catch. This picture seems to have post-processing blur applied. Making any judgements about OOF rendering moot...
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No blur added in post.
Look here for other shots by the same guy
http://www.flickr.com/photos/-451/ (http://www.flickr.com/photos/-451/)
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Not to hijack this thread, but with reference to my post above, you can see differences in bokeh on the same camera with the same lens at the same aperture with the only difference being the strength of the backlight. It makes the lens look like two different ones.
In both shots, the camera was a D700, the lens a manual 2.8/135 Nikkor, hand-held, with the ISO at 400. Lens was wide open at f2.8 in both shots.
Rob C
Probably also the subject being closer to the camera and possibly further away from the background helped with the second shot shown.
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One question that's come up before is how much of the Schneider look the phase mamiya lenses with that label really have. My understanding is that Schneider were brought in to consult on the design, but did not do the design themselves nor manufacturer these lenses. I wish I had made some comparison tests wide open when I had both the phase DF body and my AFi-ii 12 so I could post them here to illustrate, but the look wide open is not the same between the schneider phase and the schneider rollei (regardless of how much involvement schneider had in the lenses for the DF body).
Fred, have you ever used the Schneider Rollei MF fast lenses such as the 50/2.8, 80/2, 180/2.8 ? I think you'd like these lenses a LOT! And another MF lens for HB and Rollei that you might like is the zeiss 110/2....