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Author Topic: lens character  (Read 6782 times)

bluekorn

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lens character
« on: January 10, 2017, 11:50:23 am »

There was an interesting post on another website the other day regarding "lens character" which made particular reference to many legacy lenses. There was also mention of a couple of digital lenses, one of them a Sony 55 which was considered to be just so good in every measurable way that no fault could be found with it on the bench. And yet, the author tired of the Sony quickly and found that he had put it away. Why? It lacked character.

Lens character is a new notion to me, a notion that considers something completely subjective, perhaps a crossover from the left brain to the right. I used to appreciate the old Leica brochures and some ads for the Pentax Limited lineup and perhaps lens character figures in the equation in those instances. It's hard to be specific about my question here because I'm not exactly sure what to ask but it has something to do with perceived qualities of lenses, not technical, that are appreciated by users.

Does anyone have interest in commenting on their experience in using the XF lenses from Fuji as it might pertain to whatever their understanding is of "lens character"?
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Morris Taub

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Re: lens character
« Reply #1 on: January 10, 2017, 12:17:12 pm »

I have four, five old Nikon ai-s lenses. I do like their character. Depending on the light they seem to render space and color in a completely different way that I really like. They are different from the af-d lenses I have. And both of those different from the af-s G lenses I have.

I can't explain what's happening. I'm no scientist. But the difference is there.

I suspect it's the way the lenses, the glass was/is made. The coatings or lack of coatings. And the old glass can have a lot more fringing going on. Easily corrected now in post. But there is something I really like about the old lenses. I should do a test of the same scene using the different glass. I have never compared that way. Probably never will.

Also. You can't give people credit for knowing what they are looking at. Some would probably hate the things I appreciate in the older glass. Some might agree. Image quality. Like trying to discuss religion or something.

short ps : No way to 'know', but I suspect over time the design philosophies have changed for the architects of our lenses. And the big change would be so many years designing for film, our film bodies, what that implied for lens design. Manufacture of the glass, how the lenses are put together, all the new technology available to todays lens designers have to impact 'character' in some ways. No?
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 05:50:57 am by Morris Taub »
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scyth

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Re: lens character
« Reply #2 on: January 10, 2017, 12:23:32 pm »

There was an interesting post on another website the other day regarding "lens character" which made particular reference to many legacy lenses. There was also mention of a couple of digital lenses, one of them a Sony 55 which was considered to be just so good in every measurable way that no fault could be found with it on the bench. And yet, the author tired of the Sony quickly and found that he had put it away. Why? It lacked character.

Lens character is a new notion to me, a notion that considers something completely subjective, perhaps a crossover from the left brain to the right. I used to appreciate the old Leica brochures and some ads for the Pentax Limited lineup and perhaps lens character figures in the equation in those instances. It's hard to be specific about my question here because I'm not exactly sure what to ask but it has something to do with perceived qualities of lenses, not technical, that are appreciated by users.

Does anyone have interest in commenting on their experience in using the XF lenses from Fuji as it might pertain to whatever their understanding is of "lens character"?

when some people can't find/frame/create a scene/object with a "character" they try to substitute that with a shot of something totally mundane but wide open with swirling bokeh / cat eyes / aberrations , etc ...
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Telecaster

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Re: lens character
« Reply #3 on: January 10, 2017, 04:56:12 pm »

I'd say every lens has a particular character, in the same way everyone speaks with an accent. But I think what most people mean by "character" is some quality or set of qualities outside the current norm(s). So the '60s/'70s Pentax lenses, for instance, have character because they're fairly low in contrast whereas high contrast is a typical property of current lenses.

I have to confess that I've never seen the character qualities often attributed to Leitz/Leica lenses. To me they look thoroughly neutral…maybe because they're what I used when I started paying serious attention to photography and to the ways different photos look. So to me (c. 1973) Nikkors were crisp & cold, Canons were more flattering & warm, Pentaxes were clear but gentle, etc. But the lenses I was using were just uncolored conduits of light.  :)

Ultimately I think meaningful character is something you put into your photos rather than something any piece of gear will give you. How do you see? IMO that matters way more than any particular tool you use to see with.

-Dave-
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kers

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Re: lens character
« Reply #4 on: January 10, 2017, 08:21:08 pm »

I do see a character of a lens... at least in some of my lenses...
The problem is it is usually not easy to show/ communicate because it is not one image, but when you have seen many of them building that character.
Since now many lenses can do 50MP i think the attention will draw to these qualities other than technical qualities.
Nikon came with its 58mm 1.8 lens, and for me it was just not sharp enough, but it has very good coatings, very strong colours and seems to have a shorter than usual DOF.
I have bought a Nikkor 300mm F4 PF lens and that one also has something special about it. It draws a beautiful image at close distances.
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Pieter Kers
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scooby70

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Re: lens character
« Reply #5 on: January 10, 2017, 09:44:10 pm »

I have the Sony FE 55mm f1.8 and when I first got it I compared it to the film era 50mm lenses I have and I found the new Sony, unsurprisingly, to be easily and obviously technically better than all of the other lenses.

What struck me in particular was the sharpness and clarity across the frame at wide apertures and this was something that the old film lenses just could not even begin to compete with. How good the Sony lens is did come as a surprise to me as I hadn't expected it to be that good. My previous benchmark had been the original Sigma 50mm f1.4 which I thought was an astonishingly good lens but the Sony eclipsed even that lens. The Sony is IMO a simply outstanding lens.

At the moment my favourite 50mm lens is an old Minolta Rokkor 50mm f1.2. When I first got this lens I thought it was complete rubbish and easily bettered by the Rokkor 50mm f1.4 I also have but I've since come to like the look that the f1.2 gives and not just at f1.2 plus it's a dual use lens... it can be used at f1.2 for a dreamy or even funky look or it can be stopped down to where it's less dreamy and funky and more just a sweet old lens.

For me the look is important. If I want the sort of nice look I can get from an old film era lens I can use an old lens which gives it and if I want a nice look which is also technically good I can use the FE 55mm.
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ErikKaffehr

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Re: lens character
« Reply #6 on: January 10, 2017, 11:47:36 pm »

Hi,

There are some differences between lenses.

- Some are sharp and som are less sharp.
- Some lenses have more flare and some have less flare, flare can have some flair.
- Most lenses have axial chroma at large apertures, purple green fringing in out of focus areas.
- Blur characteristics differ.

But much of the statements are myths. For instance there are often statements that say Leica lenses are sharp but have low contrast, or the have high contrast.

In the old times lenses didn't have advanced antireflex coatings. Lenses use air to glass interfaces to correct aberrations. But glass/air intrrfaces come with reflections and those reflections cause flare.

So, in the old times there was a compromise. Simple designs had less flare, but were not fully corrected. In the age of multicoated lenses this is much less of a problem.

The lens barrel is very important in keeping flare low. I have tried Photodiox, Novoflex and Kipon adapters with Hasselblad and Pentax 67 lenses on my A7rII and the Novoflex made a great difference.

Bokeh can be different. The way spherical aberration is corrected play an important role for background and foreground bokeh.

Once you stop down to say f/8 I wouldn't say I would expect a lot of difference between good lenses. There may be some colour rendering differences but I would expect that to be handled by proper application of white balance.

Best regards
Erik

I'd say every lens has a particular character, in the same way everyone speaks with an accent. But I think what most people mean by "character" is some quality or set of qualities outside the current norm(s). So the '60s/'70s Pentax lenses, for instance, have character because they're fairly low in contrast whereas high contrast is a typical property of current lenses.

I have to confess that I've never seen the character qualities often attributed to Leitz/Leica lenses. To me they look thoroughly neutral…maybe because they're what I used when I started paying serious attention to photography and to the ways different photos look. So to me (c. 1973) Nikkors were crisp & cold, Canons were more flattering & warm, Pentaxes were clear but gentle, etc. But the lenses I was using were just uncolored conduits of light.  :)

Ultimately I think meaningful character is something you put into your photos rather than something any piece of gear will give you. How do you see? IMO that matters way more than any particular tool you use to see with.

-Dave-
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jhemp

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Re: lens character
« Reply #7 on: January 10, 2017, 11:55:34 pm »

Lens character is a very subjective thing.  I tend to like lenses that exhibit a fair amount vignetting, and if they don't I will ad in some vignetting in post processing even though it never seems to look as good than if it naturally occurs in the lens.  Many people see vignetting as a lens error but I love it!  I have MANY lenses and currently may favorite all around lens is the Sony/zeiss 35mm f2.8 FE.  I make sure to turn off all lens corrections in the camera and then this lens just sings wide open with a wonderful vignetting character that really enhances the mood of images. There are other problems with this lens that I won't get into but I find it enjoyable to work with and thats probably the best compliment you can give a lens.
One last point, if you haven't shot with many different lenses it's hard to notice little character traits.  This takes years of shooting and also a good amount of researching other photographers work and finding out what they shoot with.  To me you mainly see character in prime lenses shot wide open or near wide open. Zooms seem to all look the same to me, especially the 70-200 zooms from all manufacturers(BORING). 
 

kers

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Re: lens character
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2017, 06:51:25 am »

.... Zooms seem to all look the same to me, especially the 70-200 zooms from all manufacturers(BORING). 

I don't agree, i have made very beautiful portraits with my 70-200 lens , in this case the nikkor 70-200 f2.8 VR II
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TonyVentourisPhotography

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Re: lens character
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2017, 10:29:38 am »

To be plain and simple, lens character is the sum of the parts.  What we usually "associate" with the term is the signature of the "flaws" working together.  Once a lens becomes flawless and too perfect people start calling its character clinical.  Kind of silly, but it is what it is.  The way the focus area transition to out of focus, the way microcontrast and detail is rendered, and the way points of light are rendered in frame seem to have a lot of impact on what people view as character in my opinion.  If you compare enough lenses, you will start seeing it.  You just have to know what you are looking for.  Some images will show it more than others as well.  Studio scenes with controlled lighting and F/8 will show it less while a wide open portrait focused to about 8 feet with plenty of background distance will show a little more.

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Tony
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Krug

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Re: lens character
« Reply #10 on: January 11, 2017, 10:30:30 am »

I agree with Kers about some zooms having "character" - I made some gorgeous (imho) portraits with the old Minolta 80-200 2.8 and my current favourite lenses on the Sony a7rii are the Contax G 45 and 90 lenses - cannot exactly put my finger on why but when I look through images the ones that I pause over are very often from those two.
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TonyVentourisPhotography

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Re: lens character
« Reply #11 on: January 11, 2017, 11:35:18 am »

I have a Canon UV filter that is supposed to be just a clear filter...  it's sooo flawed that I decided not to toss it.  I stick it over lenses and I have instant glow, soft focus, and flare!  Perfect for high key music video work that needs to look dreamy.  I can't believe I ever found a use for it.  How did the glass get so bad?  And to think a UV filter...

Same reason lenses like the Petzval lens, and other vintage lenses come back around.  Their flaws are so great that it becomes a "look."  And people pay money for it!  Then again people also pay money to not have flaws.  Case in point, Leica ASPH 50mm F/2.  Insane.
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Tony
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Hywel

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Re: lens character
« Reply #12 on: January 11, 2017, 12:09:16 pm »

Lenses do have different characters- the feeling they evoke in different scenes can be radically different.

In still photography though I feel that most often we regard character as a failing.

I happen to love lens flare, but only in lenses where you have to work to provoke it, like my Hasselblad HC 80mm which gives a gorgeous atmospheric purple haze when a hairlight or the sun is just out of frame and pointing right at camera. A similar scene with a film-era 35mm Canon prime had so much flare that it almost obliterated the subject. Putting a lens hood on the Hasselblad almost eliminates the flare, but also eliminates a certain retro glamour when shooting pretty girls into the light of the setting sun.

So "character" is a lens defect I like, I guess. Of course, the character of the lens starts with its focal length and aperture setting. The feeling of an 85 mm lens at f/1.4 is not the same as a 20 mm lens at f/11! But beyond that, one person's character is probably someone else's unacceptable defect. As someone else said higher up, I like vignetting so much that I not only turn the corrections off in post, but usually slap on a great big 1+ stop vignette on top of whatever the lens delivered. Nonetheless, I can see that vignetting is a flaw.



The game changes completely in movie pictures. A lens that I find almost unusable for stills like a Russian 58mm f/2 that's soft, vignettes, flares and generally looks like rubbish in stills suddenly looks magical when doing a dolly shot through a string of Christmas lights  on a backlit subject.

I have an anamorphic adaptor on an elderly Canon stock zoom specifically for blue anamorphic flares, squashed bokeh and the like. Point that at a few practical lights on a darkened set and instantly you get that "Die Hard" action movies vibe. You can enhance it or play it down, but nothing gives you that look and feel like having the right lens in front of the camera.

I think it is also interesting that Cine lenses, which are expensive and "perfect" beyond the dreams of many stills lenses, are too perfect for a lot of uses. You'll hardly find an Arri Master Prime being used without some sort of diffusion in front of the lens (at least not for shooting people). Its like the design has taken so much character out of the lens that you need to put it back with halation, halos around light sources, and the flattering effect on skin tones of black mist diffusion.


All in all, I do have favourite lenses for favourite things, and they are not all created equal. I think there's something close to magical with my Hasselblad HC 80mm, the Sony 85mm f/1.4 GM, the 55mm Russian tank, the wide-angle shallow DoF combo of the 35mm Sony f/1.4 (which I've either got lucky and got a good copy of, or which I find endearing where others find it annoying).

I have similar effective focal length/aperture combinations in other systems, like my old Canon 85mm prime. It was a favourite lens for a few years, but the Sony is better by every metric and that includes how much I like the results. It's like seeing the same character only in high definition, somehow.

I've also had a few lenses which I've just not loved over the years: the 100mm Canon macro from film era was shockingly sharp and unflattering on skin, I never really warmed to the 16-35mm Canon f/2.8 Mark I, and the Panasonic 12-25mm f/2.8 never comes out and about with me- I always choose an older Olympus four-thirds 12-60mm f/2.8-4 instead. Not particularly because of the longer reach, but because when I look back at my favourite shots from the GH4, I took most of them with that lens.

Sure, we can wax lyrical and we're probably imagining half of what we call lens character. But objectively there clearly ARE factors which determine a look (remember the anamorphic flares...) and I think subtle character can lead us to enjoy using one lens much more than another.

Cheers, Hywel
« Last Edit: January 11, 2017, 12:12:30 pm by Hywel »
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myotis

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Re: lens character
« Reply #13 on: January 11, 2017, 12:46:52 pm »

Lens character is a new notion to me, a notion that considers something completely subjective, perhaps a crossover from the left brain to the right.

I'm not sure if there is any truth in it, but the story was that after Leitz had finished with all the scientific aspects of a lens design, they would build prototypes of slightly different designs, and subjectively decide on the production design based on how well finished prints exhibited the "leica" quality/character they were trying to provide.

There was an interesting follow up to this story when Leica introduced the Leica Digilux, which was not getting especially good reviews for image quality and Leica were bullying reviewers into making prints before passing judgment. The reviewers who took this advice changed their mind about  the image quality.

Hopefully, those with better and more accurate memories, can correct the errors in the above.

Cheers,

Graham



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Paulo Bizarro

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Re: lens character
« Reply #14 on: January 11, 2017, 02:09:29 pm »

Refering to the OP about Fuji X lenses, my experience as follos:

- the XF 14 f2.8 was a great wide angle, sharp and very good colours and flare resistant. IMO, surpassed by the Zeiss Loxia 21 onoy in the small format world.

- the lens on the fuji X100 series is very good too, Sharp enough and flare resistant enough, renders street and people very nicely.Possbily not so good asother lenses for critical landscape shots, but then, who uses a compact camera for that:)

TonyVentourisPhotography

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Re: lens character
« Reply #15 on: January 11, 2017, 03:21:00 pm »

Actually...the X100 is quite usable for landscape and such.  I used to carry it around as a backup with filter adapters.  I've known a couple other landscape photographers that used one too.  Only downside is it is a pain to use with ND grads because of the refresh.  You have to keep locking depth of field preview or half exposing while adjusting. 

Regardless...the rendering is great, and actually very similar to the 23 1.4 that is offered.  Im curious to see how similar it is to their new F/2 lens as well.  X100 bayer version is my favorite.  I'm not an x-trans fan at all.  However, it was close enough to a Leica M and 35mm that I let go of my Leica.  It was smaller, lighter, quieter, just as fast, had a built in ND filter, could close focus, had the evf and ovf... it out leica-ed Leica!  The rendering was very similar too.  Fuji went for gold with the original X100. 
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Tony
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Telecaster

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Re: lens character
« Reply #16 on: January 12, 2017, 04:05:10 pm »

My 50mm Zeiss ZM C Sonnar is the most flawed lens I've worked with.

Love it.

This lens design is among my favorites too. I have a bunch of 'em, from uncoated 1930s Zeiss Jenas up through an excellent early Soviet Jupiter in LTM. In fact it's probably the only lens I can identify with any degree of reliability (which is to say, some but not that much) from photos taken with it. There's a graininess to its out-of-focus character in the f/1.5–2.0 range that, once spotted, becomes easily noticeable once noticed, becomes easily spotted.

-Dave-
« Last Edit: January 14, 2017, 04:28:05 pm by Telecaster »
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bluekorn

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Re: lens character
« Reply #17 on: January 13, 2017, 07:07:09 pm »

So many of you responded that lenses do have character, special qualities that make the rendering attractive to the individual.

Here's something I copied from 16:9 website in May of '08

"The mystery was that Minolta never made a camera to match the professional appeal of the lenses. So pros moved on to Canon and Nikon. And though their loyalty to Minolta glass was broadly supplanted by relationships with optical stars of a different stripe, many working shooters missed the Minolta drawing style: lush colour, smoother-than-smooth bokeh and an appealing rendition that eschews the dramatically contrasty nature of Canon and Nikon lenses in favour of a Leica-flavoured, high-res presentation that gently rolls off the tonal extremes for open shadows and well-tamed highlights."

I could easily be wrong about this bu I think this was spoken mainly to photographers and printers from the film era. Leica mystique aside I love the language this person used to describe a felt result. But is it possible, now that we have entered a digital age where post processing seems paramount, that any lens meeting reasonable minimum standards could be made to achieve through post processing, affects once considered unique to the glass, unique to the lenses ability to render attractive subjective qualities?

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degrub

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Re: lens character
« Reply #18 on: January 13, 2017, 07:36:14 pm »

Even the camera obscura has a distinct 'drawing style' no glass needed. Sure you could get close manipulating the data just like with 'film profiles'. I prefer to render with the glass that gets the look i want. There is only so much you can do to the data though without causing problems and spending more time in post rather than shooting. So i would start as close to the look i want as i can afford.

Frank
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bluekorn

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Re: lens character
« Reply #19 on: January 14, 2017, 12:52:07 pm »

"Ultimately I think meaningful character is something you put into your photos rather than something any piece of gear will give you. How do you see? IMO that matters way more than any particular tool you use to see with." Dave

So the comment from Dave makes good sense and is not really in opposition to what Frank has just stated but rather speaks to the whole creative process of making a photo.  Franks comment is about an initial step and it makes sense to me that I want my choice of lens to be significant when I'm holding it up in front of my face to get a shot. For some reason I too am sold on the notion that "drawing style" is inherent to the lens, subtle as it may be. Again, as Frank has said, "I prefer to render with the glass that gets the look I want".

So I'm new to this idea and I don't have the glass yet and the look I want is a work in progress, but I do know it will be Fuji X glass. I'm looking for a head start through the experience of others. Speaking only of the Fuji X lens line up, does anyone feel that any of these modern primes have characteristics beyond clarity and sharpness that render with a particular drawing style?
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