Luminous Landscape Forum
Equipment & Techniques => Cameras, Lenses and Shooting gear => Topic started by: Chris Kern on August 31, 2020, 06:10:14 pm
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Apparently, Fuji is about to introduce a 50mm f/1.0 lens for its crop-sensor cameras (https://www.fujirumors.com/fujinon-xf-50mm-f-1-0-announcement-on-sep-3-at-0100-am-new-york-time/) (i.e., 75mm equivalent).
I'm impressed, I guess, but curious about who actually would buy such a lens. Assuming it's sharp wide-open (at $1500 U.S., presumably it will be), the depth-of-field is going to be exceedingly narrow at typical portrait distances. Anybody have other ideas what other applications would be useful?
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It will be equivalent in angle of view and depth of field to a 75/1.5 lens - not particularly unusual.
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It will be equivalent in angle of view and depth of field to a 75/1.5 lens - not particularly unusual.
But is it common to shoot portraits at that wide an aperture? Assuming you nailed focus on the nearest eye, wouldn't the rest of the face be awfully soft? And if not portraits, what? I can't see shooting at 50mm f/1.0 (or 75mm f/1.5 equivalent) on the street at night, but maybe I'm missing something.
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One word: Rembrandt.
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One word: Rembrandt.
Well, I'm flattered. But while I'm certainly old, I hesitate to call myself a master.
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I don't think Rembrandt used a Fuji. ;)
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Well, I'm flattered. But while I'm certainly old, I hesitate to call myself a master.
Haha, Chris, I am sure you are a master in your own right, but I had something else in mind (sorry I didn't explain what I had in mind earlier, I thought I lot of people know it - plus I couldn't find the article I remembered seeing some time ago):
Rembrandt used that technique in his paintings, where one, closer eye, is sharp, in focus, while the other eye and other parts of the face on that side are slightly blurred.
Here is the closest article I could find today:
https://phys.org/news/2010-05-decodes-rembrandt-magic.html
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Rembrandt used that technique in his paintings, where one, closer eye, is sharp, in focus, while the other eye and other parts of the face on that side are slightly blurred.
I take your point. But everyone knows how primitive autofocus systems were in that era. Autoexposure was dodgy, too: notice how dark many of Rembrandt's portraits are.
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But is it common to shoot portraits at that wide an aperture? Assuming you nailed focus on the nearest eye, wouldn't the rest of the face be awfully soft? And if not portraits, what? I can't see shooting at 50mm f/1.0 (or 75mm f/1.5 equivalent) on the street at night, but maybe I'm missing something.
Head-and-shoulders? Probably not. But definitely for three-quarters and full-length portraits. For longer portraits, you can shoot wide open and still have the whole body in focus.
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But is it common to shoot portraits at that wide an aperture? Assuming you nailed focus on the nearest eye, wouldn't the rest of the face be awfully soft?...
Well, it will be soft. But is that really unacceptable? This is a result of 135/2.0 (trying to match the age of the Rembrandt model ;) )
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Well, it will be soft. But is that really unacceptable? This is a result of 135/2.0 (trying to match the age of the Rembrandt model ;) )
Yes, that works well. I've used the same selective-focus technique for that kind of shot: tightly-framed candid portrait, three-quarters profile:
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50144844476_4e8fc5abd4_w_d.jpg)
But my initial question wasn't whether it would be possible to find any application for a 50mm f/1.0 lens on a crop-sensor camera, but rather who would have sufficient use for one to be willing to spend $1500 U.S. for it. And it was a real question, not a rhetorical criticism of Fuji's decision to offer the product. Presumably they didn't design it for the apocryphal dentist with a closet full of unused Leica gear. My brother used to work for Fujifilm and they don't think that way.
Again, assuming the lens is optically good enough to be used wide open—and at that price, it ought to be—the two applications that immediately came to mind were portraiture and low-light shooting (e.g., streets at night). But it strikes me as a suboptimal aperture and focal length, respectively, for those two applications. At normal portrait distances, I think f/1.0 is going to be too shallow for most subjects. And for most low-light situations, at least in my experience, a shorter focal length (34mm or 23mm on a crop sensor) is almost always a better choice.
So what else am I missing? Other than the Rembrandt effect?
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We assume that a lens like that would be bought to use wide open, so I'd look to advantages in bokeh, sharpness, auto focus, weather sealing and use in low light compared to the other options.
It will be equivalent in angle of view and depth of field to a 75/1.5 lens - not particularly unusual.
Yes and no. The depth of field and f number don't change with crop factor. But the photographer to subject distance may.
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We assume that a lens like that would be bought to use wide open, so I'd look to advantages in bokeh, sharpness, auto focus, weather sealing and use in low light compared to the other options.
Yes and no. The depth of field and f number don't change with crop factor. But the photographer to subject distance may.
With the same subject framing, the depth of field certainly changes.
A 75mm lens on a full-frame camera will frame a subject identically, and at the same distance, to a 50mm lens on a 1.5x crop body.
At identical framing and focus distance, with an acceptable circle of confusion scaled to the same percentage of the frame (say, 0.03 for full-frame and 0.02 for the crop), the depth of field of a f/1.0 lens on the crop will be the same as that of an f/1.5 lens on the full frame.
I can show the maths that proves it, but can't type and copy equations on my phone.
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With the same subject framing, the depth of field certainly changes.
A 75mm lens on a full-frame camera will frame a subject identically, and at the same distance, to a 50mm lens on a 1.5x crop body.
At identical framing and focus distance, with an acceptable circle of confusion scaled to the same percentage of the frame (say, 0.03 for full-frame and 0.02 for the crop), the depth of field of a f/1.0 lens on the crop will be the same as that of an f/1.5 lens on the full frame.
I can show the maths that proves it, but can't type and copy equations on my phone.
Yep. Not expressing myself well.
Its not so much the sensor size as such, but rather the larger the sensor the closer the photographer may probably get, all things being equal. With the concomitant advantages (small DoF) and disadvantages (ditto).
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Yep. Not expressing myself well.
Its not so much the sensor size as such, but rather the larger the sensor the closer the photographer may probably get, all things being equal. With the concomitant advantages (small DoF) and disadvantages (ditto).
With a larger sensor, you don't move closer. That changes the composition. Instead, you need a longer focal length, but shoot from the same position.
For the same composition from the same position as a 50mm on 1.5x crop, you need a 75mm lens on full-frame. When shooting from the same position, 75mm f/1.5 on full-frame will give you the same DOF as 50mm f/1.0 on 1.5x crop.
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We're really talking about different things.
I don't have those lenses so I crop, stitch or move. Yes the composition changes. But this is more interesting for the photographer.
If I use a 100mm lens at f 2.8 on an APS-C and need 6 images for a stitch, have I achieved the medium format “look”?
Whatever, the "look" is something not achievable with a single shot from a full frame or crop sensor.
Same with cropping or moving. A photographer doesn't think about what an equivalent would be on some other system, he/she works with the limitations of what is at hand.
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from the archive,
critical focus / DOF
shot on FF 75/f2, lightly cropped,
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50318507103_a52a49183e_b.jpg)
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from the archive,
critical focus / DOF
shot on FF 75/f2, lightly cropped,
(https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/50318507103_a52a49183e_b.jpg)
Manoli, simply beautiful: literally.
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from the archive
Very nice.
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What I am wondering is why did Fujinon make a 50mm f/1 lens, when they already have 56mm f/1.2 which is practically the same, and a great portrait lens.
What comes to usefulness of having a super fast lens it really never hurts, except the neck and the wallet.
When I was still working I often used the Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 wide open for facial portraits. Either for some caricature effect (for cabinet ministers and PM...) or for nice soft focus effect, like in the attached sample. If you wonder about the funny hat, that is the high school graduation head gear traditionally used in Scandinavia.
Nikon D800e, Sigma Art 50mm at f/1.4 1/3200 sec.
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Keith, Chris,
Thank you.
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What I am wondering is why did Fujinon make a 50mm f/1 lens, when they already have 56mm f/1.2 which is practically the same, and a great portrait lens.
What comes to usefulness of having a super fast lens it really never hurts, except the neck and the wallet.
When I was still working I often used the Sigma Art 50mm f/1.4 wide open for facial portraits. Either for some caricature effect (for cabinet ministers and PM...) or for nice soft focus effect, like in the attached sample. If you wonder about the funny hat, that is the high school graduation head gear traditionally used in Scandinavia.
Nikon D800e, Sigma Art 50mm at f/1.4 1/3200 sec.
Because of focal length and f-stop equivalence between APS-C and full frame, your 50 f/1.4 would only be matched by a 75 mm @ f0.9 on APS-C sensors. I suppose the difference between a f/1.2 and f/1.0 lens was deemed sufficient by Fuji to introduce a new lens.
They should have released a f/0.95 lens to match Nikon in marketings terms (albeit with an APS-C sensor). Still a long way to go to match the f/0.7 lens that was used to shoot the candlelight scenes in Barry Lyndon on 70 mm film.
Meanwhile, a Voigtländer APO Lanthar 50 mm f/2 on E-Mount will get a very nice bokeh at full aperture at a very reasonable cost and size.
Cheers,
Fabien
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Current fashion, and maybe fashion going back to Rembrandt, is to have sharp eye(s) and the rest soft to a varying degree. Since the Sony eye focus feature arrived, I've really enjoyed photographing my grandchildren with my 85mm f/1.8 at f/2 and getting eyelash counting eye sharpness and not worrying about the rest.