1Ds Mark II, are the lenses going 2 be good enough

[russell a]

This comment is not directed at anyone in particular.  A photograph for which "sharpness" is its main claim to fame is a sad photograph indeed.  I would suggest that, if the time spent on test patterns were reallocated to getting out in the field and improving ones eye (or even looking at the history of photography to figure out the differences between your photographs and those you admire), it would be time well spent.  I see too many technically excellent photographs that are DOA.

[Ed Jack]

Not my normal territory this section of the forum, but a riveting read anyhow.. sort of "clash of the Titans" scenario

All very civilized really... it hasn't descended into the mindless petty bickering that characterises your average DP review forum just yet  :laugh:

I find that giving your lenses a good wipe on the outside surfaces just prior to image capture does no ends of good to sharpness ::


  Ed

[Jack Flesher]

sky shot falloff tests are pretty simple, so how about showing us?

No problem -- will take some for you the next time I have clear a blue sky here to photograph

And FTR, I don't think my 16-35 is anywhere near a "Super Lens"...  In fact, I'd love to find something better -- as good as my 35/1.4 -- and regardless of cost.  My 16-35 is however better than most other options I've compared it to in the 20mm range...

[Jack Flesher]

I had a patch of blue open up this evening so grabbed a few very quick sky shots with the 16-35.  From past tests, the 16 setting at f2.8 is the worst one for this lens and falloff, followed by (oddly enough?) the 28mm setting at f2.8.  By f4 at any focal setting, falloff is virtually a non-issue with this lens.  Unfortunately there was a slight veiling cloud cover remaining and it shows as slight hot spots to the sides, so this is not a pure test image.  Nonetheless, you can get an idea of the falloff, though slight, this lens produces.  

Many photographers working with the 11MP 1Ds have, in terms of resolution, felt that it was pushing Canon's best lenses.

So far I've shot about a thousand frames with a pre-production 1Ds Mark II, and though I haven't done any rigerous tests or comparisons yet (that'll wait till I get my own camera soon), my initial sense is that the 16MP simply exacerbates the situation.

In all likelyhood the 1Ds MKII will outresolve the vast majority of lenses available for it. This is not bad thing. Something has to be the limiting factor. But, I would imagine that those looking for image quality to compete with medium format digital will want to use Canon's prime L lenses.

I hope to have some definitive side-by-side comparisons against a Phase One 22 Megapixel P25 within the next few weeks.

Michael

[braindeadmac]

I saw an 18 on ebay a while ago, but it's disappeared.  18's and 21's are extremely difficult to find, new or used.  25, 28, and 35 are very common.  The reviews for 25 are not as good as 28.  Any reason you prefer 25?  In any case there's plenty of 25's on ebay right now.

There were a couple of 18s this week, but they came and went before I decided to act....One 21 listed now.

I like the 25 angle of view better than 28.  Never use 28 much, not sure why. It's probably because my first wide angles were the Nikkor 35 and 24 lenses. Had the 24 Nikkor (in AI and AFD versions) and own the Leica M 24 Apo...Wish the M lenses would work...When I have my 24-70 Canon, I often forget I can zoom...Old habits die very hard.

[didger]

My offer to test the ones you have against Canon prime glass remains open

Yeah, yeah, I kinda expected a message from you here about now
When a good time (that I for sure won't need my lenses for a while) comes I still want to do that.  I'm also waiting to see if someone (maybe Michael) will test the 1dsMKII with Zeiss lenses and his Canon ultrawide(s).  That would take care of two issues at once (Canon vs Zeiss and 1ds vs 1dsII).  In the meantime, it's a little hard to disregard a massive body of test results and reviews, including Photodo.  Your Canon 17-35mm Photodo 3.2.  Distagon 28mm Photodo 4.3.  That's not a small difference and Photodo testing is not to be casually dismissed.  There's also the matter of my own tests.  They're not so comprehensive and also not super precise, but all my test results have made sense and not been totally out of line with everybody else's.  How do YOU explain that everybody else got it wrong about Zeiss???

We all want our own stuff to be the best and no doubt my views also get distorted by this phenomenon, but the fact remains that yours is a lone voice about poor quality Zeiss distagons and your report of extremely good Canon 17-35 all around sharpness at 17mm is also pretty unique.  

I think the only way I could really feel totally settled with this is if I come to your house some time with my stuff and we both oversee the testing to be sure we're both happy about methodology.  I'm serious about that.  Once I get my camper done (slow tedious project) I could head your way from Yosemite some time and do a little seashore shooting on the way home.  I think whatever conclusions we come up with that way would be pretty rock solid and worth sharing with everybody.  I don't even mind if the results make me look like a dummy.  Nothing new there.  I want to learn and not necessarily win points for having the "prettiest" opinions on the forum.

Hey, do you know anyone that will be getting a 1ds MKII?  It would be really cool to do a full on lens and camera "test-a-thon", even if it turns out that some other folks will be doing this too.  You can never have too much information.  Maybe we could even scrounge a copy of that supposedly ultra fabulous new Tamron 17-35mm.

[Jack Flesher]

Jonathan's Yosemite waterfall picture even showed this corner softness in an 800 pixel wide image.  

And your Eastern Sierra shot showed SEVERE falloff from center to corner...  Did you ever figure out which lens it was you used?

[BJL]

... having more pixels than the lens can resolve will still give you better color accuracy (more sensor pixels will increase the accuracy of Bayer interpolation within lens-resolvable detail) and the additional pixels will decrease the visibility of sensor noise in prints ...

Indeed, my naive economic reckoning says that when the quality of one component can be improved more cheaply than that of another, you should push that "cheaper" component to the level of quality where it is not a major limiting factor. Let the cost of the most expensive component set you r limits. E.g., do not by expensive lenses and then use cheap film!

Sensors are probably heqading to the point where one can afford to have then outresolve the very expensive lens collection needed to match the latest 35mm format sensors,so I can see future improvements mostly removing sensor performance from the equation on resolution limits. "Excess" sensor resolution also eliminates moire problems and Bayer interpolation artifacts as mentioned, by "oversampling".

[didger]

it was indeed one of your Zeiss primes

I knew that for sure, but not which one.  Here's a set of crops to show top and bottom sky all the way across for 3 Zeiss lenses.  The big color differences are because I couldn't get blue all the way across in a single image, so there were obviously big auto white balance differences from one take to another.  All shots were at f8 pretty much dead center histogram wise and default PS conversion.  You can see significant falloff for 18mm but very little for 28 and 35.  It seems that for 35 bottom is better than top.  I'd be interested in seeing a comparable test of your 16-35 at those focal lengths and also your bad Zeiss lenses.  Are they worse than this?  Is the Canon zoom a lot better than this?  I wouldn't spend a lot of money just for less falloff than what my Zeisses have.  Even that much worse image I posted got totally fixed in most of the processing efforts.  Resolution is another issue, but I haven't seen any real difference in corner vs center for any of my lenses (the ones I kept), expect when I was shooting at too close a distance with the widest ones.  Also no CA.

[didger]

We can also deal with the falloff -- though not as easily -- using a mask in PS.

Mild falloff generally won't show at all in most images and even the pretty drastic falloff (most likely polarizer) of my image on that thread got automatically fixed for some people with whatever processing they were doing for other corrections.  Other people had to work a bit to fix the falloff.  You could only see the falloff in the sky in the first place, and there cloning can often come to your rescue if nothing else works.  Sure, no falloff would be best, but fixing BD easily is not really a free lunch either, since the interpolation required for distortion fixing introduces image degradation.  The falloff in that image was an extreme worst ever case (probably polarizer) and the images here were all f8.  I usually shoot at f11, so there would be slightly less falloff yet.  In any case, corner softeness is the biggie, since there's no cure for that.  You can't create lacking information out of nothing.  However, at this point I'm not willing to throw away Photodo and my own test results where corner sharpness is concerned for distagon wide primes.

[didger]

Well, if your lens isn't "super", and Zeiss distagons are not "super", that doesn't leave much in the way of ultrawide candidates super wise.  Now that I have my permanently attached to the camera panorama head, I can very easily do vertical pano shots with my 35mm or 50mm lens for stitching and that's a way to get truly super quality ultrawide shots, though if you're having to bracket for later blending it's a bit of a hassle to do the panorama thing, though it can be done.
I just wonder what people will do ultrawide wise with their 1dsMKII's if nothing is really quite good enough for a 1ds.

[didger]

Well, I'd say that for any real practical purpose, that's no fall off at all and if it's even better at f8 or so, then falloff for this  lens is essentially non existent, certainly way better than my Zeiss 18mm.  Well, falloff is not an issue over which I'd spend much extra money for improvement over what I have, but corner softness is another issue, and getting the definitive answer for that will have to wait for another day.