Originally posted by photoptimist As others have noted lens element count means almost nothing in terms of lens quality or rendering -- there's good and bad lenses of every element count.
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What's especially amusing is that lead glass is called "crystal" because it was actually used to imitate natural rock crystal and gemstones -- lead crystal is a fake knock-off of the natural material!
To me, lenses with character are wonderful but they are anything but natural. They actually impose the imperfections of their optical designs on the image. It's actually the clinical lens that creates the most objective and true image. Yet lenses with character are wonderful artistic tools.
You're spot on with all your points. But one...
Even the most advanced multicoating is not 100% effective. Each glass-to-air surface reflects back (instead of refracting and letting through) at least 7% of the incoming light. IIRC any uncoated element reflects as much as 30%. That's why for long time the glass-to-air surfaces were kept to a minimum, and the Planar (which actually predates other common designs like the Cooke triplet and the Tessar) was practically abandoned until the vacuum coating process was invented.
So the actual number of elements makes a difference, albeit not as relevant as in the past, even with modern multicoated objectives.
The author of the blog referenced by the OP presents a couple of concepts I wholeheartedly concur with (I love SOME vintage lenses), then he tries to conceptualize... covering everything with a whole load of BS.
Of course he knows about optical glass as much as I know about rocket science.
The choice of different types of optical glass is so wide nowadays, and so specialized, that really makes no sense to differentiate "crystal" from "normal" optical glass, based on lead content.
Excluding a few specialized optics possibly made for photography outside the visible spectrum, the only true crystal (quartz) lens I remember is a variant of the Struss portrait lens. Struss was the first Oscar award winner for motion picture photography, and earlier he devised a soft focus lens, aspheric and hand ground/polished, that was either made from optical glass or transparent quartz. The price of both was very high, with the same money you could buy three Ford model T!
If you dig through the pile of BS, you find some truth, though. Old low-elements optics often give pictures that are more "rounded". He is right about that, if you convert to grayscale there is a wider, richer spectrum of grays, especially visible at the two ends, deep shadows and strong highlights.
As I already mentioned a "proper" soft focus lens, I'm going to explain why it's naive to compare a lens to a computer.
You don't need a super clinic lens to capture the maximum of information, that could eventually be degraded/enhanced/morphed/whatever afterwards by an algorithm. It is the sensor that does it. All lenses provide the same amount of data. It's the quality of that data that is not the same.
Interpolation, or if you prefer fabricating pseudo sharpness in a slightly blurry image is almost as difficult as faking the exact sharpness-meets-halo of a true soft focus lens.
I'm sure there are bitmap wizards who can work with plug-ins and layers, plus a considerable amount of time, and get almost there... but it's not photography anymore, at least not the kind of photography I like. It gets pretty close to graphic art.
The day this kind of process is made as simple as a couple of clicks and available to everyone, it would be the programmer who makes most of the esthetic choices, not the photographer.
I like vintage optics, I really do, and because I do I also know that generalizing a judgment, either good or bad, makes no sense at all. I often shoot in manual focus, the pleasure of using a smooth, well built object with pleasant ergonomics have a positive impact on the quality of the pictures. Though build quality is secondary, if optical quality is not at the same level.
To be more precise, a vintage lens that is purchased with the intention to use it as a picture-taking tool has to give something that a reasonably priced modern zoom can't offer. Other way it's a collector item.
I'm fine with it, but I'm aware that the scope is different.
I own a large number of vintage lenses (BTW, most of them are linked to my signature, so whoever got curious can check my tastes) and I really treasure a few of them, but since the beginning I always tried to have a reasonable answer to the question "why I want to buy it?"
Of the many, many lenses I could mount on the K-1 that sits on the table in front of me while I'm writing these lines, very few were hoarded just for the sake of it. I tried to always have a reason. There can be many.
One is economical. I can't have the A Star 1.8/135mm, I'll buy a cheaper alternative!
Another one is affection, or historical interest. I thought that the last designs by a genius like Bertele should have been good enough, so I purchased the Schacht 2.8/35mm.
Then there is the pleasure of handling (and using!) a well made example of opto-mechanic, but the main reason is the hope, that with time becomes an educated guess, of finding a new paintbrush, or a new color for the palette, that would in some way help me develop my own humble way of painting with the camera.
There is no way a software algorithm could create the bubble bokeh of a Trioplan out of a far, out of focus highlight. Maybe one day it will, but I'm not holding my breath.
The same way, at a much subtle level, a simple design could help getting a fuller grayscale gradation, and a single coated, or even uncoated lens could get even further preventing "burning" the extreme highlights.
In the end, it's up to our own individual taste, with the caveat that when differences get subtler, the response of the casual viewer could differ from that of an educated eye... but all this has been already written, over and over
Originally posted by Rondec I think most folks judge photos based on lighting, composition and subject and less on rendering of a particular lens. The lenses that stand out most to me, that I can recognize right off without looking at exif, are those like the Soligor which are pretty rough, in my opinion, but I guess some people love them.
Of course you are right. In most pictures the choice of the lens is barely noticeable (if at all possible). In a few cases the particular lens "makes" the shot.
Regarding Soligor, I think it would be useful if you specified which lens you are referring to.
There are Soligors and Soligors... at that time, the worst of the worst were the Korean lenses, by almost unanimous consensus. I wouldn't use the name Soligor as an example of horrible optics. Maybe at the very end they rebranded some terrible Samyang... the same brand of a terrific 35mm I really treasure, and of a 24mm that I just bought with high expectations (with the hope it won't come decentered).
Things can change a lot over the years...
Back to Soligor, a few primes I own are quite good (the best are made by either Kino or Tokina). I have no zooms though.
EDIT
Re: flimsy AF construction.
I'm sure there are others more versed in optics who could go much deeper. I'm just reminding the readers that there are optical designs that are quite impervious to mis-spacing.
Move the central element of a simple Cooke triplet : you get a soft focus lens!
Change the distance of the two halves of a Plasmat, and you've only changed the conjugate the lens was optimized for (read: it will be better at infinity or at close range).
I suspect Pentax and other lens makers have considered the wobbliness of some AF lenses when they designed the relative optics.
Not sure if decentering can be easily compensated for. I'm totally ignorant in that regard
Cheers
Paolo