Are Older Lenses Better Than Newer Lenses?

[splitimageview]

I’m kinda the opposite.

I don’t need crazy resolution like 60mp and I’m not obsessed about counting hairs on my dogs snout. 😁So I’m quite happy using old glass on a modern mid-range digital.

I’m guessing most of my glass was designed in the 70s, with the latest manufactured in the early 2000s.

I only have one native Z mount lens, and not because it’s an extraordinary optic; just for situations that require quick AF.

If I still shot cycling and motorsports I’m sure I’d have glass more appropriate for those subjects but I’m more than happy with the results with old glass.

Any difference I’d probably only notice if I were to shoot modern glass side by side with the old, and this wouldn’t necessarily make for a more meaningful or satisfying photograph.

This way I can have a much larger variety, too, outstanding performers that were obscenely expensive back in the day can be quite cheap today, with modern equivalents more expensive than ever.

 

[boojum]

I thought I had a great analogy of lenses and their applications on cameras depending on use. And the lenses we can call up have different characteristics and we can use those characteristics for what we are shooting. For flowers the Amotal is wonderful especially wide open or close to wide open. The new Mandler 35 is nice for bokeh, and so on. But there is another set of variables: the cameras. I got a camera whose color I did not like and asked around how to fix it. Some kind soul on FB said to play with white balance and so I did. I am at Kelvin 6K on all of this brand now and like the color more. Strange or radical? Not at all. I just opted for a digital version of film selection on the basis of results desired. AWB just was not cutting it.

So my supposed pat analogy fell flat. It can be a dance with the lens and WB being tuned for effect. This rabbit hole goes deeper than I first suspected. But the gain is more control over the image. Yes, I do shoot JPG. RAW, too, but I use and post JPG.

Are any of your folks playing with WB?

 

[Godfrey]

Working white balance is another tool in the image rendering process. I manipulate it as I deem necessary for a given scene, made with a given lens...

For example, this shot of my Kodak Retina RF collection had a sharp blue-yellow cast, due no doubt to the funny overcast light and the anti-UV coatings on my patio's glass doors. Captured with the Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c and XCD 21/4 lens in raw format, it was just a few moments touching the white balance that made it a good normal rendering:

Kodak Retina RF Kit
Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c + XCD 21mm f/4​

G

 

[p.giannakis]

. Case in point: at one time I had both the 50/1.8 AFD and AFS. Decided to let go of the AFS version because of the extreme onions in out of focus highlights

Yes, me too I had the newer 50/1.8 S. It was eerie how quietly and quickly it focuses but eventually I kept the 50/1.8 D and later added an 1.4D. Somehow I liked the rendering of the older D lens.

 

[Shadams]

Are any of your folks playing with WB?

Always. Or nearly so. I haven't shot an 18% card in years but I do monkey with things until I like how it looks.

I shoot jpg — between 25,000 and 50,000 frames a year. I don't have the time left in my life or even the inclination to shoot raw so I tweak the cameras such that editing is a selection process like I did with slides: "no-maybe-yes".

The amount of information hitting the screen and prints already far exceeds what I was getting from Kodachrome or C-prints so the loss of the extra data available in raw is moot. YMMV.

 

[boojum]

Always. Or nearly so. I haven't shot an 18% card in years but I do monkey with things until I like how it looks.

I shoot jpg — between 25,000 and 50,000 frames a year. I don't have the time left in my life or even the inclination to shoot raw so I tweak the cameras such that editing is a selection process like I did with slides: "no-maybe-yes".

The amount of information hitting the screen and prints already far exceeds what I was getting from Kodachrome or C-prints so the loss of the extra data available in raw is moot. YMMV.

We are singing from the same hymnal.

 

[wlewisiii]

I love my Nikon RF lenses.

I love my Pentax HD DA limited lenses on my K3.

It's all excellent.

 

[Archiver]

Recent lenses, especially wide angle lenses, rely heavily on in-camera correction for distortion and vignetting. This is revealed when using a raw processor that does not show the corrections. It's especially annoying when you're cough cough using a very old version of Lightroom that doesn't have corrections for recent lenses built in cough. 😅 Older lenses, and recent manual focus lenses, tend to be better corrected.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Working white balance is another tool in the image rendering process. I manipulate it as I deem necessary for a given scene, made with a given lens...

For example, this shot of my Kodak Retina RF collection had a sharp blue-yellow cast, due no doubt to the funny overcast light and the anti-UV coatings on my patio's glass doors. Captured with the Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c and XCD 21/4 lens in raw format, it was just a few moments touching the white balance that made it a good normal rendering:

Kodak Retina RF Kit
Hasselblad 907x/CFVII 50c + XCD 21mm f/4​

G

This image still has a blue overcast, at least on my MacBook screen. Not objectionably blue, but still blue.

But then I wouldn't have noticed that until you mentioned it...

An enviable collection of Retinas, BTW. They are, I've long thought, a greatly underrated film camera.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

I shoot jpg — between 25,000 and 50,000 frames a year. I don't have the time left in my life or even the inclination to shoot raw so I tweak the cameras such that editing is a selection process like I did with slides: "no-maybe-yes".

The brain boggles.

About ten years ago I did a tad less than 20,000 in southeast Asia in a 12 months period. I've long regretted this - about half that output still not yet properly catalogued and post processed (only a scant best of have been done). I look at them every now and then and sigh loudly. Okay. I'll do the rest some time later this year, or so I keep promising myself.

How many hard disks do you fill up every year?

And if you say Western Digital or Samsung, for sure will buy shares in whichever company. Profits guaranteed!!

 

[Bolo Kukus]

Hm. Many a bad picture has been taken with the very best lenses. And vice-versa.

The gist of all this discussion, I reckon, is the lens that suits you and the scene/subject and the camera you are using at the time, is the best lens to have. Whether young or old.

To capture an image, a 90 year old Elmar 50/3.5 will do as adequate a basic job of image-making as the latest whizzbang piece of glass from China or Europe or Japan. In the right hands, and given the inspiration.

Most of my photo colleagues are zoomies. I've had many of those in my time, the important ones at least. In the late 1980s I did a series in Melbourne with the much-maligned Nikon 43-86 zoom, on Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film, outdated, so obscure even in that time that I had to send it to a specialist lab in Adelaide for processing and IRRC I paid about 5x the usual cost to have it souped (I recall it was returned to me unmounted, rolled up in a Kodak plastic 35mm canister). I sold a few of those images to a US photo magazine - in that long ago era when publications actually paid better than pocket money for the images they used, now in the digicrap century all ancient history with a dose of FantasyLand - I never did find out if my photos were used. Eventually all my slides were returned. I still have them, now and then I enjoy taking them out of their Kodak yellow boxes and putting them thru my slide viewer, especially the multi chrome portraits of our now long-deceased house cats.

Currently for the fun of it I'm playing with a set of 1980s-1990s Takumar lenses I acquired from a late friend's estate. The lot has two zooms, a 35-105 all-metal zoom and a somewhat less robust 28-80 made of strong plastic I think but not really up to the build of the other lens. Also a 40/2.8, a 50/1.7 and a 28/2.8. To do this I had to buy two K&M adapters from China, one for my Fuji XE2 an done for the Nikon Z. Both adapters as well as the lenses cost me much less than a current Nikon Z zoom would, but as I've not yet put those adapted lenses to the test, I really do not know if the results will be up to the current Nikon quality standard.

Time will tell and I will be finding out.

As some may have deduced from all my posts, I seem to have enough lenses and cameras and other photo bits to set up my own camera store.

Were I to even consider this, my SO would soonest pack me off to a psychiatrist for a brain-check. SO's rationale seems to be, all oys for boys, cameras and suchlike keep me happily occupied and off the streets, well, at least for anything other than image-making. So yup, life's good.

 

[Archiver]

Hm. Many a bad picture has been taken with the very best lens. And vice-versa.

The gist of all this discussion, I reckon, is the lens that suits you and the scene/subject and the camera you are using at the time, is the best lens to have. Whether young or old.

Most of my photo colleagues are zoomsies. I've had almost all of those in my time, the important ones at least. In the late 1980s I did a series in Melbourne on the old Kodak Ektachrome Infrared film, outdated it was, so obscure even in that time that I had to send it to a specialist lab in Adelaide for processing and IRRC I paid about 5x the usual processing price to get it done. I sold some of those images to a US photo magazine - in that long ago era when publications actually paid better than pocket money for the images they used, now in the digicrap century all so much ancient history with a good dose of FantasyLand thrown in - tho' I never did find out if those photos were used or not. Eventually the slides were returned. I still have them, and now and then I enjoy taking them out of their Kodak yellow boxes and putting them thru my slide viewer, especially the multi chrome portraits of our now long-deceased house cats.

RIP your furry friends. 😢

Currently for the fun of it I'm playing with a set of 1980s-1990s Takumar lenses I acquired from a late friend's estate. The lot has two zooms, a 35-105 all-metal zoom and a somewhat less robust 28-80 made of strong plastic I think but not really up to the build of the other lens. Also a 40/2.8, a 50/1.7 and a 28/2.8. To do this I had to buy two K&M adapters from China, one for my Fuji XE2 an done for the Nikon Z. Both adapters as well as the lenses cost me much less than a current Nikon Z zoom would, but as I've not yet put those adapted lenses to the test, I really do not know if the results will be up to the current Nikon quality standard.

I'm sorry for the loss of your human friend, too. The Takumar lenses will have gobbets of character and will play very well with your Nikon mirrorless Z.

 

[Godfrey]

This image still has a blue overcast, at least on my MacBook screen. Not objectionably blue, but still blue.

But then I wouldn't have noticed that until you mentioned it...

An enviable collection of Retinas, BTW. They are, I've long thought, a greatly underrated film camera.

The slight blue cast is reflective of the slight blue cast in the actual scene since it was a sunlit photograph, lit by the wide open patio windows, on a day where the sky was cloudless and deep blue. If I correct out that slight blue sky cast, the rest of the colors become somewhat unnatural.

Thank you! Yes; to me, the Kodak Retina RF cameras of that era are just one small increment removed from the contemporary Leica Barnaks of that same time, with a similarly high quality lens set (although limited to three focal lengths), super quality build and feel. The Leica M stepped up the game by another increment, as did the later Contax, Nikon, Canon, et al. 😎

G

 

[Bolo Kukus]

The slight blue cast is reflective of the slight blue cast in the actual scene since it was a sunlit photograph, lit by the wide open patio windows, on a day where the sky was cloudless and deep blue. If I correct out that slight blue sky cast, the rest of the colors become somewhat unnatural.

Thank you! Yes; to me, the Kodak Retina RF cameras of that era are just one small increment removed from the contemporary Leica Barnaks of that same time, with a similarly high quality lens set (although limited to three focal lengths), super quality build and feel. The Leica M stepped up the game by another increment, as did the later Contax, Nikon, Canon, et al. 😎

G

No great need to do too much to that photo. It's a documentary image. We talk gazoodles of those every day. They serve a purpose and they satisfy. That's their strongest point.

Whether blue or green or Kodak magenta (remember those days?) is basically unimportant. At our ripe old ages, who wants to spend any more of our remaining valuable time staring at a computer screen any more than we needs must do, anyway...

 

[das]

I think that rangefinder lenses hit a performance wall by the 1970s-80s when multicoating became standard and SLR lenses when ASPH optics were introduced, which more or less leveled the playing field with RF lenses. 35mm film is an imperfect medium, and many lenses from the 50s-80s have only been truly appreciated when you see how sharp they are on modern flat sensors with precise focusing. For film, there is to me no reason to chase the latest and greatest because the arguably greatest lenses at each focal length have already been made and cost a fraction of what they were new.

The race to the top for digital will probably never end as someone pointed out above, you don't even need to design perfect lenses anymore as long as software is there to make the corrections.

 

[Bolo Kukus]

I think that rangefinder lenses hit a performance wall by the 1970s-80s when multicoating became standard and SLR lenses when ASPH optics were introduced, which more or less leveled the playing field with RF lenses. 35mm film is an imperfect medium, and many lenses from the 50s-80s have only been truly appreciated when you see how sharp they are on modern flat sensors with precise focusing. For film, there is to me no reason to chase the latest and greatest because the arguably greatest lenses at each focal length have already been made and cost a fraction of what they were new.

The race to the top for digital will probably never end as someone pointed out above, you don't even need to design perfect lenses anymore as long as software is there to make the corrections.

Well said.

The 1960s Pentax Takumars were legendary for their sharpness. I had several (all bought secondhand, as I did even then, in the '70s) and they did outstanding work in sharpness and color rendering. The story goes that the later '90s versions are not quite as sharp, but I've yet to read any reliable data confirming this. I also happen to have several of the latter (28, 40, 50/1.7, two zooms) acquired recently, as yet not put to the test on a Nikon Z but I intend to do all this in the very near future.

As one other RFF member/poster has previously confirmed, 1950s Schneider lenses for the Kodak Retina range are also no slouches in sharpness/colors/mid-tones.

I moved from Pentax to film Nikons (Nikkormats) in the late '70s and in the late '00s to digital with a D90. This now antique camera came with an 18-55 zoom kit lens that in the right hands can make tremendously good photos. Eventually when I had more disposable income to play with I bought Nikon D lenses, one by one, until I assembled my current kit, recently added to with two Z lenses, the 28 and 40. I'm looking for a 24-70 Z zoom that I can afford, but I'm patient and waiting for the right one to come my way. It's how I've always bought my gear and it suits me.

We all know HCB wasn't particularly impressed with high sharpness, which given the cameras and 35mm films of his generation wasn't a particularly easily achieved thing anyway. He photographed for publication, and even then newspapers, magazines and books of the time had tricks up their sleeve to improve the quality of their published images. In the '60s when I was a young writer-photographer two newspapers I freelanced for made good use of my images taken with a Yashica TLR, which were not as sharp as those from the Rolleiflex TLR I later bought. Even now when I revisit those in my scrapbooks those tear sheet news pix look good and sharp to me.

Today's software and notably AI can do wonders for even technically bad images, as several of my photographer friends are now busily proving. Old out of focus and badly exposed negatives and slides from decades ago are taking on new life.

The craze for improvements goes on and on, and in today's techno-world it's entirely possible that the camera and the lenses will soon become increasingly unimportant. The days of wall-size photo murals from iPhone images is well and truly here.

 

[Formerly presspass]

A lot depends on whether you are shooting digital or film. As to the effects of older lenses, see the work of James Ravilious and his documentary of rural England, He valued mid tones and found the early, uncoated Leica lenses worked better for him than the lenses that were current in the 1970s.


I prefer the early lenses for my film work. In addition to the mid tones, I like the haptics of early Nikon SLR lenses and prefer the pre-AI lenses to the AI and AIS ones. Again, I am using them for black and white film. I also appreciate Nikon keeping most of them with a 52mm filter thread. From 24 to 200, I can use the same filters.


With Leica, I enjoy the uncoated lenses and also find the Mandler designed lenses work well with black and white.

 

[phofseth]

The mere fact of functioning after turning the last century and some decennium milestones testify to well thought through construction of my old lenses.To get an impression of progress I mounted an old single-coated Angenieux 180mm and their more recent multicoated, apochromatic ,internal focus 180mm on my Nikon Z. Not much difference visible in the snaps, but the old lens was very much lighter and compact (but not at all so fast)

Recent glass types and coatings give designers more freedom and digital give options for correcting design faults.. Still the Summicrons and the Distagons.perform well on both my little digital CL and the heftier Nikon Z and I am pleased to avoid automation messing with settings. The much more recent Leitz L-mount wide zoom and the less wide Nikon kit lens also give me my preferred "Brueghel landscape painter detail". Nevertheless, the older glass has the advantage of being cheaper than the new, especially since I bought it when people believed newer were much better.

Recently I lit my slide projector and enjoyed looking at almost an entire wall of Kodachromes exposed with contemporary Japanese, Swiss and German glass. Nothing to complain about as to the optics. but without time travel, comparing results will remain impossible.

p.