mich rassena
Well-known
I've recently gotten into adapting lenses from 35mm to micro 4/3 in a big way. I have a small selection of adapters and quite a few lenses from most major camera systems (Canon, Nikon, Pentax, etc) and quite a handful of CCTV and cine lenses.
I wonder if all the worry about vignetting and sharpness, etc, was really only relevant when using slide film. If you're using these lenses on a digital system, a little bit is easy to remove in post, chromatic aberration can be reduced or eliminated, and a little bit of apparent sharpness can be added. None of these will make a bad lens good, but with judicious post-processing you can eliminate the minor differences between good prime lenses.
Some of my lenses don't cover the sensor with their image circle, there's a strong black area around the image, there's nothing to be done with that. A few that I use have such strong vignetting and field curvature that panoramic stitching is challenging and not worth the trouble. So "bad" lenses exist. Though there's something to be said for using them for special effects. Even if you don't buy into the LOMO thing at the price point that company is asking, there is something compelling about using lenses which not only fail at perfection, but don't even strive for it. It can force you to be more creative. I recall I bit of faint praise I once received about one of my photos: "It sure is sharp". I'd much prefer that the observer of my work notice and comment on the subject or the composition.
As far as sharpness goes, all I really care about is if the subject is properly in focus and the regions which should be sharp, are sharp. What I've found on the micro 4/3 camera I have that most prime lenses resolve beyond what a single photo at the base ISO can render. There's just too much noise even at that level. I take multiple shots and combine them, eliminating noise, and there is more detail uncovered. So that tells me the lenses are good enough. Maybe if I had a full frame mirrorless it could keep up.
As someone said upthread, the real advances in the last 30 years, beyond autofocus, is what relative to the 1950s classic formulas would be exotic lenses: ultrawides, superzoom 10x telephotos, super-fast wides. None of these existed in any quantity 50 years ago. A lot of these push the envelope, so perhaps there is quite a lot of room for improvement, especially at the edges of the image circle. I can't afford any of these, so I wouldn't know.
I wonder if all the worry about vignetting and sharpness, etc, was really only relevant when using slide film. If you're using these lenses on a digital system, a little bit is easy to remove in post, chromatic aberration can be reduced or eliminated, and a little bit of apparent sharpness can be added. None of these will make a bad lens good, but with judicious post-processing you can eliminate the minor differences between good prime lenses.
Some of my lenses don't cover the sensor with their image circle, there's a strong black area around the image, there's nothing to be done with that. A few that I use have such strong vignetting and field curvature that panoramic stitching is challenging and not worth the trouble. So "bad" lenses exist. Though there's something to be said for using them for special effects. Even if you don't buy into the LOMO thing at the price point that company is asking, there is something compelling about using lenses which not only fail at perfection, but don't even strive for it. It can force you to be more creative. I recall I bit of faint praise I once received about one of my photos: "It sure is sharp". I'd much prefer that the observer of my work notice and comment on the subject or the composition.
As far as sharpness goes, all I really care about is if the subject is properly in focus and the regions which should be sharp, are sharp. What I've found on the micro 4/3 camera I have that most prime lenses resolve beyond what a single photo at the base ISO can render. There's just too much noise even at that level. I take multiple shots and combine them, eliminating noise, and there is more detail uncovered. So that tells me the lenses are good enough. Maybe if I had a full frame mirrorless it could keep up.
As someone said upthread, the real advances in the last 30 years, beyond autofocus, is what relative to the 1950s classic formulas would be exotic lenses: ultrawides, superzoom 10x telephotos, super-fast wides. None of these existed in any quantity 50 years ago. A lot of these push the envelope, so perhaps there is quite a lot of room for improvement, especially at the edges of the image circle. I can't afford any of these, so I wouldn't know.
