About lenses and that sort of thing
When discussing photography people tend to concentrate on cameras. “What camera did you use for that photograph” or, my favorite, “That is a beautiful picture, you must be using an expensive camera”.
That’s not a big problem but let us not forget that a camera is not much more than a light-tight box with a hole in it. The actual subject is transferred to your sensor or film by a lens. Photography means ‘to write with light’ or something along that line. And the actual writing is done by your lens, not by the camera.
When discussing photography we might want to have a look at those lenses, they are much more important then the camera.
Fixed lenses
Let’s start with so called ‘fixed’ lenses, also known as ‘prime’ lenses nowadays. A fixed lens has a ‘fixed’ focal length, in other words the distance between the optical center of the lens and the film or sensor, both a light-sensitive medium, can not be changed. The other type of lens would be the zoom lens, where the focal length, the distance between the optical center and the medium, can change, is variable. We will discuss zoom lenses later.
The subject on the left reflects light that is transferred by the lens to the sensitive medium on the right
Lenses are complicated to say the least and this article is not a complete guide to lenses and what and how, or about the difference between a lens for a 35mm camera and a medium format camera and all that. I want to concentrate on the real life use of lenses. What can we do with them, are there characteristics that we should be aware of, why are there so many different lenses that have the same specifications but differ hugely in price? We wil discuss only lenses for the 35mm format film or sensor, what is now referred to as the ‘full frame’ format.
Standard
This photograph was made with a Leica Summicron 1:2/50 mm standard lens at f 2.0, its widest opening
Lenses are designed with differnt focal lengths. A lens with a short focal length wil show a wider angle of the world than a lens with a longer focal length.
A lens with a focal length (the distance between the lens and the film or sensor) of ca. 45 mm - 55 mm is regarded as a ‘standard’ lens. Everything with a shorter focal length is a ‘wide angle’ lens, everything longer is a ‘tele’ lens. A wide angle lens makes objects smaller than ‘normal’, a tele lens wil ‘enlarge' objects.
The standard lens gives an angle of view that we interpret as ‘normal’, the same as we think that our eyes deliver to our brain.
Perspective
The perspective that a lens creates is the relative size between objects close to the lens (in the foreground) and objects at a greater distance (in the background). A standard lens gives us a ‘normal’ perspective, again in line with what our eyes and our brain see.
Universal
The standard lens is very universal. It can be used for many subjects and many situations. If we want to show a lot of objects in our picture we can walk backwards and if we walk towards the objects they will become bigger. The standard lens will not have much influence on the relative sizes of these different objects in our picture.
Quality and simplicity
Leitz Summicron 1:2/50 mm
A standard lens is relatively easy to design and manufacture. Standard lenses have the best optical quality of all types of lenses.
The shorter or longer the focal length of a lens, the more complex the design and manufacturing wil be.
A standard lens offers by far the best value for our money: relatively cheap to buy, the best possible quality and the most universal in usage.
Wide angle
A lens with a shorter focal length than the standard lens is called a wide angle lens. The distance between such a lens and the film or sensor is shorter than with a standard lens.
A wide angle lens has, no surprise there, a wider angle of view compared to a standard lens. We see more from the same subject. It seems that we took one or more steps back.
A wide angle lens also renders the perspective in a different way. Objects in the foreground become more pronounced, objects in the background seem to be smaller and less important. We can use that changed perspective creatively, e.g. to emphasize something in our picture.
The wider angle of view allows us to show more of the surroundings around our subject. We can show where the subject is located, how it interacts with other objects in the frame.
Sharpness
A wide angle lens shows objects smaller when compared to longer focal length lenses and these objects can appear to be sharper. A wide angle lens has therefore a bigger depth of field. A ‘dot’ appears smaller and the size of this ‘dot’ wil be closer to the smallest object that the human eye can distinguish: we think we see more objects as ‘sharp’. The technique of ‘zone focussing’ (see Focus) is generally combined with the use of wide angle lenses. Because objects appear to be sharper when using a wide angle lens compared to a standard lens, we can use slower shutter speeds if needed. Camera movement wil be less pronounced.
Made with a 21 mm wide angle lens. The lens was not positioned 100% vertical, straight vertical lines seem to tilt
Distortion
A wide angle lens can introduce some perspective distortion:
When the lens is not held 100% vertical, straight lines in the picture wil start to tilt.
Objects close to the lens wil appear to be bigger than they really are. This can be an advantage, we can use that in our photograph, but sometimes this can be unwanted, e.g. when a hand becomes the same size as a persons head.
Objects at the edges of the frame will be stretched out. Cirkels become ovals.
A typical wide angle photograph. Leitz Summicron 1:2/35 mm
The wider the lens the more we have to be aware of these possible perspective distortions. The more extreme wide angle lenses, like 21 mm lenses and wider, can be difficult to handle.
Reportage tool
Wide angle lenses are typically used for documentary photography. They allow the photographer to position the subject in its environment.
Leitz Summicron 1:2/35 mm
Especially the 35 mm wide angle lens is a workhorse for documentary style photography. The problems with perspective distortion are very wel manageable and the wider field of view, compared to the standard lens, allows for some aditional creative options.
In modern photojournalism wider angles than 35 mm are often used, partly because the photographers do not have enough physical space to distance themselves from the subject but also because such a wider angle of view wil contain more ‘subject’ and may tell the full story in one picture.
Distance to the film or sensor
A lens with a focal length of 21 mm is placed at 21 mm from the sensor or film.
The focal length of a lens is defined as ‘the distance between the optical centre of the lens and the sensitive medium in the camera’. But only the optical centre is at 21 mm distance, the actual physical back end of the complete lens might be even closer to the medium.
Sometimes this close distance presents some problems. A single lens reflex camera has a mirror in front of the medium. This mirror is used to reflect the image from the lens to a ground glass.
The space needed by the mirror wil have to have at least the same dimensions as the camera’s image format because of the required size of the ground glass on top of the mirror. This depth into the camera would be ca 24 mm or more, needed to ‘swing’ the mirror up-and-down.
It is not possible to use a short wide angle lens with such a camera because the lens would leave no space for the moving mirror. Many reflex cameras had an option to fix the mirror in the upright position to allow the use of short wide angle lenses. The fixed mirror had the added benefit of motion reduction by eliminating the movement of the mirror.
L1 is the front lens-element, L2 is the rear lens-element. H is the optical centre of the lens, F is the focal point. f is the nominal focal distance of the lens
Retrofocus
Wide angle lenses that are designed to have a very close distance between lens and film (this was before the digital era) are also called ‘real’ wide angle lenses.
The solution for using short wide angle lenses on reflex cameras would be to design a different way to bend the light rays that leave the lens. The lens would have to be placed away from the film but have a wide angle of view. We call these wide angle designs ‘retro focus’ lenses.
A retrofocus type wide angle lens is constructed in such a way that the actual optical center of the lens (H in this diagram) is located behind the actual lens.
The lens has the same angle of view as a classic wide angle lens, but at the rear, the light rays are projected farther away from the lens. These light rays meet in the focal point (F) which is located at exactly the focal distance of the lens, away from the point H. The distance f in the diagram is the nominal (classic) focal distance of the lens.
A retrofocus design is usually more complicated than a real wide angle lens, but it gives the lens designer a lot of extra options. These design wil probably require more lens-elements and this wil make the lens possibly more perceptible to flair when used in certain conditions.
Retrofocus lenses do not have the typical light fall-off towards the corners of the image that we see with ‘real’ wide angle lenses.
This Leica Super-Angulon M 1:3.4/21 mm wide angle lens on the left is a real wide angle design. It was designed for the Leica rangefinder M camera
This Leica Super-Angulon R 1:4/21 mm wide angle lens on the right is a retrofocus design. It was designed for the Leica reflex R camera.
It is not difficult to spot a retrofocus design or a real wide angle design. A real wide angle lens wil show a lot of ‘lens’ behind the lens mount. That wil be the part that protrudes in the camera, close to the medium. A retrofocus lens shows almost nothing behind the lens mount, nothing protrudes in to the camera.
Longer focal lengths
L1 is the front lens-element, L2 is the rear lens-element. H is the optical centre of the lens, F is the focal point. f is the nominal focal distance of the lens
A lens with a longer focal length than the standard lens has, again no surprise, a longer distance between the lens and the film or censor than a standard lens.
This type of lens is called a … hmm, that is complicated. It is actually called a long focal length lens. But everybody uses the name tele lens.
As we have seen a lens is about as long as its optical center ‘plus something’. These long length lenses can become really long and difficult to handle. Imagine a 1:5.6/400 mm lens in a long focal design.
But we can use the same optical trick as was used for the retrofocus lens. The designer can place the optical centre of the lens outside the actual lens. Only this time it is put in front of the lens, not behind.
I wil call all longer-than-standard lenses ‘tele lenses’ as that is the name that people use most, even when these are not always real ‘tele’ designs.
Leitz Elmar 1:2.8/135 mm
A tele lens compresses the image. It isolates an object from a scene and can draw attention to that single object.
The pictures that these lenses produce wil usually contain unsharp elements in front and behind the main subject. The unsharp imaging characteristics of these lenses are very important for the quality of the final photograph.
Tele lenses have a shallower depth of field compared to standard lenses.
A tele lens wil not only enlarge the subject but it wil also enlarge camera movement. When using a tele lens we must use faster shutter speeds compared to a standard lens.
Leitz Elmar 1:2.8/135 mm
Sensor design
On the left a generic sensor design. When more oblique angles of light reach such a sensor the light might spill in to the next sensor element.
On the right a Leica sensor design which allows for the use of lenses that produce such oblique angles of light, like very short wide angle lenses.
A digital camera uses a sensor and such a sensor has minuscule lenses at the front. These small sensor-lenses guide the light towards the actual light sensitive elements on the sensor. Generic digital sensors are designed for photographic lenses that project the incoming light under a fairly straight angle into the sensor-lenses.
When photographic lenses are positioned very close to these sensor-lenses then they might project the light under a steep angle, especially at the edges of the frame . In that case some light wil be lost because the generic sensor-lenses are not designed for such an extreme angle of incoming light.
Leica had to equip the digital M cameras with a custom build sensor to allow for the optimal use of their optics. This is one of the reasons why Leica was relatively late in developing a digital M camera: they had to find a way to use real wide angle lenses on a digital sensor.
Lens-camera combinations
Most mirrorless cameras have a sensor that is optimized for the manufacturers own lenses. They can however mount lenses made by a lot of different manufacturers with the help of adapters.
Mounting other manufacturers lenses on a camera can be a nice way to experience the characteristics of such lenses but we must keep in mind that these lenses are not always 100% compatible with our camera’s sensor. Especially older lenses were designed to produce results on film, not on a digital camera. Never the less, these experiments can be great fun and can give excellent results.
Here we see two high quality tele lenses with a comparable angle of view. There is a distinct difference in character between the two.
A Leitz 1:2.8/135 mm lens on a Fuji X-Pro1 camera. No auto focus and limited camera options. The camera has a smaller sensor size, on this camera the lens behaves more like a 200 mm lens
Lenses from the same manufacturer usually share some basic characteristics, they can have a similar ‘signature’. In that case a lens from a different brand can really stand out and not ‘fit in’ with the rest of the lenses. It is good practice to use lenses with a similar signature when photographing a series of photographs of a subject.
Nikkor 1:2.8/180 mm lens on a Nikon D700 camera
A Novoflex 1:5.6/400 mm lens on a Fuji X-Pro1. This is a long focus design, not a ‘tele’
So called lens ‘tests’ of older (‘vintage’) lenses on digital media are of very limited value. They do give an indication about the results of the tested camera-lens combination but do not have much value in testing the quality of the lens itself. A lens designed for a film camera should be tested on film and vice versa.
High speed and low speed and more
High and low speed - fast and slow
A lens can be ‘fast’ or ‘slow’.
One of the things that interest us as photographers is the maximum amount of light that a lens can allow to pass through to the sensitive medium. A fast lens allows a larger amount of light to pass, compared to a slow lens. The more light that passes through the lens on to the medium, the faster the shutter speed that we can use, see Getting it right the first time.
The front lens-element of a lens has a specific diameter. A lens also has an optical length, e.g. 50 mm. We saw that this 50 mm means that the optical centre of the lens is placed at a distance of 50 mm from the film or sensor, the medium. The relation between the optical length in mm and the front lens-element diameter in mm is called the ‘lens speed’. It works like this:
A formula
If a 50mm lens has a front lens-element diameter of 25 mm then we can write those measurements like a relation between those numbers, in this case the length of the lens is 2 times as big as the diameter of the front lens.
We write this equation as a relation of 1:2, the length is 2x the diameter of its front lens. Now we can say that this specific 50 mm lens has a lens speed of 1:2. In normal lens ‘speak’ we say ‘2’ or f 2. “This 50 mm lens has a speed of 2 or f 2”.
In other words, this lens can never let more light pass through than f 2. This f 2 is the lens speed.
This means that a 50 mm lens with a speed of f 2.8 would have a front lens-element diameter of 50:2.8 = 17.8 mm instead of the 25 mm of the 1:2/50 mm (f 2.0) lens.
A 135 mm lens with a speed of f 2.8, a 1:2.8/135 mm, would therefore have a front lens diameter of 48.2 mm and a 28 mm lens with a speed of f 2.8, a 1:2.8/28 mm, would have a front lens diameter of 8.5 mm etc.
On the left a high speed lens, a Leica Noctilux 1:0.95/50 mm
On the right a lens of normal speed, a Leica Summicron 1:2/50 mm
This picture with the two lenses shows two standard 50 mm lenses. They have the same focal length, the same angle of view, the same perspective etc.
But the Noctilux is an extreme fast lens, with a front lens diameter of 56.6 mm, which results in a maximum aperture of f 0.95. It is a 1:0.95/50 mm lens.
The Summicron is a lens of average speed, with a a front lens diameter of 25 mm, which results in a maximum aperture of f 2.0. This is a 1:2/50 mm lens.
quality vs speed
If we enlarge the front lens-element it becomes more complicated to design a high quality lens. In the earliest days of the 35mm film photography a 50 mm standard lens would have a normal lens speed of f 3.5. A f 2.0 lens was considered very high speed, a very fast lens.
Aperture
All photographic lenses contain a variable opening (aperture) that regulates the amount of light that is allowed through the lens. This aperture is an important component that has multiple functions. It regulates the amount of light send to the sensitive medium but it also defines the depth of field, see the blog about Focus. And as a result of this depth of field mathematics, the aperture defines how unsharp or sharp the different objects in our picture wil be. We call this the ‘unsharpness’ or nowadays the bohkeh or bokeh or bo-keh or whatever way we want to write or pronounce this Japanese description. But what’s in a name, no matter how we call it, this unsharpness is a vital component for the esthetic quality of our final photograph.
We can open the aperture to its highest speed or we can close it down, one click at the time, see Getting it right the first time. At the biggest (or full) opening we use the total area of the lens-elements inside the lens. If we close the aperture we use a smaller area of the lens-elements. This will have a positive effect on the lens defects. In other words, the more we close the lens aperture down the better the lens will perform. But we can also close the aperture too much. In that case the light will have trouble passing the very small aperture opening, we call this defraction. A long story short, all lenses have an optimal aperture opening, usually a value between f 4 or f 8 but it can also be another number, depending on the lens quality, higher quality lenses tend to perform best at wider apertures.
With other film / sensor sizes we use very different types of lenses and there the optimal opening can be very different.
Aberrations
In optics, aberration is a property of optical systems. In general, when we speak of aberrations we mean optical lens defects.
All lenses have defects, imperfections. All photographic ‘lenses’ are actually lens systems, build with several separate lens elements grouped together to form an optical lens system.
Lens design
Lens design is what this blog is all about.
Nowadays lenses are designed with the help of computer software
Lens design is complicated. The design team defines the desired properties for a lens and then designs the lens, using different types of glass, different curvatures etc. etc. Over the decades some basic design principals emerged like ‘Gauss’ designs, or ‘Double Gauss’, ‘Tessar’ and a lot more.
Designing a lens is ‘just’ the start, the lens has to be manufactured and all manufactured lenses will have to be finished identical and within very strict specifications.
The methods used for the lens manufacturing can have a huge influence on the price of the lens. Some optical designs can be very complicated and time-consuming to manufacture or include extremely expensive types of rare optical glass. Some manufacturers automate their production as much as possible, others include manual techniques because a machine can not produce the required level of quality.
All produced lenses of the same model are expected to produce identical image results. This is not always the case, especially with cheaper brands. Strict quality control during the manufacturing process wil make a lens more expensive, especially when the expected quality is of the highest standards and requires re-assembly or even rejection of parts that other manufacturers would be all too happy to accept as adequate.
The art behind the design
A lot of lens design theories have their roots in Germany where the optical industrie started somewhere in the 1840’s.
A lens must have a lot of characteristics: it must project a sharp images of the subject on the medium, this image should not be distorted etc. But how do we define ‘sharp’, what is ‘distortion’? Not all lens designers have the same ideas about these definitions. And those are just two characteristics, there is much more involved in creating an image of the subject on our medium. No two lens designs are the same. A 1:2/50 mm lens from Canon can be very different when compared to a 1:2/50 mm from Leica or a 1:2/50 mm lens from Nikon. They all have the same lens speed, they have the same perspective and angle of view but they all have different characteristics. We sometimes call that ‘character’: all lens designs have a different character.
In other words, lens design is not only a physical act of computing an optimal design but it also requires imagination and creativity.
Choices
These different characteristics have to do with the different choices that a lens designer has to make. The design has to compensate for aberrations. How sharp should the lens be? For what price can the lens be manufactured and what would be the price that the user wil have to pay? What creative options do we want to offer our user?
A perfect lens does not exist and can not be manufactured or even be designed. Compromises have to be made and it is the designers choice what aberrations will be compensated, how much they will be compensated and what aberrations wil not be solved, or not so much. We can not have it all.
There are artistic choices to be made. How should the unsharpness be defined? What do we want with the colour rendition? And so on and so on.
Germany vs Japan
In general, we can speak of a ‘German’ style of lens design and a ‘Japanese’ style. In general, the Japanese style is more focussed on overall sharpness in a flat plane of field where the German style tends to maximize center sharpness, but it is a lot more complicated than just that. This has an effect on the transition between sharp and unsharp parts of the image and also affects the absolute sharpness of a lens. German lenses used to be sharper than their Japanese counterparts, but only in the central part of the image. The overall sharpness was better with the Japanese designs.
But this is a very generic view on a very complex universe of lens designs. One can not state that a German lens would not be sharp in a plane field all the way to the edges of the image or that Japanese lenses can not produce beautiful unsharpness.
Leitz and Zeiss
The German optical companies Leitz and Zeiss started manufacturing lenses in the second half of the 19th century. The Zeiss Tessar design is a famous example of a popular design from Dr. Paul Rudolph as early as 1902. Many optical design ideas have their origin within these companies and these names remain important in modern optical design.
Lens designs are well documented and these designs are usually archived by the lens manufacturers. These design choices can be passed on to next generations of designers and after many decades of lens designs we can sometimes speak of a distinctive signature or character that these designs from one manufacturer have in common. We know that Leitz designers consult older documentation for their modern designs. We can speak of specific eras where one designer was in charge of designs, Leitz has specific ‘Mandler’ designs and the current head of optical development Peter Karbe is known for his modern lens designs.
In this article I give a lot of examples with Leitz (Leica) and Carl Zeiss lenses. Other manufacturers make excellent lenses as well but especially Leitz lenses are extraordinary wel documented, making it easier to use those as examples. German lens makers tend to give their designs specific names, making it a little easier to find out how or why those lenses were designed like they are. I am also a big fan of German glass, that helps. I used Nikon and Mamiya lenses in the past and still own Fuji cameras and excellent Fuji lenses. Al those could be just as good but less practical examples.
Same difference
In real life it can be very difficult if not impossible to identify a lens manufacturer just by looking at a finished photograph. Was this a Zeiss or a Nikon 2.8/28 mm lens? But when looking at a series of photographs taken with different apertures and under different light conditions differences may become visible. But they can be subtle.
What defines a lens character can be the transition between sharp and unsharp objects in the picture at a specific aperture. Is the transition smooth or is it well defined? Is there a sudden sharpness fall-off or not? How do the unsharp objects behave? How do the unsharp objects in front of the sharp subject behave and how is the relation with the unsharp objects behind this sharp subject? Lenses can give a distinct three dimensional effect with this sharpness behavior.
There can be a difference in overall sharpness between the centre and the edges of the image. How smooth is this difference? How do these edges of the image look at different apertures and different focussing distances?
Absolute sharpness is not that important. A lens can even be too sharp for a specific subject.
With tele lenses parts of the image wil always be unsharp. There wil be unsharpness in the foreground and / or the background. With these lenses the unsharp behavior can be crucial, much more important than the actual overall sharpness of the lens.
All lenses have a certain way of rendering colors. Some are a little cool, others a little warmer. Or a little yellow, or … Sometimes we can distinguish a manufacturer by the specific rendition of colors.
Example
Photographed with a Leitz Summicron 1:2/35 mm lens at f 2.8
Here we see two photographs made with lenses with equal specifications. Both are 35 mm lenses designed to be used on a camera with a Leica M mount. Both photographs were shot at f 2.8 with the same shutter speed and on the same camera, a digital Leica M10. The Leitz lens was manufactured in Canada in 1984. It is a Canadian design by Walter Mandler. The Zeiss lens was designed in Germany and build in Japan by Cosina. The Zeiss lens is a more modern design than the Leitz lens.
Photographed with a Carl Zeis Biogon ZM 1:2/35 mm lens at f 2.8
Both lenses created a very sharp image. We start to see some very subtile differences when we look at the unsharp parts of the pictures. We can see a difference in the transition between sharp and unsharp and in the character of the unsharpness. Notice the difference in sharpness ‘fall-off’, the transition between the sharp subject and the tissue box in the background.
The better you look the more differences you find.
You can find bigger versions below this blog for easier comparison.
Zoom lenses
A zoom lens has no fixed focal length but a variable one. It wil have no fixed angle of view but, again, a variable one.
A zoom lens is a complicated design and is usually of lesser quality compared to fixed lenses with the same specifications. A zoom lens wil need a lot of glass elements and lens-group movement to achieve its design goal.
Discipline
Using a zoom lens is much more difficult than it might appear to be. With a fixed focus lens we get used to the angle of view and perspective rendering of that lens. After a while we know how the lens wil render the subject even before we put the lens on the camera. We wil be able to decide if a desired result requires a 28 mm lens or a 50 mm or a 105 mm focal length.
One of the first zoom lenses, the Voigtländer Zoomar
A photographer must ‘make’ a picture before even using the camera, we should know what we want to achieve before we start creating that photograph. This pre-conception is very difficult when we are using a zoom lens with its multitude of focal lengths with their multitude of rendering and perspective characteristics.
When using a zoom lens we are tempted to start zooming the lens until we fill the viewfinder with a pleasing composition, but without paying much attention to the actual focal length that the zoom lens is using at that moment. In doing this we may be much less aware of the pictorial characteristics of a chosen setting. We often don’t chose a focal length on our zoom lens because we want to use it’s specific rendering character but because ‘the picture fits’. Creatively, this is a very bad habit and wil obstruct a photographer from learning the characteristics associated with a focal length. A zoom lens creates lazy photographers, not better photographs.
The only advantage of a zoom lens is that we have all our different focal length lenses fixed to the camera, ready to use. We don’t loose time changing lenses. Most photojournalists use zoom lenses for that reason. An aspiring photographer who has to learn the way that lenses draw an image are not best served with zoom lenses unless such a lens is used at one zoom setting only. In that way the photographer gets intimate knowledge about the characteristics of that zoom setting / focal length. Once familiar one can select a different lens / zoom setting.
Unfortunately nowadays most new cameras are sold with a zoom lens, this is a bad idea when we want to learn about photography. Fixed lenses make better photographs, both technically and creatively.
What can you do
All very nice but what should you choose? What is ‘the best’?
My Leitz Elmar-M 1:2.8/135 mm lens. It is not the sharpest lens Leitz has to offer but it has a beautiful rendition of unsharp objects in the image. Sharpness is not the most important characteristic of a lens.
There is no ‘best’ lens. There are definitely some very very good lenses, no matter how you look at it. But these near-perfect lenses are near impossible to obtain, they are extremely expensive. And you will probably not see this perfection in your own photographs even if you could use these lenses. You will need a near perfect photographic technique to be able to display the qualities of these near perfect lenses.
If possible, never use a zoom lens. With a zoom lens, you will struggle to get into the full depths and creative possibilities that may be hidden in your subject and that you want to discover and photograph. Zoom with your feet, not with your lens.
Most lenses are made for a specific type of camera. A Sony lens wil work best on a Sony camera. Nikon on Nikon, Leica on Leica. Modern mirrorless cameras can use ‘other’ brands of lenses but those lenses will probably not connect optimally with the camera and you may loose a lot of functionality. Choosing a good lens has a lot to do with choosing the camera brand that has the right lens for you. Most people chose a camera because it has specific functions or specifications. It might be a good idea to choose a camera because it can use the lenses that you prefer.
Lifelike
Why can’t a photograph just render a lifelike, neutral image of the subject? Why do we have al this ‘character’, these differences?
The eye and brain can not be compared to the mechanical lens and the sensitive medium. Our vision is produced by neural means and human tissue. A photograph is by its very nature a mechanical rendering, photography can never reproduce that human process, it will always be a poor substitute at best.
The photographic process can never be lifelike or neutral, it is a completely different way of rendering our world compared to the human eye and brain. And how would we define ‘lifelike’, ’neutral’ or ’realistic’? Neutral compared to what exactly? Do two people see the same thing?
All we can do as photographers is choose our equipment and a creative process that suits our own personal perception of our personal world, our vision. A neutral rendering of a subject can not exist.
© All photographs were made by me. The drawings and product photos came from the internet and were optimized by me for this article. If you click on any of my photographs you can view a larger version.
For easier comparison here are the two tests with the Summicron and the Biogon again:
