The skinny on lenses

[Darrin]

Someone was posting about what lenses to buy, and I was going to post it in the thread, but it turned out to be a dissertation,so i thought it could become a sticky or something.

Here's the skinny on lenses..

as far as optical quality and glass are concerned, it really doesn't matter as only two companies in the world make glass for lenses, zeiss and Nikon. Yes, it is a fact, Cannon lenses have glass that is either made by Nikon or Zeiss, but then so does tamaron, olympus, minolta, hasselblad, sinar, bronica, pentax, leica, etc.

Now, some take it further and add optical coatings especially designed for their cameras (it's the rainbowy stuff on the rear lens element when you let light reflect off it.) Optical coatings are a must for color nowadays. We LIKE optical coatings!

The mechanics of the lens is better in some brands than others. I would buy (if I REALLY had to) a canon lens before a tamaron.

The top 35 mm film camera is a Leica, no ifs, ands, or buts about it. However, digital leicas are EXPENSIVE, hard to find, and not as nice/user friendly to use as a nikon or canon. My goal in life is to buy a leica and wander europe for a month taking photos ON FILM!

As a professional, what i take to a wedding, as far as 35 mm lenses go, is a 10mm 2.8 nikor fish eye, a 18-35 2.8 wide zoom, a 50 1.4, 85 1.8, 70-200 2.8, a 400 2.8 with a 2x teleconverter. ( i also take a lot more hasselblad stuff, lights, etc. So don't think that just because you have some of the same lenses that you can run out and shoot a wedding).

My favorite is the wide zoom. It allows for me to stand in the middle of a dance floor and photograph people full length that are only about 10 feet from me... But wait! the bride's mom is in the back of the hall fist fighting with the grooms mother! Switch cameras (I carry two) and use the 70-200 to shoot the action.

The 50 and the 85 are great for using in low-light situations so that if the freakin DJ want's to be 'romantic' and dim the lights to hide the fight, I can use these to gather more light without having to use flash.

When you talk about portrait lenses, you need to know what a 'normal lens' is. It is a lens that gives you the same angle of view as your eyes do when you do not look through a camera. A normal lens for a 35mm is a 50mm lens, for a medium format it is a 150mm, and large format is 300mm. But since an underwater view camera is something even I have never heard of, lets stick to 35mm and maybe medium format.

Now don't run out to buy one, cause it's not a good portrait lens... The best range for a portrait 35mm camera is in the 85mm to 125 range. That type of lens is nice for two things...

Narrower depth of field - If your subject is about 10 feet away, and your background is 10feet or more from your subject, then your background will start to go out of focus and you subject will stand out better.

You don't have to stand a foot away from someone, or a mile away to get a head shot. More on this later...

Also, the best f/stop for a portrait is f8.. also for two reasons...

1. The depth of field is deep enough so that a face is in focus back to front, but the depth of field is SHALLOW enough so that your background/foreground is not sharp enough to distract. If you have a wider aperature, your df might not have a nose in focus, and if you have a smaller aperature your trees in the background are too distracting. (we are photographing a person, not trees)

2. A lens is optically it's sharpest at f8, no matter what your focusing on and how big your df is.. it's still sharper at f8..

So... why do we not use a 10 mm fisheye as a portrait lens...

Optical law #1.

The wider the angle, the more built-in depth of field the lens has... and vise-versa. If you look at a photo of a car taken with a 24 mm lens, the background is..

1. Further away...

2. More in focus.

However, if you want to get a head shot of a person, you have to be standing about a foot away from their nose in order to fill a frame. THeir nose would also be BIGGER than their body. The wider the angle, the more visable the distortion. Wide angles distort. Google photos of fisheye photos and you will see what I mean.

ok.. let's switch to a 1000 mm lens...

to fill a frame with a head, you usually have to stand in the next county. I'm talking FAR away. My 400mm with 2x is basically a 600mm f4. I can shoot across the length of a football field from goalpost to goalpost and fill a frame with a person.

also, you would notice that the background is shoved way right behind a person, but is really out of focus.

did I miss anything?


Enjoy

Darrin
founder of the 'I Love NIKON club"
Mphotog, CR, CPP-PPA

 

[LoneStarSA]

Thank you so much. This really helped iron out a little confusion about lenses for me!

 

[Misled]

Very nice Darrin. Do you do your darkroom work all yourself also? That's the one thing I never got into when I was doing 35mm, thought I've never worked professionally. Keeping records when I was shooting 35 also became a pain. Trying to lable shots before I had them so I knew how the shot was takin took up quite a bit of time.

 

[swjim]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13243633#post13243633 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Darrin
as far as optical quality and glass are concerned, it really doesn't matter as only two companies in the world make glass for lenses, zeiss and Nikon. Yes, it is a fact, Cannon lenses have glass that is either made by Nikon or Zeiss, but then so does tamaron, olympus, minolta, hasselblad, sinar, bronica, pentax, leica, etc.

I know that Canon has large lens manufacturing facilities but have never heard that they purchased their glass from other companies, ex: http://www.canon.com/press/2006/ef_lens.html I know that Sony uses Zeiss and what were formerly Minolta lenses, but had never seen anything published about a similar relationship between Canon and Zeiss/Nikon.

It's not a huge deal to me, I'm very happy with my Canon lenses, but as a serious photo hobbyist as well as a techie it does pique my interest. Can you point me to references about this relationship?

 

[osprey77]

Great, i'm acutally shooting my first wedding this weekend, i have done others and presented photos as a gift. But this is my first time as the photographer. Thanks for the tip on F8, i'll set that as priority and see how it works.

Go Nikon

 

[BlueCorn]

2. A lens is optically it's sharpest at f8, no matter what your focusing on and how big your df is.. it's still sharper at f8..

That depends on the lens. While it's a decent rule of thumb it's not an absolute.

 

[BlueCorn]

Re: The skinny on lenses

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13243633#post13243633 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Darrin
S
as far as optical quality and glass are concerned, it really doesn't matter as only two companies in the world make glass for lenses, zeiss and Nikon. Yes, it is a fact, Cannon lenses have glass that is either made by Nikon or Zeiss, but then so does tamaron, olympus, minolta, hasselblad, sinar, bronica, pentax, leica, etc.

Sorry but that's not correct either. Schott, Ohara, Hoya, Corning, Sumita, Hereaus and a few others all make bulk optical glass. The lens manufacturers make their own lenses from that bluk glass. Zeiss, for example, buys from Schott. Canon appears to buy from both Hoya and Ohara. Canon does grow their own fluorite for use in their lenses via a patent protected process.

 

[Darrin]

osprey - If you put your camera on priority, I will personally come and pee in your tank! ALthough I have heard of people doing this to increase amonia...


Manual, people! It is the MOST important dohicky on your camera. You are SMARTER than your camera, and I want you to LEARN how to photograph something, not let it do it for you.

Especially at a wedding.

A good photographer knows when the priority function is wrong, and if you go to a wedding and use the auto functions, you will screw up eventually. And the bride will sue.

Trust me... I've been there, and my job is to tell you how to do it right..

For instance... One of my photographers insisted on ignoring me. As a rule, you should never hand hold a camera, always use a tripod. It makes you look professional.

But... When you are at a church alter, doing the family photos, I use a light meter to figure out the ambient light of the church. Since it is usually dim, we slow the shutter way down to about 1/4th to 1/8th of a second, and then use studio lights on umbrellas to raise the amount of light so that we can shoot groups of people at f8 to have them all in focus. She said she wanted to shoot a group outside at 1/125th of a second, at f2.8 so that they wouldnt blur. I said if the camera was on a tripod, and if she would use a strobe to freeze the action, she wouldn't have to worry about blurryness..
She ignored me, and the group shots had nice infocus people in the middle, but out of focus people in the back and front of the group.

The bride did file a lawsuit against my studio, but I was able to fix a lot of it at the lab.

darrin
Master photographer, Photographic Craftsmen, CPP-PPA

 

[Darrin]

misled -

I have a large darkroom. I can make up to 30x40 zone system images off of 5x7 negatives.

However, it is now a storage room for fish stuff, as I have not used it in 3-4 years.

I took a vacation in Febuary and took a dissasembled sinar 8x10 in two large backpacks to Big Bend in Texas, but I still have not developed the sheet film.

My wife thought I was insane.

d

 

[bored4long]

I think you should rename your thread title to: "The skinny on lenses for film"

For the vast majority of us shooting cropped DSLRs your suggestions for lens sizes is incorrect.

This is some interesting food for thought, though.

Also, the best f/stop for a portrait is f8.. also for two reasons...

...

2. A lens is optically it's sharpest at f8, no matter what your focusing on and how big your df is.. it's still sharper at f8..

Thanks for taking the time to offer some free advice. I welcome all help offered!

Do you feel shooting film puts you at an advantage or disadvantage against your competition that shoots digital?

 

[Darrin]

bored4long-

why should it just be for film? That is the number one problem. Everyone thinks that information does not translate from film to ditgital.

And the whole point is that it completely relates. THe only thing you would have to do is multiply 1.4 or 1.6 times whatever lens I use to get what you need. EVERYTHING else is the same.

I teach A LOT about photography, MOSTLY to professional photographers. They all think that lighting, technique etc has changed since digital came around, and I whip out my books that show that the lighting, exposure, and composition that EVERYONE teaches now is EXACTLY the same as when my book was published. The ONLY difference is how the information is captured and stored.

My books, btw, was published in 1909.

Th techniques of Photography have not changed, since it was invented in the 1830's, except the quality of the equipment has gotten better (No headclamps needed anymore, and no 3 minute portrait exposure times).

Oh... I use 30%film and 70% digital at weddings. So those lenses I was talking about are for my Fuji s2 6 megapixal cameras. THe only film i shoot is for the family photos at the alter and cake cutting photos..

I still give my brides proofs, so I like to have impressive equipment when i shoot..

Also, I feel IMO, that the shadow detail AND the highlight detail is MUCH better in film than digital, so when I am shooting in dim light at a church and family is waiting, i dont want to have to stop for a whitebalance. Once my lights are set, I dont have to change anything and I can blast away.

Now, remember, my shadow detail and highlights are MY calibration parameters, working closely with my lab for decades.

I have done MANY tests, with different cameras, lenses, films, brands, etc...

I have used agfa, kodak, fuji. I have used nikon, pentax, sony, etc. I have used several labs over time. And this is what works for me. I am comfortable using film, as I don't trust digital as much. My lab fixes any errors, so I dont have too.

When you buy a camera, shoot everything, birds, fish, dirt, naked people (sex of your preference). USe different lenses, use different lighting.

AND, use different printers, labs etc... Your mistakes are visible on the print. If it looked good on the computer, but not as a print, it's the guy who printed it at wal mart. 90% of your problems won't be with your camera, its the lab who prints it.

Blah- I was supposed to work on albums...

hope this helps..

d

 

[tyoberg]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13248740#post13248740 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Darrin


My books, btw, was published in 1909.

d

And may it remain in print for another 99 years! Here here!:lol:


I like shooting in manual, but using a G lens in manual is a major burden. The aperture ring makes it so much easier and faster.

I've learned a ton by buying a couple old manual lenses and shooting them on my D40 (they don't meter though). Forces you to think through it more, but you also have instantaneous feedback at your fingertips.

 

[KurtsReef]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=13247902#post13247902 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Darrin

For instance... One of my photographers insisted on ignoring me. As a rule, you should never hand hold a camera, always use a tripod. It makes you look professional.

..
She ignored me, and the group shots had nice infocus people in the middle, but out of focus people in the back and front of the group.

The bride did file a lawsuit against my studio, but I was able to fix a lot of it at the lab.

How did the lab fix the out of focus people?

You don' t have to shoot at f/8 to get an entire group in focus, it depends on the sensor size and focal length of the camera as well as the distance you are from the subjects as to what your DOF will be. Surely as a master photographer you know the formula and simply speaking in generalities.

To determine a particular lens 'sweet spot' or where it is sharpest simply pull up the MTF chart.