[hef19898]

Thing is so, good vintage lenses, and I mean lenses from the 70s, are actually incredibly sharp, and perform great optically. To this very day, if you get a good sample.

Improvements are mainly in terms of coating (reflections, ghosts and such) as well as zoom ranges and auto focus systems. That vintage lenses are not sharp is simply not true, having a lot less of glass in a lense is actually an advantage.

If you talk about lab test numbers, especially around the corners of the frame, modern lenses sure beat vintage ones. Not that you would realize any of that in real life (art replication, detailed macro work and other specialized stuff nonwithstanding).

[blagie]

Sort of.

My universe broke when Sigma introduced an 18-35mm f/1.8 zoom. An f/1.8 zoom. Wow. And it was optically brilliant.

Seventies lenses are super-sharp, but that's because they're mostly slow primes. Any modern prime stepped down to f/5.6 -- even cheap consumerific ones -- will be super-sharp.

There's nothing in seventies technology which allows lenses to have the aperture, zoom range, and aberrations of modern ones.

[hef19898]

Appertures, well, those f2.8 Nikkor telephotos from that period still demand high prices for a reason. And f4.5 isn't that slow, even compared to modern zooms. Or those old 50/1.4 (agreed, the 1.8 versions seem to be tad better) and other 1.8 primes. Still great glass. Or those unaffordable NOCT lenses... Not sure what I would need one for so.

What those old lenses have so, is build quality. They are machnical master pieces, as oppossed to modern day plastics. I like that. Also, close to no electronics that can fail.

Those wide zoom ranges, and large appertures, do have other downsides so. Everything is a trade off, and some things are sacrificed to achieve a 18-35/1.8 lense. Still impressive. Or the latest Canon (?) patent on a tilt-shift-macro-zoom...

[blagie]

Virtually nothing, except weight, was sacrificed to make the 18-35mm f/1.8 zoom. That's why it's impressive.

It's possible due to things like:

- Much better lens coatings (allowing for more elements without flare)

- Computer modelling

- Being able to better machine aspherical elements

On integrated cameras, like an RX100, we can do even better due to digital. We don't need low-distortion, but just well-characterized distortion which a computer can invert.

Those old lenses -- at least the ones still working -- do have build quality. Adjust their prices at the time for inflation, and have a look at modern Zeiss, Leica, and other premium lenses. You'll see similar build quality.

For fun, next time you're looking at old lenses, pick up a Quantaray too, for fun. Or most older (before around 2000) Sigma lenses. Or other off-brands. You'll see unparalleled build quality, but in the other direction -- eighties-era plastic. The optical quality is bad. Not "fun" bad, "vintage" bad, or "whimsical" bad, but just bad.

When we look at older stuff, we tend to look at stuff which stuck around, but even that Quantaray is high-end compared to an older consumer camera. Most people who owned a camera had a non-SLR one. You looked through a little window on top, and the pictures were shot through the main lens. Those were even worse. Or a disposable (a single plastic element lens).

[kuschku]

When you look at what's available today...

f/2.7, sharp at fully open, parfocal, zero focus breathing, fully manual zoom lenses...

and what used to be...

f/5.6, sharp only when stopped down even further, massive focus breathing, prime lenses...

well, vintage lenses start to look like toys.

[ddalex]

> it was optically brilliant

Of course, if it's a F/1.8

[blagie]

That's not how it works. The wider the aperture, the worse the aberrations. IF you can make a lens usable at f/1.8, it will be tack-sharp stepped down. That's why wide primes have a reputation for being super-sharp.

Roughly the same optical design, limited to f/2.8, will be better in all respects.

A good way to think about this -- oversimplified obviously -- is you have a bunch of functions you're trying to cancel with e.g. a linear combination. If you look really close to the center, it's already a flat line. If you step out a little, two are adequate (have the slopes cancel). As you go further and further out, things become increasingly wonky. That's why you have super-complex designs for an f/1.8 zoom -- to get that cancellation right -- but even a single element works fine at f/22.

There actually were f/1.8 zooms all along, but for applications which didn't demand that sharpness (TV and CCTV). You can pick those up cheap and see what happens. They're sometimes fun on a real camera too (many will span a μ4/3 sensor with just a tad of vignetting).

[dist-epoch]

I'm not convinced.

I have a very acclaimed old design 50/1.5 lens (but was bought new), but it just sucks compared with a modern much cheaper 50-70/3.5. The colors in particular, they are just bad. I'm not sure what test would pick that, a color accuracy kind of test. Modern coatings truly do wonders.

[hef19898]

Depends on the lenses, of course. There are still enough crappy new lenses on the market so.

Color rendition is also impacted by the sensor, assuming digital cameras.

Since I don't know which lenses you talk about, hard to tell. I do have some really old ones, 80-200 f 4.5 from the late 70s and an equally old 300 f4.5. Both render color just fine, no difference between those and new Nikkor lenses. Sharpness wise, those old ones are easily as sharp as any new one, lab test confirm that. And the limited amount of glass gives them, a totally subjective, clarity new lenses don't have. Bot that I would d be able to tell just from looking at a printed or processed picture.

[jetrink]

> Color rendition is also impacted by the sensor, assuming digital cameras.

Particularly since the old lens was designed for film, perhaps even black and white film. The choice of film has a much larger impact on color rendition than the lens would have. Also, unlike sharpness, color rendition is highly subjective and easily corrected. If you're shooting to JPG and you don't like how the camera is interpreting the colors from a lens, most cameras allow you to customize the white balance.

[eschneider]

Some lenses definitely have more chromatic aberration than others, completely independent of film or sensor.

[jetrink]

Chromatic aberration is a type of optical distortion and is a separate issue to color rendition. Color rendition refers to the lens's ability to transmit light equally across the color spectrum. If the lens is more transparent to red wavelengths than blue, images will look warmer, for example. Chromatic aberration, on the other hand, is a type of distortion in which a lens fails to focus all colors to the same convergence point. It will negatively affect image quality even if you use the lens to take black and white photos, since the result is a blurrier image.

[ggambetta]

Can confirm. I just finished a short film where I used a Minolta Rokkor 45mm f/2.0 for the close ups, on a GH5, and I loved the look. Beautiful colors, very nice bokeh, pretty sharp even when fully open (I guess the crop from 35mm to M4/3 helps).

[kuschku]

If you'd like to e.g. crop a vertical frame out of a horizontally framed picture, the sharpness limitations of old lenses also become immediately obvious. Even many newer lenses immediately fail.

[hef19898]

Really? Never had the problem, and I print up to A3, even have a A1 sized print from a D70 and a old 18-85 (?) kit Nikkor, which is sharp enough, with enough resolution, at the edges and corners.

If you take a 100% crop from a corner so, well, that is different. I'd argue so, that in this case, you should have composed your shot differently in the field. And again, you have to print huge to actually see the difference.

[kuschku]

Vintage lenses describes an entire category. Not all of them are hidden gems. In fact, the vast majority of them aren't.

I'm primarily doing videography, but most of the vintage lenses I've tested are too soft to crop a 1080p vertical "short"-style video out of a 4K landscape video (even though the landscape video may look fine).

It's not just my old konica minolta lenses, though, the more affordable Sony lenses from 2015 are just as bad.

I'm now using contemporary fujinon cine lenses and they're tack sharp all the way to the edge, even fully open at T/2.8

That said: If you've got hidden gems, or like the less clinical look of vintage lenses, go ahead, have fun!

[hef19898]

Ah, videography, that changes things. I only shoot stills, so I have no idea how video works.

And yes, not all vintage lenses are good. One has to go look for the good ones, usually the top line pro lenses of the day, those are still very good.

The one, cardinal thing about gear is so, once it hits a certain threshold of performance, e.g. "good" 4k video, whatever makes you feel good is great gear. Doesn't have to be the newest and shiniest, nor a specific brand or something.

My vintage glass so is neither soft nor sub-par, for my purposes, optically. Well, they do have a certain clarity to them, especially for blavk and white, that I like. I also know it is in my head, as I actually cannot tell those lenses apart from new glass by just looking at the pictures. I do like the incredible mechanical build quality so, they are master pieces of precision mechanics in all metal, and I like that feeling using them.

While not always true, there is a connection between price and quality: cheap / affordable products are generally less good than expensive ones, at the same time there can be incredibly good cheap products and crappy expensive ones, also the expensive ones can be bad value by virtue of being overpriced.

I heard good things about Fujinon, never tried them so.