[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.