tashley
Veteran Member
Hi John,
I think that as a vast generalisation, lenses are better re-designed for digital, though a lot of older, film-designed lenses work well and create great results, whether technically or creatively.
However... here's a good example: the last-generation Leica 35 Lux was designed for film. It had a focus shift which people almost never noticed on film but which in the end made it not ideal for digital, so Leica made another version.
One of the reasons might have been that digital sensors in effect either have more resolution (I don't want to start scanner wars here, like I say these are generalisations) or are more often used to make large prints at least.
Another reason that was widely given at the time was that film has more 'depth' to the emulsion and so the shifts in focus got sort of sucked in to the depth and were less noticeable.
in Medium Format land, Rodenstock and Schneider have made new, digital targeted lenses for technical camera use too. Sensor wells and micro lenses, especially when offset towards the extremes of the frame, induce chromatic aberrations, vignetting and colour shifts which need different lens designs on order to be minimised.
When I had a P45+, Luminous Landscape ran various opinion pieces as to whether it was roughly equivalent to 4x5 film. Many people, including me (and I have shot a reasonable amount of 4x5) thought it was, though again this depends on the scanning process involved in order to make the comparison. The D800 sensor is within spitting distance of the P45+. Which means that lenses that might originally have been designed for a 35mm film camera are now being asked to handle a 'film' that has the resolution of a sheet many times the size. So it's no wonder that many film lenses are not optimal for the job in purely technical terms, even if they can still be wonderful 'look' lenses.
Gallery: http://tashley1.zenfolio.com/
I think that as a vast generalisation, lenses are better re-designed for digital, though a lot of older, film-designed lenses work well and create great results, whether technically or creatively.
However... here's a good example: the last-generation Leica 35 Lux was designed for film. It had a focus shift which people almost never noticed on film but which in the end made it not ideal for digital, so Leica made another version.
One of the reasons might have been that digital sensors in effect either have more resolution (I don't want to start scanner wars here, like I say these are generalisations) or are more often used to make large prints at least.
Another reason that was widely given at the time was that film has more 'depth' to the emulsion and so the shifts in focus got sort of sucked in to the depth and were less noticeable.
in Medium Format land, Rodenstock and Schneider have made new, digital targeted lenses for technical camera use too. Sensor wells and micro lenses, especially when offset towards the extremes of the frame, induce chromatic aberrations, vignetting and colour shifts which need different lens designs on order to be minimised.
When I had a P45+, Luminous Landscape ran various opinion pieces as to whether it was roughly equivalent to 4x5 film. Many people, including me (and I have shot a reasonable amount of 4x5) thought it was, though again this depends on the scanning process involved in order to make the comparison. The D800 sensor is within spitting distance of the P45+. Which means that lenses that might originally have been designed for a 35mm film camera are now being asked to handle a 'film' that has the resolution of a sheet many times the size. So it's no wonder that many film lenses are not optimal for the job in purely technical terms, even if they can still be wonderful 'look' lenses.
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Gallery: http://tashley1.zenfolio.com/
