I have a number of Voigtlander lenses (LM and LTM) and a couple of cheap LTM Leicas as well as a huge swirl of “Russian” LTM lenses but I use them on M4/3 bodies. Maybe I am not critical enough or likely to be amazed at what a FF sensor could do for me?
As far as I understand it, the problem seems to affect the corners, especially on wider angle lenses (due to optical refraction). I'd guess that on the smaller M4/3 sensor you won't see it, as you're not "using" light rays coming in at wider angles?
Photography is a qaere (to borrow my interpretation of Old English) business - it seems that we fuss and carry on always looking for a lens/recording-medium that creates more perfection in an image.
I simply look at an image and I either like it or don’t like it. I certainly don’t go specifically into it to see if the image that I like is a perfect rendition or if the image, once determined so, becomes a flawed capture for whatever reason and it now becaomes something that I do not like any more.
I have written several posts about the “philosophy of photography” and they seem to go down a bit like lead balloons. Not that the words were ignored and not digested by some.
All throught the age of photography there have always been great images where the level of perfection would not pass the “expert’s test” of present day image quality. And these were all taken using more difficult to use equipment to the point where one wonders why they can be so well regarded considering the endless quest for image perfection which is much more easily obtained today.
In many ways I think it is just so that we have something to talk about.
Over the ages the necessarily soft and moving painterly “Pictorialist” type images were replaced by the “f64” group and Ansel Adams’ rigorous processing of perfection.
There will always be two schools of thought in photography - that which seeks perfection of replication and that which predominately seeks to move the psyche of the viewer. Not that a perfect replication cannot do this. But the import and feeling generated by an image can overcome technical errors - the photographers job is to preserve a moment in time at a particular place in time and it will never be perfectly done unless one was actually there - and memory is an even more imperfect recordong medium which is subject to fading and embellishment.
I have pointed out that every image captured cannot have perfect perspective unless the camera is held horizontally not only sideways but fore and aft. However, whilst tilted horizons are the first error of the new user a fore and aft tilt is readily (and always) accepted unless it is architectural. Surely we should examine every image caught for instances of fore and aft tilt as well? These images are just as “imperfect” as softer edges?
Surely all perspective distortions - even those from ultra wide lenses - should be unacceptable?
But my “cause” is like a donkey braying at the moon as I am sure that “errors” that we cannot see are not errors at all - just as much as I don’t go looking for errors in captures that move my brain as “good”.
The reason why we “don’t” think that there is an error in an image of “Aunt Philadelphia” is we know that the person in the image is she even though it doesn’t look quite like her from that angle of capture. We often don’t like images taken of us because they often don’t flatter us from a particular angle. In real life our brain directs our recognition (this came from a signwriter who shared the wisdom of his craft with me). It is trained to recognise straight lines and we “know” that buildings are mostly made up of horizontal and vertical lines and it rebels when it sees something that “is a building” but the perspective and angle of capture makes a caught image look “odd”. However rounded shapes are easier and the brain is more accommodating in its recognition procedure. People we know are always recognised by our brain simply because we know them and if an odd angle of view is included our brain will still go through its recognition algorithm. “Oh hello George, I didn’t recognise you at first from down there ....”
On the other hand a photograph is a fixed rendition of a moment in time and we can see more clearly that this person we know really well can sometimes look quite different in a photographic capture. There will be even more reasons for this than an angle of view and a focal length and it is a subject well beyond a long post in a photographic forum.
But in the end there is nothing wrong with the science of perfectly rendered photographic capture. Once good enough image capture and replication has been achieved then any further progress is just for the interest in what can be done. For surely the brain will always try and adjust what we see by comparing it with what we know.
My 1950’s Hektor 135/4.0 has been oh so sharp on M4/3 since I cleaned the hazy lenses - any sharper on FF and I could cut myself
Yep, I also really enjoy my vintage lenses, especially since I have the Z6. I love to explore the specialties in rendering these vintage beauties show.
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Tom Caldwell
