Great Little Lens

Bob Tullis wrote:

Greg7579 wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

Greg7579 wrote:

Great job Truman.

Really good for a DPR gear list user review to actually have some meat in it. I just give stars and gave 5 to all three of the beautiful little 23/35/50 F2s.

If everyone gets an A - an A has no meaning. Average is a "C" right in the middle. If a C lens gets an A - then what does that say about the true A lenses?

I was teaching in college when the "everyone has to get an A craze hit the undergraduate world." The justification was "if I don't get an A, I'll never get into medical school and my life will be ruined." A few test later when those demanding an A figured out that they were going to be lucky to pass the course - the tune changed. Then it was - "your test are too hard." It was "me" it was the entire facility. If so why did some do very well on them? You have to give the cream room to rise to the top.

If there is to be a valid ranking system it needs to represent something or else it has no meaning. Five thumbs up on every lens Fuji makes tells no one anything. Not all lenses are created equal. That does not mean they are "bad lenses." Personally I would rather know the warts of a particular lens before I buy it. That's why I don't pay much attention to lens reviews on line. Most are pretty worthless.

You can't have a perfect lens with glass that size. I agree with your comments though.

There is no perfect lens. Every design, Sonnar, Planer, etc. has trade offs and some will be better in one area and a different design in another area. The best lens for a given person is the one that fits best with the type of rendering a person wants and needs for his selectee genre.

I think you must have completely misunderstood my response. I was complementing you. Why are you lecturing on the current propensity of American society and the Milenials' desire for an all A system? I am vehemently opposed to that nonsense. You know where I went to school and that I spent 30 years in the military right?

We don't give out As. But if I were rating the Fuji 23/35/50 F2s, I would give them an A. But I agree with your review.

It's not a personal affront, nor a lecture, Greg (IMHO). I think you completely misunderstood the thoughts that came to his mind in response, so eloquently expressed. Not so much as a response to you, but as a general observation of a lot that goes on here and in other brand forums when it comes to gear (you just happened to be the catalyst).

I for one agree that too many people nowadays don't appreciate nuanced shades of gray, only assessing gear in stark black or white. I remember how converts from film on this site used to speak about lens IQ, and subtle nuances in how they render, not in terms of magic and such. I miss that - but Truman is a throwback in that sense, and I for one quite appreciate his perspectives from his experience.

Greg, Bob is right - that was not directed at you but you provided the lead in line.  Lens design is hard.  It is particularly difficult for aircraft reconnaissance cameras and even more difficult with the camera is in space.  When I was at FCI I spend more time than I wanted to in upstate New York (which can suck in the winter   ) either at Kodak or the Corning research campus working with those guys on lenses for our cameras.  Many times Corning had to cook up a new glass formulation.  Many times new methods in coatings or polishing were required.  Of course Corning and Kodak used charts to test design and test prototypes but no final decision was made until we mounted a lens and flew it on a couple of test ranges.  One was our Long Island range for humid atmosphere test and one in the desert - China Lake or Groom Lake (depending on the final customer) were popular spots to see how it handled heat currents.  Images were then given to experienced PI's to give an evaluation of the produced images.  It was the human's input that the prime factor as the final product was for the PI's to derive information from the scene.

Thinking about this last night it seems that when the design tool used primarily to test design prototypes, the MTF went main stream, its importance was overhyped.  It's a good tool.  However, it only addresses one aspect of the lens performance.  It is a great tool to check the ray tracing algorithms used in design.  However, there is a lot more to a lens than a good amplitude spectral response.  The MTF does not even address the phase response of the lens spatial frequency response.  But it gives a nice pretty chart and numbers.  It is objective but only about the spacial spectral response of the lens.  The unfortunate thing for many lens properties - there is not a set of numbers that describe what is a good rendering by the lens and what isn't.  Couple that with the fact that everyone's priorities of the importance of the different aspects of a lens rendering and even more confusion arises.

There is no magic number that tells people if they will like how a given lens will render an object on the sensor.  For a test chart - the MTF is a start but not a lot of people buy a lens to take pictures of test charts.

One of my favorite lenses is the Leica 50 Cron - the Type 3 model.  I don't particularly like the Type 4 model.  It is a lens with nice smooth rendering and is very flexible because of that.  I am reminded of this lens by the Fuji 35 f.4. Does the type 3 have a few warts - sure but I know them and they are easy to work around.  To be honest when I got the Fuji 50 f2, I was disappointed.  I guess the 56 f1.2 had my expectations too high.  The 50 f2 does have a  wart - certain background can generate poor rough bokeh that can be distracting.  Working with it I found that by changing the way I approach a scene - maybe only move to the right or left by a foot or so I could mitigate the distracting background by changing how how a specular reflection of point source of light hit the lens.

I forced myself to use this lens almost exclusively at the track and after awhile as I learned the strengths and weaknesses of the lens I have grown to really like it.  I have the small 3L Peak Design sling pouch for my Pro3.  Today the 50 is either on the camera or in the pouch. In is a constant companion with the 35 f1.4 and Pro3.

I bought the 50-140 f2.8 for the track.  Wonderful lens.  I would give this a 5 star zoom rating.  However, I sold it because I found between the 50 and 90, I could cover 95% of what I used the 50-140 for.  I found that even with a zoom, 90 mm was the sweet spot of what I used at the track and the 90 was better and the 90 was faster and the 90 was smaller and lighter.  OIS is fine but shooting at shutter speeds to freeze a galloping horse - OIS is irrelevant to even a negative.  So while the 50-140 is an A grade lens - it's not one I would use.  The good news was I bought it on sale and I didn't lose much on it.  For the few times I need to use a zoom the 55-200 works just fine.  I did my buy wife the 18-55 as she learns on my H1 as I got tired being her "lens changing boy."