DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

EF 400mm f/5.6L USM image quality

Started Jul 1, 2021 | Questions thread
mermaidkiller Senior Member • Posts: 1,450
Re: EF 400mm f/5.6L USM image quality
1

rodriguezPhoto wrote:

stillviking wrote:

I really love this lens, much better than todays.

I think that film era lenses like this one are built to appeal to a different aesthetic than today's purely digital lenses are. Corner to corner sharpness from wide open is the order of the day for lenses these days. Film era lenses like this one seem to give you the very best they can at center, and not focus too much on perfection at the corners, since film couldn't be guaranteed to be perfectly flat anyway. To me it just seems to make the output more pleasing.

A camera with film has a spring driven rigid sheet in the camera back which presses the film against a frame of 24x36mm which is open to the lens, so it is not less flat than a sensor in a modern camera.

The main issue here is that modern people have much higher requirements to the IQ and modern DSLR / MILF cameras are not below 24MP and most even 30MP while 20 years ago 6-8MP was the mainstream. And indeed lenses are much better and the downside of this is that modern lenses are heavier and bulkier (cf. RF lenses vs EF counterparts with same FL(range) and F ratio). This is against the usual trend that modern consumer electronics is getting lighter and smaller.

-- hide signature --

Ricoh KR-5 ... Pentax ME Super ... Canon T90 ... ... ... 40d ... 7d ... 6d ... r6

 mermaidkiller's gear list:mermaidkiller's gear list
Sony RX100 VI Canon EOS R6 GoPro Hero7 Black Canon EF 85mm F1.8 USM Canon EF 50mm f/2.5 Macro +5 more
Post (hide subjects) Posted by
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow