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I'm done with lens reviews

Started 4 weeks ago | Discussions thread
Jeff Biscuits Senior Member • Posts: 1,166
Re: I'm done with lens reviews
1

Truman Prevatt wrote:

Microcontrast

Actually it is quite real.

Fill me in in one thing, though…

I’ve done a limited amount of image processing in my career which has involved analysing local contrast/gradient. So “microcontast” as that concept of contrast within a small area of an image (whether analog or digital) makes complete sense.

Where it doesn’t make sense to me is when it comes to lenses. It’s a term that’s explicitly differentiated from just “contrast”, and I can’t get my head around how a lens can provide microcontrast to any different degree than it would provide “macro contrast”. In other words, how could a lens have the capacity to alter tonality just because of the proximity of their tones? It seems obvious that a lens can give more or less contrast, but surely there is no way two lenses with the same macro contrast can differ in terms of microcontrast.

So I’ve always assumed that in the context of lens reviews, microcontrast—though a perfectly real and measurable thing—is used in a somewhat mythical way, because in terms of a lens transmitting light, it’s just contrast.

Or is there something I’ve completely overlooked?

 Jeff Biscuits's gear list:Jeff Biscuits's gear list
Ricoh GR Digital II Ricoh GR Digital IV Fujifilm X20 Fujifilm XF10 Ricoh GR IIIx +14 more
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