What's the quality that gives some lenses (like Minolta G) a "3D" look?

[Bart7D]

Nice thread!
I'd like to be more specific.
Speaking of this quality in G-lenses (but also in top-notch Nikon/Canon glass)

• It's not just good overall sharpness
• it's not just good or increased contrast
• it's not just sharpness of main subject and all else blurred
• it's not just nice bokeh
• it's not just the degree of detail
• it's not just dynamic range
• it's definitely not what many people conjure with HDR and/or tone mapping

It's also the finest gradations in every transition of color(intensity) and luminance, presented in a coherent/convincing/credible way.

All this is what can yield the perception of an image being '3D'.

It's all this (and more) that makes top-notch lenses special - and expensive....

But it's still the photographer who can use all these features to real photographic avail.

. . . . .

Bart

 

[brian14478]

minolta 100-200 4.5 $75 used (wide open)


minolta 100-200 4.5 around $75 used


sigma 75-200 2.8/3.5 with 1.4x vivitar around $125 for both






sigma 75-200 2.8/3.5 w/1.4 vivitar




sigma 75-200 2.8/35 w/vivitar 1.4x


sigma 75-200 2.8/3.5 w/vivtar 1.4x










Its not just the expensive lenses..some very good used lenses can and do produce the same look,..as long as the lens is high quality in important areas....and the shooting conditions are right

I have seen many beercan images (minolta 70-210 f4)that have the same look....around$100-$150)...brian

 

[JerryCurtis]

While some lenses have different coatings that give them "that look", it's mostly the physics of the shot that gives it the 3D illusion - f/l vs aperture and distance from cam to subject to background.

This one has both OOF foreground and background due to long f/l (400mm), fairly wide apeture for the distance (f/5.6) and good distance rations from foreground-subject-background:

This one has no OOF foreground. It still has some 3D look, but not as much as the previous one. These are with the 70-400G lens, so is fairly high quality with good micro-contrast as well. It all adds up and the more of these qualities and features are present, the better. I don't think it matters the brand of lens - just that the image is put together properly with decent glass.

--
*Jerry*
Sony V1, H5, A350 and A77... Still learning...

'The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.'
-- Dorothea Lange

http://www.pbase.com/icicle50/root

http://www.pbase.com/icicle50/image/88943577/medium.jpg

 

[Equals Nothing]

arie wrote:

So, DOF and defined edges are the key. Though, I think you can also say that even with a large DOF, you could probably still get a feeling of depth even without much. bokeh.

Yea, actually It's my belief that too thin DOF can ruin it because you wont have enough depth to keep all of the subject's edges sharp. It is a very controlled illusion, you have to open the lens enough to seperate the object from the surroundings, but not so much as to not have all edges fairly sharp. It's that crispness of the subject vs the bokeh that makes it jump out. I think it's real hard to know, even with DOF preview, exactly how it will look, which is why there isn't much hard data on it. Sometimes it happens, incidentally, and sometimes it doesn't.

 

[Draek]

User skill. High resolution and micro-contrast helps, but most of it is a good head on top of the photographer's shoulders knowing how to compose a shot in more than two dimensions.

I must say, though, that while it can be an impressive technique when pulled out successfully, it is not mandatory for great photography---I've also seen many photographs that work precisely because they appear "flat", and invoking through their composition and subject arrangement a feeling close to classical painting.

 

[Tom2572]

I've been on a quest to find the answer to this as well, and while I get over my head quite quickly on the science behind it, there are a couple of misconceptions with the word "contrast" when it comes to lenses, and the contrast that we think of with a modern lens with modern coatings is not the same contrast that helps to create that 3d effect. Take the below image from the Library of Congress. There is no way you can call the undoubtedly un-coated lens used to take this photo a "high contrast" lens, in fact the whole image is quite low in contrast, yet the 3d effect is readily apparent.

Resolution also has a part in this because what people think of as sharp these days is actually just high contrast, and lens makers are more than happy to exploit this misconception which has brought us to an age of ultra-coated high contrast lenses that people mistake as being sharp.

So, put this together and the secret sauce is actually a low contrast lens with high resolution. Which, when you think about it makes perfect sense why some of those older Minolta lenses seem to have that "look". It's also why a lot of those early 20th century pictorialist photos have that look.








There's a pretty good Luminous Landscape article that goes deeper into contrast though it doesn't really touch on 3d.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/lens-contrast.shtml

 

[EinsteinsGhost]

I would say it is a combination of micro-contrast and separation with a really smooth bokeh. Here's an image, taken with Sony 135mm f/2.8 STF that demonstrates a 3D effect with and without considering the background blur.

In the following case taken with the same lens, it is the separation that primarily defines the effect...

--


Sony A55, Sony NEX-3, Sony F828

 

[rgsnow]

I think its not only contrast, but the photo compositon, the focused ball player, the out of focused players and also the dugout, which all are in the back ground. Take any of them out and you may lose the 3D effect. Most photos with that 3D look just happens. You go out to the park to shoot butterflies, and come home with a snapshot that turns out to be one of your all time favorites. I took this a few years ago, and is one of my favorites photos. It has a 3D effect that I have not been able to duplicate. I have others that have a 3D look, but not like this one. When shooting flowers and such, I always try to make a conscious effert to do so.



Here is one of a butterfly, the little blue flower in front of the butterfly, created the 3D. Both were taken with 70-300G

 

[sybersitizen]

arie wrote:

There have been a lot of people who comment that some lenses produce images that have a 3 dimensional look, or at least no "flat" looking.

It's just a cult belief, a hoax, a mass hallucination. There is no 3D look that you buy with a lens. People can't even agree on what that might be if it existed. If you want some kind of 3D look, you build it as you would go about building any photo with a specific goal in mind.

 

[Glenn]

--

http://www.daisyseyecancerfund.org/Files/Awareness/photographing_rb_poster.pdf

 

[Dave Oddie]

arie wrote:

There have been a lot of people who comment that some lenses produce images that have a 3 dimensional look, or at least no "flat" looking. Most notable are the older Minolta G lenses, an the CZ lenses.

Does this have to do more with the coatings on the lens or something else?

Use of short DOF also produces a more dynamic image, but there seems to be something more to it.

 

[quatpat]

arie wrote:

There have been a lot of people who comment that some lenses produce images that have a 3 dimensional look, or at least no "flat" looking. Most notable are the older Minolta G lenses, an the CZ lenses.

Does this have to do more with the coatings on the lens or something else?

No... it has to do much more with your own imagination, and with the "3D hype" that some people spread around photography forums.

Use of short DOF also produces a more dynamic image, but there seems to be something more to it.

 

[Sam_Oslo]

The Sharpness, contrast and a nice bokeh of the lens is essntial for the "3D" look. but the copositionn, background and background-light plays a big role too. So you have to "see" the 3D yourself, but your lens should be capable of creating a sharp shot with nice bokeh too.

Here is my 3D-shot of the day, fresh from today, with Tamron 70-200/2.8 (the good old cheap one). The nice bokeh of other ducky in the background plays a big role in popping out the 3D-ducky out of your monitor .

 

[Oleg L K]

The original Sigma 18-125 f/3.5-5.6 is not a pro lens but has a pronounced "3d-effect". I spotted it on many of my photos from the A100 era, and I never did anything special to achieve it. Just shot and developed RAWs using "dcraw" plus some postprocessing.

 

[Bruce Norikane]

Glenn wrote:

you are probably thinking of tilt/shift shots. the Whole of the DOF is in the shot like the dog shot above (which is great) but at an angle to the field of view or in a strange place in the frame that looks unnatural.

Look for Vincent LaForet .. his style uses a lot of T/S shots and probably the shots your thinking of in particular are from him flying around in a helicopter

--

http://www.daisyseyecancerfund.org/Files/Awareness/photographing_rb_poster.pdf

Here's a wikipedia article that explains the tilt-shift or miniature effect:

Loading…

en.wikipedia.org

Google tilt/shift or miniature photo effect for more articles and examples:

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www.geeksugar.com

Geek Sugar example of miniature effect

 

[D Williams]

The "3D" characteristic of a picture, also described as "snap" or "pop" is a combination of measurable and arbitrary properties of a lens and the components of the picture.

Measurable lens properties are acutance/resolution, sometimes collectively referred to as sharpness. Resolution is is how close you can put black and white lines together and tell them apart. Acutance is how fine a gradation the lens can transmit between one shade of gray and the next at a given resolution. While maybe not totally accurate, acutance is commonly referred to as micro-contrast and is closely related to the 'clarity' setting in Lightroom.

Bokeh has no standard measurement but exists, and is related to out-of-focus falloff (how fast do things get out of focus or lose resolution between 'here' and 'there') and out-of-focus rendering ( In my mind, this relates to loss of acutance in the out-of-focus parts).

Note that acutance/resolution and bokeh change with aperture.

Resolution/acutance allows us to see details in the subject, the most important detail usually being the edge. Visual separation of the subject from the background in a photograph is caused by a difference in resolution/acutance between subject and background and visual cues.

Visual cues include colors, shadows, relative sizes, etc.

So, the best way to get 'pop' is start out with a high resolution/acutance lens with a pleasing bokeh, which are the main qualities of the 135mm STF. Then get a detailed subject suitably distanced from a contrasting background with regular texture that can be easily defocused and apply cross of oblique lighting to the subject to add defining shadow.

OR,

open the lens all the way, move the subject away from the background, fire away and hope.

 

[sybersitizen]

Oleg L K wrote:

The original Sigma 18-125 f/3.5-5.6 is not a pro lens but has a pronounced "3d-effect". I spotted it on many of my photos from the A100 era, and I never did anything special to achieve it. Just shot and developed RAWs using "dcraw" plus some postprocessing.

The only way to prove that you can buy a 3D look is to shoot something with your 3D look lens and then shoot the exact same scene from the exact same spot using some different lens with the exact same parameters (focal length, aperture, focus distance, exposure, and post-processing settings, if any). Then let's see if there's a difference.

 

[The_Wicker_Man]

Equals Nothing wrote:

arie wrote:

So, DOF and defined edges are the key. Though, I think you can also say that even with a large DOF, you could probably still get a feeling of depth even without much. bokeh.

Yea, actually It's my belief that too thin DOF can ruin it because you wont have enough depth to keep all of the subject's edges sharp. It is a very controlled illusion, you have to open the lens enough to seperate the object from the surroundings, but not so much as to not have all edges fairly sharp. It's that crispness of the subject vs the bokeh that makes it jump out. I think it's real hard to know, even with DOF preview, exactly how it will look, which is why there isn't much hard data on it. Sometimes it happens, incidentally, and sometimes it doesn't.

You're nothing if not persistent, Max

 

[tbcass]

You hit on the real issue. The first has a 3D "look" due to the composition having both foreground and background aspects. Composition is the real key to a 3D look.

 

[tbcass]

sybersitizen wrote:

arie wrote:

There have been a lot of people who comment that some lenses produce images that have a 3 dimensional look, or at least no "flat" looking.

It's just a cult belief, a hoax, a mass hallucination. There is no 3D look that you buy with a lens. People can't even agree on what that might be if it existed. If you want some kind of 3D look, you build it as you would go about building any photo with a specific goal in mind.

Correct. Proper composition is the key to a 3D look. No lens can do that.