[MF3D.FORUM:629] Re: Thanks Paul

[Brian Reynolds <reynolds@xxxxxxxxx>]

Bill Glickman wrote:
> But what I was mainly referring to was a deciding on a versatile
> lens, one that can shoot at 5.6 if you are shooting waves crashing
> on rocks...(achieve stop motion) in which case many LF lenses would
> produce very poor results.... and this is due to their very poor MTF
> curves at these wide apt.  So bad it would be noticeable in the
> viewer when shot wide open..  MF glass, has excellent sharpness over
> almost the entire f stop range, usually tailing downwards at the
> smallest openings.  But in still situations, I totally agree, stop
> all the way down, you are not enlarging enough to allow diffraction
> to rear its ugly head!
> 

You shouldn't be so quick to judge LF lenses inferior.  A little while
ago Kerry Thalmann, Mike McDonald, and Chris Perez did a series of
lens tests on MF and LF lenses.  Their intent was to cherry pick the
best lenses available to them.  In the course of their testing some
people sent them additional lenses to test.  You can see the tests and
conclusions at <URL:http://www.hevanet.com/cperez/>.

Basically modern LF lenses perform just as well as modern MF lenses,
and 50 year old LF lenses (Kodak Ektars) are just about as good as
modern ones.  They also showed that you do not have to stop all the
way down (even with 8x10).  Of course LF has swings and tilts to
maximize DOF.  They did find a correlation between price and
performance.

-- 
Brian Reynolds                  | "Dee Dee!  Don't touch that button!"
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