I learned a new phrase.
Thanks everyone for the observations, and external resources.
(mutters …) bank managers …
I can only recommend to get a ‘cheap’ analog medium format camera and try it yourself.
My limited personal experience is this: DoF ist not shallower than e.g. a Canon 85/1.2, but everything else can be. Going from in focus to out of focus regions can be smoother on a larger format, corner sharpness fall-off can be less visible, contrast wide open can be better, micro contrast can be better, distortion can be better controlled, the plane of focus can be flatter…minute details that add up.
The Mamiya645 with 80/2.8 that I have has some swirly bokeh that I am not a fan of for example. Still, the whole package just looks very good even compared to good modern lenses. There is more to a lens (and a film/sensor) than just resolution.
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Do you use that lens on a digital camera body
or “just” on the Mamiya 645?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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Imagine that you have a semi-antique lens, like a Mamiya 80/2.8,
and that you have a Mamiya (analog) camera body
as well as a digital camera body, onto which you can ‘adapter’ the lens.
What differences would you be able to spot from the images?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
Same lens, different ‘sensors’…
I think the sensors would need to be the same dimension in order to compare the lens performance on each. Think about how distortion and vignetting manifest; you’d want images with extremities covered by the same aspect of the lens… ??
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What are we comparing? Digital full frame to digital medium format is a ridiculously small step.
let’s start with APS-C and step up to full frame. The sensor size is multiplied by two (or 2.2), most sensors in APS-C and FF are sold somewhere around 24 MP, so there is no real advantage in resolution. There IS an advantage in depth of field for FF but it’s not as big as the advertising tries to tell us. In real life you miss a lot of shots at f/1.4 because the eyes might just not be perfectly in focus and the slightly larger DoF of an APS-C sensor could save the shot. I do NOT think I can tell if a portrait was shot with a FF or APS-C camera.
Now let’s step up from FF to digital medium format: the sensor area is about 1.5 times larger. Not 2 or 2.2 times. 1.5 times only. I told you that I can’t really see the difference between APS-C and FF, so it’s completely hopeless to identify any difference between FF and MF. They DO sell MF cameras with 100 MP (Fuji) and that is an incredible resolution, but I rarely publish anything north of 4MP (2560*1712) … why punish me and my laptop with those super huge files? Plus the separation / DoF of a 105mm 1.4 or 200 2.0 on FF is unequaled and doesn’t exist in digital MF.
They say that opportunity knocks only once but temptation leans on the doorbell ;o) and my temptation listens to the beautiful name of Hasselblad X1D (doesn’t it sound like music? ExOneDee?) but there is simply nothing it can do that a D850 with a 105 1.4 can’t do better - at a quarter of the price.
Things change radically when we look on the analog side of things. The “sensor size” of a Pentax 67 is about five times (in words: FIVE times) bigger than the 24*36 mm negative format of a classic 135 film. The detail and resolution of such a large negative or slide is just rivaled by the new 100 MP sensors now. And no full frame camera-and-lens-combination can come close to the incredible shallow DoF of the Super Takumar 105 2.4 in front of a Pentax 67 (another temptation).
If you want to shoot material for real huge prints, say two by three meters (seven by ten feet) , you might still go with analog medium format rather than digital. But in order to benefit from that great resolution, you need quite expensive lab gear, an expensive rotating (drum) scanner and again) a PC that can handle those huge files … the cost of camera plus lens is ridiculously low compared to that
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I have some old Hasselblad prints at home and I can tell you that they are a marvel to look at. The camera not so much, at least in the brief time we had one. The ease of use of the modern camera is much more compelling.
Now, this is interesting and the important question is Why?
What is it that makes those old Hasselblad prints a marvel to look at?
Darkroom skills?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
‘Just’ on the Mamiya for now. I would need an adapter. And I don’t really see why I should try. 645 is 56mm*41,5mm=2324mm² if I put this on my X-T1 (with a 370mm² sensor) I am really cropping in on the center of that lens…but…I literally don’t see the bigger picture. There are some people out there who did this, and it is a fine 80/2.8 lens, but you loose so much of the image circle. With that bigger image circle comes a lot of the ‘magic’ I think. It’s not magic though.
I am more interested in getting a decent macro lens and ‘scanning’ my negatives, stitching everything together.
Oh and that Mamiya lens is NOT a Planar 80/2.8…
Here’s what one could also do: cruise through the existing flickr groups for those lenses. You’ll see the ‘zeiss pop’ in comparison. And you can get a good grasp of what medium format can look like. I can only stress heavily: This is not only about DoF, that is rather irrelevant I think, it’s about all other aberrations which are SO much better controlled in longer focal length higher f-number lenses.
True. But since a lens is supposed to be at its best in the center, the idea to use
a large format lens for a smaller sensor is not a bad idea at all.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
Nothing wrong with that, but …
There are many trade-offs in a lens design, and one of those is the usable radius of the image circle. The larger the radius, the more difficult it is to make at high resolution, or large aperture or whatever.
For example, I have many lenses around 50mm focal length. They are mostly cheap and good quality for 36x24mm (FF, Full Frame). One of these is 47mm, max aperture f/5.6. Yikes, how come it has such a small aperture? Because it covers 5x4 film. It’s a cracking lens for 5x4. But I suspect the performance it gives on 36x24mm would be worse than the faster and cheaper lenses designed for that format.
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Would that be the Super Angulon?
@Claes I just enjoy looking at them because they look great and different. It isn’t because I have the desire to justify the equipment, brand, etc. Taking them was awkward but we barely got any duds compared to smaller cameras.
Super Angulon XL 47mm, usually attached to a simple home-made box camera designed for that lens. I also have the 58mm and 72mm, and these fit on more conventional cameras.
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Hm… I have a hunch that this thread soon needs a split…
Nevertheless:
would you agree that a skilled darktable wizard of today
would be able to perform the same wizardry as
what a skilled antique darkroom wizard could do in the analogue era?
- If no: what is missing, today?
- If yes: then why do we consider present-day developments inferior to what was performed then?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
You are asking the wrong person. Skill is something that I don’t have. 
Digital doesn’t yet have the resolution of 5x4. The hard digital cut-off of high frequency detail causes problems that are best solved by much higher resolution, otherwise with upsampling and “invented” HF data.
When that problem is solved, I think digital will be capable of giving 5x4-like results. It would pass the Turing test of being indistinguishable.
Digital skills are entirely different to analogue skills.
Digital: I sit in my comfortable chair and tell the computer to make the first draft of my images. Then I work on each, still sitting in my comfortable chair. My effort is mostly brain-work.
Analogue: I kneel beside my boarded-up bath in total darkness, except for the luminous hands of a stop-clock. Remove a 5x4 sheet from the box, slide it into the dev dish, rock gently side-to-side and up-to-down. Remove the film, slide it into the stop bath. Then fix, and turn on the light, and wash. Repeat for all the other sheets. That’s just the negatives. When they are washed and dried, get on with the printing. My effort is mostly physical.
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Sometimes the beauty of a specific tool or medium are the limits that it has, and the creative methods that people come up with to work with and around those limits.
The RZA talks a lot about how the limits of the SP12 sampler fueled his creativity in his early beat making days. And that finding new techniques was a matter of working with the limits of his equipment.
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abso-fucking-lutely. My father was an avid amateur photographer - and a pharmacist by profession. The laboratory became a darkroom on weekends and - despite having spent hundreds of sundays (really) rolling film-drums and swiveling the developer tray - I wouldn’t have the slightest idea how to do in a lab what I can to with programs like darktable, RawTherapee and Gimp.
Just remember (or imagine) what it means to store paper in five gradations, provide for a bunch of different developer liquids (that need to be heated to a specific temperature for reliable results … and suffers badly with every development circle) . Try to imagine how much time and money it costs to come to terms with a personal color-grading and apply it to a bunch of photos. No non-destructive editing here, no going back and “click” for another value or setting. Every test, every new version costs money … and time à gogo
Naw kids, we’re spoiled. It has never been as easy as today.
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