April 2001 Archives

There is no such thing as best in lenses. At best there is "best sharpness" or "best controlled background blur." These are, of course, highly desireable qualities, under most circumstances, and may even cause someone to rate a lens "best all around." This means that under the greatest number of circumstances, this will be the best lens. This does not, however, mean that it is the best lens under all circumstances. If you want to bring out the subtle tonal gradiations, in a face or a locomotive, Minolta G lenses will generlly do an excellent job. If you want a punchy shot of a snow-boarder in mid-air, well, G lenses will do a great job, subtle tonal variations and all... but that may not be exactly what you are aiming for. And suddenly we are into the realm of preferences. Preferences are not objective, and as such are hard to argue. Actually, they are very easy to argue, and many people do, vigorously, and to no end, but ultimately, they are just preferences. Anyway, I cringe when I hear "best lens." Best lens for what? The artist in me loves to explore the possibilities.

In hearing many things about "how much detail is enough?" I find a certain irony in hearing that digital is "good enough" and top quality film has "too much extraneous information" from the same people (not necessarily on this list) who would rather die than be caught with a third-party lens on their camera. I mean, why buy a lens that will resolve to 120 lines per mm if the medium that you are capturing to will not resolve 1/10 of that? What is the advantage of a Minolta G prime lens over a Cosina 28-300 zoom if the medium being recorded is a CCD array, complet with noise, at 1024x1200 pixels? I exaggerate a bit, but it makes you wonder...

I have read (I forget the source) that the maximum amount of data on the most fine grained film that a scanner can caputure is about 6000 dpi. Beyond that you are resolving grain. Some exceptions are good to over twice that (12,000dpi for Technical Pan). This would result in files of 600 MB per image for most films, and 2.4 GB file for one Technical Pan frame. So when you shoot a roll of 36 exposures of Kodak Gold, you have recorded 21.6 Gigabytes of potentially digital information. Leaving aside all questions of how useful this might be, suffice it to say that digital cameras have a long way to go before they match the potential inherent in film. If you have ever shot 20 rolls of film in one day, ask yourself where 432 Gigabytes (almost half a terabyte) will go in your camera bag.

Note: Since I wrote this in 2001, digital cameras have made considerable progress. My current take is that a 6MP digital camera can match most the quality of equivalent 35mm film cameras under most condtions. Exceptions might be: using Velvia or Technical Pan while shooting tripod mounted.

While there may be some notable exceptions that I am unaware of, most older third-party MF wide-angles are pretty bad (I had a Makinon 24mm f/2.8 (before I knew any better) that was so bad the edges were vignetted and the whole image was soft, noticable even on a 3x5" print; I got rid of it quickly). Newer (last five years) thrid-party wide-angles are the same design as their AF counterparts, so for example, the Sigma 24mm (see my other post on the topic) does better even than the Minolta counterpart. Buying used, it can be hard to tell the year of a design, and it can be pretty risky getting a third-party wideangle. Remember, wide angles are pretty hard to do well, especially compared to 50mm or even 135mm. I have seen quite a few very good 135mm third party lenses for minolta. I have a minolta 28mm f/2.8 celtic that I got cheap once. I was got it to give it away to someone,but I was so happy with the results that I kept it, and have been using it regularly ever since. I've seen them for as low as $40, both on e-bay and at places like cameta.com. That is what I would suggest. KEH.com is another of my favorite places to get lenses.