Also the desktop I have now for ML work is powerful enough to do a full 3d simulation of a lens using the full Maxwell equations from first principles. I remember doing the back of the envelope calculations that I'd need the Bluegene/L back in my undergrad days to do it for real, well: https://bnnbreaking.com/arts/video-gaming/nvidia-geforce-rtx...
What a time to be alive.
Thanks for encouraging me to search about it, and quickly realize Bolte Bridge is a natural target due to relative level of architectural sophistication as well as being easily accessible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolte_Bridge#/media/File%3ABol...
Takes high ISO settings to get something out of that, but it works and is dead simple.
When I borrow my dads camera for the odd shot at times, I totally relly on AF, if I went by the view finder I am almost blind... Same thing the other way round!
"Fingerprint coated" haha !
"...this lens fails to deliver persuasive arguments in nearly all situations..."
LOL
after you had taken a pic, you had to rush into the darkroom, develop the paper and then reverse print it (cannot remember how, or even if i did).
all a bit weird, but it kept me amused back then. i haven't been involved in photography for nearly 40 years.
https://www.timhunkin.com/a198_goodbye-cibachrome.htm
Sadly, this marvellous paper - direct positive colour and easy to develop - is no more.
Direct link to the video since (for me, right now) the embed in the above doesn't work. https://youtu.be/5AOlPuTQt-M?si=q7RibENicPH0Be9m
https://wandel.ca/homepage/yashicamat.html
https://wandel.ca/homepage/wetcamera.html
TLDR: The first one is about using a 20-year-past-expiry film in a format I didn't otherwise use; the second is about developing a drenched E6 slide film in b&w chemistry and trying to get prints.
It’s a great way both to explain the whole premise behind photography (your fancy camera and lens is just an elaborate way to project an image onto a bit of light-sensitive stuff that you otherwise keep in the dark) and to give students some early hands-on experience developing prints without all the intervening steps involved in making a print from film.
It's a pretty common trick photographers and videographers use to get a sort of dream-sequence effect.
I did learn that they must be used judiciously. After shooting most of a personal music video with a Sweet 80 wide open, my wife described it as "like watching an ocular migraine".
I don't know anything about photography. Is using specialized lenses like the ones you mentioned better than postprocessing software?
But lenses can do things that postprocessing can't do, strictly speaking (though it can often emulate well enough to fool most people).
The input to a lens is a field of photons that are:
1. Striking the sensor at different places. In other words, which pixel they hit.
2. Coming into the sensor at different directions.
3. Coming in at different wavelengths.
The 2D image captured by a sensor completely discards 2 and it drops a significant amount of information from 3 on the floor by bucketing all wavelengths into red, green, and blue amplitudes designed to mostly mimic human visual perception.
Lenses have access to the whole shebang.
Edit: CARIBOU - Hello Hammerheads https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2N_VvfPX1Bc
...
With mere hours of experience in the art and science of optical design, the team at SUPERCHROMAT remain novices in the field. As such, this prime lens, with 6 elements over 4 groups, provides inferior optical performance at a price affordable to few.
Regardless of whether it’s a matter of selective focus in the close-up range, high-contrast available light applications or landscape shots with immense depth of field, this lens fails to deliver persuasive arguments in nearly all situations unless stopped down to f/22.
2X 200mm biconvex lenses BK7. Uncoated.
-700 / 075 X 3 used eyeglass lens 1.67 / Vd 42. Fingerprint coated
+30mm aspheric achromatic triplet LAK14/SF57/Aspheric polymer. VIS 0º coated
Because that's basically what happened in his last 2 abominable movies. He found some really unsuitable thrift lenses and thought it was a master stroke of genius to use them in a professional movie. That's why virtually every single frame is horribly blurred except at the exact center.
Luckily these lenses are pretty cheap (The USSR made many of them), I purchased two in late 2022 that shipped from Ukraine
A video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYvWpavSXeE
YT, voice copying demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNwuAjeDOVE
arXiv, voice cloning detection: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2308.12734.pdf
kaggle, Deep-Voice (support files): https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/birdy654/deep-voice-deepfake...
Has voice cloning using Retrieval-based Voice Conversion and then detection for: Ryan Gosling, Joe Biden, Elon Musk, Barack Obama, Margot Robbie, Linus Sebastian, Taylor Swift, and Donald Trump.
Apparently overly-optimistic detection results reported based on discussion, although they're still not bad at 86% after removing possible training data issues.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24196650
So, maybe it wasn't "kept" but did it at least once, so now it's ingrained as a thing to poke fun.
https://camerapedia.fandom.com/wiki/Radioactive_lenses
I own a Super-Multi-Coated Takumar 50mm f/1.4 and can confirm that the glass browns with age. UV exposure (sunlight) does clear it some.
The so bad it's actually good :) Lovely song, too
Improvements are mainly in terms of coating (reflections, ghosts and such) as well as zoom ranges and auto focus systems. That vintage lenses are not sharp is simply not true, having a lot less of glass in a lense is actually an advantage.
If you talk about lab test numbers, especially around the corners of the frame, modern lenses sure beat vintage ones. Not that you would realize any of that in real life (art replication, detailed macro work and other specialized stuff nonwithstanding).
My universe broke when Sigma introduced an 18-35mm f/1.8 zoom. An f/1.8 zoom. Wow. And it was optically brilliant.
Seventies lenses are super-sharp, but that's because they're mostly slow primes. Any modern prime stepped down to f/5.6 -- even cheap consumerific ones -- will be super-sharp.
There's nothing in seventies technology which allows lenses to have the aperture, zoom range, and aberrations of modern ones.
What those old lenses have so, is build quality. They are machnical master pieces, as oppossed to modern day plastics. I like that. Also, close to no electronics that can fail.
Those wide zoom ranges, and large appertures, do have other downsides so. Everything is a trade off, and some things are sacrificed to achieve a 18-35/1.8 lense. Still impressive. Or the latest Canon (?) patent on a tilt-shift-macro-zoom...
I have a very acclaimed old design 50/1.5 lens (but was bought new), but it just sucks compared with a modern much cheaper 50-70/3.5. The colors in particular, they are just bad. I'm not sure what test would pick that, a color accuracy kind of test. Modern coatings truly do wonders.
Color rendition is also impacted by the sensor, assuming digital cameras.
Since I don't know which lenses you talk about, hard to tell. I do have some really old ones, 80-200 f 4.5 from the late 70s and an equally old 300 f4.5. Both render color just fine, no difference between those and new Nikkor lenses. Sharpness wise, those old ones are easily as sharp as any new one, lab test confirm that. And the limited amount of glass gives them, a totally subjective, clarity new lenses don't have. Bot that I would d be able to tell just from looking at a printed or processed picture.
If you take a 100% crop from a corner so, well, that is different. I'd argue so, that in this case, you should have composed your shot differently in the field. And again, you have to print huge to actually see the difference.
