I read it on the Internet again: "It's no use using older lenses on digital cameras. With today's best digital sensors, you must use the very best, very latest lenses."
I must? Why?
This is another IF (Internet Falseism, a "falseism" being a truism that isn't true). You have doubtless read it a hundred times in one form or another.
What if you want to use a soft-focus lens on a digital sensor? Will the sky fall? The world explode? Will you be arrested?
Must be true, though, because I've read it on the Internet so many times.
Actually, you can use any lens you want to on a digital sensor, no matter what its potential resolution. If it's a good sensor, it will merely capture whatever the look and properties of the lens happen to be.
Optimizers do it best
The only reason to use a high-resolution lens on a high-resolution sensor is if you want a high-resolution picture. But if you have an interchangeable-lens camera, you can switch that high-res lens for a low-res lens and back again, and no hostages are taken and no one gets hurt. You remain free to roam about on your own recognizance and the sky stays where it belongs.
It's a lot of fun to use old lenses on new sensors.
If you "optimize" your camera for high resolution, all you have is a camera that takes pictures with good resolution. You still have the exact same problem every other photographer has with every other camera: what to do with it. How to put it to good use. How to make the dumb equipment make a smart picture. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, or for ninety-nine out of a hundred photographers, incrementally better resolution makes zero difference in the aesthetic and expressive success of any particular picture.
And if you "optimize" your camera for high resolution, all you have is a camera that takes pictures with resolution that is good for this point in history and with today's particular technology. In olden days, John B. Williams wrote a book called Image Clarity that was all about his investigations into how to optimize photography for high resolution. He covered everything. Of course, none of it is relevant to digital photographers today because the technology has changed (and film photographers certainly aren't using film in order to achieve optimal image resolution). That's what will happen to your attempts to "optimize" resolution now, too. Only faster.
Flatware applications
Besides, very generally speaking, optimizing for resolution, these days, is akin to saying Warren Buffett needs more money. I see more pictures spoiled by too much resolution as I see spoiled by too little (just as I see more pictures spoiled by too much out-of-focus blur as I see spoiled by too little).
If it's what you want to do—optimize resolution, starting with the best sensors and the ideal lenses for them, a sturdy tripod, and some way to show your results meaningfully—well all right then. By all means go ahead. It's one thing you can do. It's one look. It's one kind of photograph to take.
And, of course, there might be a few specialty applications which require extreme resolution. A Zeiss spokesman, at a presentation in the '90s, used this example: what if you see a person holding up a table utensil several hundred yards away, and you want to know whether it's a fork or a spoon? ...And you have time to set up your surveyor's tripod, which he recommended and used? John Williams used a slightly more plausible example: what if you're doing surveillance photography and you want to be able to read a license plate from a long distance away? But he had to add as a caveat: ...and you can't switch to a longer telephoto lens? Or words to that effect. Well. There are some pictures that might work better with higher resolution than you can get normally. A few.
I'd own both. Old, bad lenses and new, super-sharp, hyper-clinical ones. One for fun. The other for fun.
Nowadays, we might add a third imperative: what if you want to win arguments on Internet forums about the superiority of your gear choices by showing little snippets of pictures at 100%?
Well now, that's important, as we all know. Just as important as showing whether it's a fork or a spoon, or for reading license plates when you left your 600mm at home even though you're doing surveillance.
...But mine are better!
I hate to break it to the Internet, but there's actually no law that says you get extra life points for a tiny bit more resolution in all your photographs. You get no credit for it. Most pictures will not be better for it. Most people will not care. Even the ones who do care won't care for very long.
Use any lens you want to on your digital camera. You stand just as good a chance of making a good picture with the most highly corrected lens it's possible to buy today as you do with an ancient screw-mount lens with low contrast and poor edge definition. It's just that the artistic problem will be different, that's all.
Mike
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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
James Weekes: "Hear, hear. Some of my favorite pictures of the last few years are taken with my Holga lens on a Micro 4/3 body. I love the color, and am surprised by the resolution, which is better than my old Holga cameras with TX.
"The biggest advance in my world has been the 20-megapixel sensor on my Lumixes. The color is just lovely and the resolution is really adequate."
Andrew Lamb: "A few years ago, I did some stills on a film set where the DOP was John Mathieson (Gladiator, Logan, X-Men: First Class, etc). He was using a state-of-the-art Red camera but the lens was a Cooke zoom from the early '70s. I asked his assistant about this combination and was told that using an older lens was to stop the image from looking too clinical. Anything goes."
Phil Stiles: "I've played a lot with vintage glass on modern sensors. I would add that the modern sensor can reveal that those old lenses are better than one remembers. My 105mm ƒ/2.5 AIS Nikkor produces great images on my Sony A7rIII. After comparing a Contax C/Y 85mm ƒ/2.8 with a Batis 85mm ƒ/1.8, I sold the Batis. Focus peaking and magnification have changed the ways we can use vintage glass. Since we're viewing on the web, you probably can't point to a shot 'spoiled by too much resolution,' although my guess would be that it's a portrait where the camera sees so much more than the eye that the hyper-realism becomes surrealism."
Huw Morgan: "I have a crazy-sharp 85mm portrait lens that causes me nothing but grief. Every subject looks at the pictures and freaks out over wrinkles and skin flaws that seem to leap out of the screen. I need to apply copious amounts of Photoshop 'wrinkle cream' to make clients happy, eating into my time and profit. I'm looking for an 85mm slightly blurry lens. Anyone have any suggestions?"
Mark Roberts: "Anyone interested in photography would do well to see the movie "Mr. Turner" (about the painter J.M.W. Turner). Director Mike Leigh had hoped to shoot on film to get the look he wanted but didn't have the budget necessary. So he shot digital but used the oldest, least-corrected lenses he could scrounge up. Can't argue with the results." Rob L.: "There's one little bit of 'maybe' here, though—I've had several older lenses that did weird things on digital bodies—reflections off the back elements, or the way they light hit the sensor—so it's worth testing things a bit. But as I age, it's AF, not optical purity, that's driving me to current glass. :-) "
Jim: "In my work (fiber optics) I've been exposed to a lot of recent systems for surveillance and the technology is getting spooky. Only part is due to camera resolution; the rest is digital post-processing. I've seen fisheye cameras over traffic intersections that can read every license plate and are starting to use facial recognition. Did you read about how the British identified the Russians accused of poisoning in the UK—they found many images of the guys and could easily track their movement. Drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and a camera will read your license plate and send you a bill for the toll. I parked in a parking garage recently and the ticket was printed with my license plate ID and used it to help locate my parked car.
"Of course this processing is not intended to create attractive images. But if you want that, you can find lots of software that will manipulate images to make them look 'better,' whatever that means to you. Did you see the New York Times Magazine portfolio a couple of weeks ago with the weird images manipulated by Cindy Sherman?
"The point is that we are reaching a point near where PCs were 20 years ago, where advances are becoming less hardware and more software."
James M: "Just what I need to help me relax about my gear. Can you please post this article once a month, so that the effect doesn't wear off?"
scott kirkpatrick: "'Falseism?' Better is the expression that physicist Wolfgang Pauli made famous: 'Not even false!'" [Link —Ed.]
George Feucht: "Absolutely true about the demand for vintage less-than-perfect lenses for cinematography. Here's a great example. This is the Cooke company re-manufacturing their old, flawed classic lens set due to the demand of the original sets from the '60s/'70s. Things just look too hyper-clean when you use perfect optic on a perfect sensor. Modern, sharp lenses look great on film. As for our new, perfect cinema sensors, they look best with flawed lenses."
