APO Summicron 50mm, too sharp!?

[trond]

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Full of moire and "false color" pixels. The only conclusion: You got to use film with apo 50 until M with 70 Mpix comes.

 

Seriously, if anyone is asking whether something is too sharp the answer is in fact always "sensor is sub par". As long as there is even a hint or moire, sensor is not good enough for the lens, not the other way round. I wonder how long it takes before "megapixel race accusers" get the idea.

 

Of course more resolution is not easy to get, and especially getting the sensor to accept steep ray angles at the same time is something we still have to wait for. So probably the new M is a good compromise anyhow.

 

Dear Hannes,

 

I put the title of the thread in a slightly provocative tone

 

I don not think that a lens can be too sharp.

 

It comes as no surprise that on M9, the sensor is the limiting factor.

 

Leica has designed this lens to match the performance of several future generations of sensors, probably at least to the 50-70 Mpix level.

 

My dealer confirms my M240 will ship on the 28th of February, so it will be very exciting to see how the APO50 fares on the new M240.

 

BR

 

Trond

[01af]

It comes as no surprise that on M9, the sensor is the limiting factor.

If the sensor was something like a 'limiting factor' then the pictures taken with this lens on an M9 would appear no sharper than those taken with the M9 and any other decent lens.

 

So I shall say it for the umpteenth time—sensors don't limit lenses, and lenses don't limit sensors. The image's resolution always gets limited by both factors.

[Hannes Lummes]

Olaf, I think You just contradicted yourself, or we understand "limiting" in a different way. Perhaps it is a "hard concept" to you whereas I see it more like "does cause serious degradation and makes it impossible to see the true potential"

 

Anyhow, sensor is a limiting factor. And yes, some hypothetical lens with better resolution would make still sharper pictures even with M9. In any case serious moire is ugly compared to somewhat soft lens.

 

As we can see with our plain eyes bayer pattern 18Mpix in 36/24 format is way too little, and as many have seen, so is 36Mpix. D800E still has moire and *so does even D800* because the low pass filter in it was not made very strong, obviously to make it still clearly sharper than anything that other manufacturers offer.

 

File size problem with 70Mpix? Perhaps now, but not in 5 years when we see it in commercial cameras.

 

Still problematic moire with 70Mpix? I truly doubt, but don't claim to know. We'll see.

 

Foveon sensors might be impossible to use with symmetrical wide angle lenses and ramdom pattern sounds like file structure and computational disaster.

 

I had high hopes for Fuji's new pattern, but it is way too simple to solve everything and total resolution is too low. It causes bad artefacts in many situations. So bad, that I wonder if they really did the math and simulated the performance before deciding to produce it. It did convince me before I saw some problem samples.

[01af]

Anyhow, sensor is a limiting factor.

That's right—after you replaced 'the' with 'a'.

 

 

As we can see with our plain eyes, Bayer-pattern 18 MP in 24 × 36 mm format is way too little, and as many have seen, so is 36 MP.

Way too little for what? Making sharp pictures?

[Paul J]

I see as much Moire in my Phase One P65+ than I do my M9. It's not hard to correct. It's never been a problem. When you make use of such tools which add something to your work ie add sharpness, more resolution etc. you learn how to work around and/or correct their weaknesses and you benefit in the end.

[tobey bilek]

If the moire brush does not remove it, then do a patch in photoshop. Snow should be easy.

[philipus]

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Thanks (again) for posting the image. I now managed to download the DNG. There is clearly a lot of detail across the frame.

[algrove]

I always assumed the APO50 was initially designed for the Monochrom.