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Why Never Stop Down?


MrFriendly

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On 10/9/2020 at 5:08 AM, AndreasG said:

What do we know about Peter Karbe as a photographer? Are there any photos available?

I've heard rumours that he photographs using various noms de plume. At one time he used Henri Cartier-Bresson, more lately Sebastião Salgado.

Edited by wattsy
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3 hours ago, steve 1959 said:

During one interview karbe said "he uses jpegs because he works on a computer all day.

On this forum that qualifies him for instant execution by firing squad.

Do you have a link to that interview?

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I think most people covered it! But in general, in most photographic compositions adequate depth of field is more important than absolute peak sharpness at the point of focus. I think 5.6 is still probably a good "peak" expected sharpness point for most photos, or even f11 for 3d scenes with lots of foreground and scale. 2.8 for portraits... these are assuming normal-ish lenses, from about 28-75mm.

I have the 50mm APO summicron SL, and as astonishing as it is wide open, it is usually better for me at 5.6. In fact, in P mode the SL2 often prioritizes it being wider open (probably at Karbe's discretion!), so that even in bright light it is at 3.5 or 4. I wish it would choose 5.6 as a baseline, just for the DOF reasons. Yes, of course I can use aperture priority or manual, but there is value in having the P mode a bit more biased to DOF. I either do that via program shift or Aperture priority...

The photos below were shot at f32 on a 450mm lens, so aperture is not everything...

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7 hours ago, steve 1959 said:

During one interview karbe said "he uses jpegs because he works on a computer all day.

On this forum that qualifies him for instant execution by firing squad.

The quote is "... I didn't change the the jpeg, I don't like to to use Lightroom because I use a computer all day, I don't want to do it in my my spare time ...".

(Thank you MrFriendly)

Edited by SrMi
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There is - or perhaps there was - a way of following the demand for not stopping down and being comfortable with sufficient depth of focus at the same time. The 1:3.8/18mm Super-Elmar-M and the 1:3.8/24mm Elmar-M are lenses which fulfill every wish for sharpness and resolution fully opened and don‘t give you much room to worry about dof. With good performance at high ISO values of modern digital cameras the modest opening is no reason to feel left behind. On a lesser extent you may say the same for the Summarit series. 

Though Leica - or better: their customers - didn’t appreciate those qualities. They prefer spending more money on worse optical performance and the bad conscience caused by some dubious marketing speech by Leica Camera, when they reasonably stop down a Summilux.

Edited by UliWer
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I was lucky enough to be able to buy the zeiss 35mm f1.4 distagon some time ago and i sometimes use it wide open.

There is a certain beauty in shooting wide open with a fast lens and its  wonderful to have the option of going for that wide open look when it suits me.

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1 minute ago, Dennis said:

So true. Like my 21mm thread 🙂 does it worth to have it in exchange of a bigger size?

My research led me to the distagon and i am very pleased with it,it also fits in well with my zeiss 25mm f2.8 biogon.

But of course the leica 35mm f1.4 is smaller than the zeiss and the voigtlander 35mm f1.4 nokton is tiny.

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Well, this thread has wandered off track....  Herr Karbe was talking about the new lenses for the SL system.  The MTF curves are certainly impressive, for the prime lenses only the 75mm f2 lens shows a slight improvement at f5.6, the rest look pretty much similar from open aperture to f8.  However, I have not seen any objective quantitative analysis for resolution or other performance parameter by these lenses.  For M lenses,  with perhaps a couple of exceptions (probably none of them Leica), the old adage of two f-stops down from maximum aperture for best performance still applies.  Realize that when a fast lens is said to be calibrated at open aperture it means that it focuses accurately at that aperture - it does not mean the lens has best performance at that aperture.  The SL lenses are Leica's response to the Zeiss Otus and Sigma Fine Art series, optimal image quality at any cost - including the physical size of the lens!  

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8 hours ago, Rick in CO said:

Well, this thread has wandered off track....  Herr Karbe was talking about the new lenses for the SL system.  The MTF curves are certainly impressive, for the prime lenses only the 75mm f2 lens shows a slight improvement at f5.6, the rest look pretty much similar from open aperture to f8.  However, I have not seen any objective quantitative analysis for resolution or other performance parameter by these lenses.  For M lenses,  with perhaps a couple of exceptions (probably none of them Leica), the old adage of two f-stops down from maximum aperture for best performance still applies.  Realize that when a fast lens is said to be calibrated at open aperture it means that it focuses accurately at that aperture - it does not mean the lens has best performance at that aperture.  The SL lenses are Leica's response to the Zeiss Otus and Sigma Fine Art series, optimal image quality at any cost - including the physical size of the lens!  

Karbe suggested not stopping down in an interview with leica australia about M lenses.

He may have said the same thing during the SL lenses interview that was also on that channel but i would not know myself.

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It just came to my mind today after I was thinking about this thread.

M lenses. Leica paid person... Bingo! It is conspiracy! 

No M cameras have dust reduction. Would it be M8 or 8K USD M10. W/O doesn't show dust bunnies, f8 and less does.

Not to mention M9 corroding sensors.

⚒️ :) 

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