[Leica] interesting essay about the potential of MF digital, and the difficulty of achieving it!

[henningw at archiphoto.com (Henning Wulff)]

>Holy s**t.
>
>Joseph (and his friends) have
>put a whole new light on
>our digital cameras, sensors, lenses
>and their respective costs, precision, design and manufacturing tolerances.
>
>Thanks Frank - very, very en light ening.
>
>Regards,
>George Lottermoser
>george at imagist.com
>http://www.imagist.com
>http://www.imagist.com/blog
>http://www.linkedin.com/in/imagist
>
>On Jul 22, 2009, at 9:59 AM, Frank Dernie wrote:
>
>>  Sorry Frank, I did mean to post the URL :-(
>>
>>  http://www.josephholmes.com/news-medformatprecision.html
>>
>>  shows that in order to achieve the potential of a digital sensor 
>>the precision necessary is much higher than is easily available.
>

I don't have a digital MF system right now because the economis don't 
make sense for me, but the same general issues apply to DSLR's as 
well. The Canon 21Mp bodies (and Nikon and Sony as well) have sensors 
that mostly outperform the lenses available. Each manufacturer has 
some lenses that are up to the task, but most aren't.

As mentioned before, the most glaring failures are in the wideangle 
region. Some lenses, such as the 14-24 Nikon zoom, are excellent but 
still cannot fully make use of the sensor. The corners still cannot 
produce aberration free detail to the level of the sensor 
capabilities.

And this lens is one of the best. The fixed focal length lenses, such 
as the 14's, 20's etc from all makers are definitely deficient.

The new 24 and 17TS lenses from Canon are a step in the right 
direction, but when shifted are hardly outstanding and fall well 
short of what the sensors can record.

In some ways the 4/3 and m4/3 systems are closest to matching lens 
and system performance to sensor performance. The lens/in camera 
software corrections allows the designers more leeway in their usual 
compromises. If distortion can be taken care of in post processing, 
then that is one less constraint on lens design and other parameters 
that are not easily corrected in software can be better corrected in 
the optics themselves. The little 14-45 G1 kit lens is a good example 
of this. It's an inexpensive standard range zoom that performs way 
better than most other kit lenses of similar specs, and it's small 
and light. The 7-14 m4/3 lens performs about as well as the huge 
Nikon 14-24. Admittedly, its an f/4, but it has a larger range, is a 
lot less expensive, and way smaller and lighter. And the results from 
it have considerably less distortion after the lens/camera software 
deals with it. Not having legacy lenses and components to deal with 
has its benefits.

MF system users naturally are less tolerant of poor corner 
performance after spending $50-100,000 on their gear and are also 
more knowledgeable about the issues and weak links. Hopefully some of 
their criticisms and resulting advances will filter down to 'lesser' 
systems.
-- 

    *            Henning J. Wulff
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