which lens is best for flower photography?
Sam Carleton
I am interested in doing some flower photography in the studio with my Linhof
Technika III. Presently I have a APO Sironar N 135mm f/5.6 for my street
photography. What lens will give me the best results with flower
photography? I was thinking of getting the Apo-Symmar 210mm f/5.6 because
I would also be able to use that for portraits. Is there a more ideal lens
for flowers? I am under the impression that a flat field macro lens is not
going to matter much in flower photography because the flower has a lot of
depth to it. Is my impression correct, or are there other aspects to macro
lens that make them ideal when focusing down to 1:1 or closer? Sam Carleton
--- -------- check out my current work at: http://w3.one.net/~ehc
-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
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Patrick Bartek
Regarding which lens is best for flower photography?, Sam Carleton wrote:
> I am interested in doing some flower photography in the studio with my Linhof
> Technika III. Presently I have a APO Sironar N 135mm f/5.6 for my street
> photography.
> photography?
> I would also be able to use that for portraits. Is there a more ideal lens
> for flowers?
> going to matter much in flower photography because the flower has a lot of
> depth to it. Is my impression correct, or are there other aspects to macro
> lens that make them ideal when focusing down to 1:1 or closer?
In general, lenses, APOs or otherwise, fall into two categories: Macro
and Normal. Macro lenses are optimized for image reproductions of
about 1:5 or greater; Normal taking lenses are optimized for
reproductions of 1:5 and less. (Some lenses called Process
lenses like Artars and Ronars are optimized for 1:1.) Either type will
produce excellent images at any reproduction ratio. Its just that the
Macros do better than Normals at what they're designed to do. The
question is: Are they that much better to warrant the huge sum of
money you pay for them?
I did a 1:1 test a while ago with a 180 non-APO, non-Macro (a
Rodenstock) and compared it with a 180 APO Macro (a Sironar) on the
same camera, same subject, same everything. Examining the chromes
under 8X magnification, the APO Macro was sharper, but only slightly
to moderately so; and considering the fact that the "non" 180 was 20
years old... Well, I decide that the APO Macro just wasn't worth the
money for what it delivered.
My advice? The 135 you have should be good enough for both "street"
shooting flowers. But it is a little short for the typical portrait.
Try something in the 210 to 300 range.
--
Patrick Bartek
NoLife Polymath Group
bar...@skylink.net
BobS
At the risk of having the wrath of others decend on me I'll point out that
all (and don't get picky and point out some specialized lens that is
designed to project on a curved field -- that's beyond the scope of the
question here) lenses are flat field, since film is (hopefully) flat. A
quote from Ron Levin Sr. Vice President of Schneider Corporation of America:
"...One of out standard answers on this is that all lenses are flat field,
but some are flatter than others. If you think about it, 4x5 is flat, very
flat, and therefore the lenses have to be highly corrected; otherwise you
would get distortion and unsharp images near the edges. No matter what our
lens design, they are all flat field."
You can read the entire interview in the July 1995 Shutterbug. If anyone
disagrees with this agruee with Mr. Levin not me.
Sam Carleton wrote in message <6ckef1$akv$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>I am interested in doing some flower photography in the studio with my
Linhof
>Technika III. Presently I have a APO Sironar N 135mm f/5.6 for my street
>photography. What lens will give me the best results with flower
>photography? I was thinking of getting the Apo-Symmar 210mm f/5.6 because
>I would also be able to use that for portraits. Is there a more ideal lens
>for flowers? I am under the impression that a flat field macro lens is not
>going to matter much in flower photography because the flower has a lot of
>depth to it. Is my impression correct, or are there other aspects to macro
>lens that make them ideal when focusing down to 1:1 or closer?Sam Carleton
>--- --------check out my current work at:http://w3.one.net/~ehc
SPECTRUM
On 20 Feb 98 16:07:04 +0800, "Patrick Bartek" <bar...@skylink.net>
wrote:
>Regarding which lens is best for flower photography?, Sam Carleton wrote:
>
>> I am interested in doing some flower photography in the studio with my Linhof
>> Technika III. Presently I have a APO Sironar N 135mm f/5.6 for my street
>> photography.
>> photography?
>> I would also be able to use that for portraits. Is there a more ideal lens
>> for flowers?
>> going to matter much in flower photography because the flower has a lot of
>> depth to it. Is my impression correct, or are there other aspects to macro
>> lens that make them ideal when focusing down to 1:1 or closer?
>
>In general, lenses, APOs or otherwise, fall into two categories: Macro
>and Normal. Macro lenses are optimized for image reproductions of
>about 1:5 or greater; Normal taking lenses are optimized for
>reproductions of 1:5 and less. (Some lenses called Process
>lenses like Artars and Ronars are optimized for 1:1.) Either type will
>produce excellent images at any reproduction ratio. Its just that the
>Macros do better than Normals at what they're designed to do. The
>question is: Are they that much better to warrant the huge sum of
>money you pay for them?
>
>I did a 1:1 test a while ago with a 180 non-APO, non-Macro (a
>Rodenstock) and compared it with a 180 APO Macro (a Sironar) on the
>same camera, same subject, same everything. Examining the chromes
>under 8X magnification, the APO Macro was sharper, but only slightly
>to moderately so; and considering the fact that the "non" 180 was 20
>years old... Well, I decide that the APO Macro just wasn't worth the
>money for what it delivered.
>
>My advice? The 135 you have should be good enough for both "street"
>shooting flowers. But it is a little short for the typical portrait.
>Try something in the 210 to 300 range.
Personally I prefer the G-Clarons for this type of work. I use
the 240/f9.
Regards,
John S. Douglas
Spectrum Photographic Inc.
http://www.spectrumphoto.com SPEC...@spectrumphoto.com
SPECTRUM
On Sat, 21 Feb 1998 01:00:34 -0800, "BobS" <b...@psln.com> wrote:
>At the risk of having the wrath of others decend on me I'll point out that
>all (and don't get picky and point out some specialized lens that is
>designed to project on a curved field -- that's beyond the scope of the
>question here) lenses are flat field, since film is (hopefully) flat. A
>quote from Ron Levin Sr. Vice President of Schneider Corporation of America:
>"...One of out standard answers on this is that all lenses are flat field,
>but some are flatter than others. If you think about it, 4x5 is flat, very
>flat, and therefore the lenses have to be highly corrected; otherwise you
>would get distortion and unsharp images near the edges. No matter what our
>lens design, they are all flat field."
>
>You can read the entire interview in the July 1995 Shutterbug. If anyone
>disagrees with this agruee with Mr. Levin not me.
>
>Sam Carleton wrote in message <6ckef1$akv$1...@nnrp1.dejanews.com>...
>>I am interested in doing some flower photography in the studio with my
>Linhof
>>Technika III. Presently I have a APO Sironar N 135mm f/5.6 for my street
>>photography. What lens will give me the best results with flower
>>photography? I was thinking of getting the Apo-Symmar 210mm f/5.6 because
>>I would also be able to use that for portraits. Is there a more ideal lens
>>for flowers? I am under the impression that a flat field macro lens is not
>>going to matter much in flower photography because the flower has a lot of
>>depth to it. Is my impression correct, or are there other aspects to macro
>>lens that make them ideal when focusing down to 1:1 or closer?Sam Carleton
>>--- --------check out my current work at:http://w3.one.net/~ehc
>>
>>-----== Posted via Deja News, The Leader in Internet Discussion ==-----
>>http://www.dejanews.com/ Now offering spam-free web-based newsreading
>
Well I have a APO Symmar for him ! I racked that thing out to
about 1.2:1 and boy did that image look weird ! I don't think it was
flat but I was a little dizzy from looking at the groundglass !
Patrick Bartek
Regarding Re: which lens is best for flower photography?, BobS wrote:
> At the risk of having the wrath of others decend on me I'll point out that
> all (and don't get picky and point out some specialized lens that is
> designed to project on a curved field -- that's beyond the scope of the
> question here) lenses are flat field, since film is (hopefully) flat. A
> quote from Ron Levin Sr. Vice President of Schneider Corporation of America:
> "...One of out standard answers on this is that all lenses are flat field,
> but some are flatter than others. If you think about it, 4x5 is flat, very
> flat, and therefore the lenses have to be highly corrected; otherwise you
> would get distortion and unsharp images near the edges. No matter what our
> lens design, they are all flat field."
>
> You can read the entire interview in the July 1995 Shutterbug. If anyone
> disagrees with this agruee with Mr. Levin not me.
The FLAT of the flat field lens refers to the subject not the film.
All cameras, except panning ones, project the image onto flat film.
Flat field lenses (also called Process lenses) were originally
designed to photograph FLAT, essentially 2 dimensional, art (and later
transparencies for color separations) for use in making plates for
printing presses; and were optimized to be used around a 1:1 repro
ratio. Large format phtographers started using them, because they all
easily covered 8x10 or 11x14 cameras and could be found in cheap
abundance. Plus, they were extemely sharp. Any abberations that were
caused by shooting 3-D subjects at infinity fell at the extreme edges
of the field, mostly beyond the normal range of swings and tilts.
PS. I really don't care what Ron Levin, sr. vp, of Schneider Corp of
America says. He's got it backwards. Probably came up through
sales and not engineering, anyway. ;-)
Benson
I think you should read some optics design text book before you express
such a
narrow view of flat field lenses. If you need some recommendations, I
can direct
you to many optics design text books and current optics design software
to support
the requirement of flat field lenses for photographic imaging. 3-D or
not, the
image gets flattened on to the film plane.
Richard Knoppow
Benson <wns...@PACBELL.NET> wrote:
What the lens desingner tries to do is to make a lens which will
focus a flat object plane onto a flat image plane. With a few
exceptions, this is general with all lenses. A lens which is going to
be used mainly for imaging a flat surface onto another flat surface,
as is the case for copying, process, and enlarging lenses must be
especially well corrected in this way.
For normal camera use it is possible to allow some field curvature.
This can be an aid to the designer since a small amount of curvature
can improve other aberrations.
Process lenses were originally intended for photo-engraving so the
designs varied from normal camera lenses in providing optimum
correction for a object/image size ratio of 1:1 or nearly that and to
carful correction geometric distortion. Lenses intended for
three-color separation work were furthermore made apochromatic. Not
all process lenses are apo's, the Goerz Gotar being an example.
One way of improving the correction of a lens is to limit its speed
and coverage. That is the case in most process lenses. Typically the
classic designs have speeds of around f/9 to f/12 depending on focal
length. They are also typically corrected for a narrower coverage
than standard lenses. The Goerz Apo Artar has about a 45 degree
coverage and the Zeiss Apo Tessar a bit more, perhaps 50 degrees. A
normal camera tessar of f/4.5 speed will cover about 60 degrees.
When used for infinity focus the Artar type picks up some coma at
the margins of the field. Coma is a form of off-axis spherical
aberration. This is nearly eliminated by stopping down. The Apo
Tessar also will perform perfectly well at infinity stopped down a
bit.
Field flatness is not quite as good away from the design optimum but
remains very good.
It is more likely for a normal, infinity corrected, lens to have
degraded performance at close distances than for a process lens to be
seriously degraded at infinity.
The key to all this is the angles that the light rays make when
striking the various surfaces in a lens. For camera lenses the
entering rays are assumed to be coming from an infinitely distance
source and , thus, to be parallel. For a process or macro or
enlarging lens the rays come from a closer distance so make different
angles at the lens surfaces. The less curved the surfaces the les
difference this makes. So slower lenses or modern lenses with
high-index of refraction glass suffer from these variations of
corrections less than others.
---
Richard Knoppow
Los Angeles, Ca.
dick...@ix.netcom.com
Les Jackson
I use a 180 Schneider Makro-symmar High Modulation for very critical fine art
reproduction. It blows away my Sinaron 210 standard lens for this type of work.
Will you noticed the difference in flowers, I dont think so. The 180 Schneider is
the sharpest lens I have ever seen, but only the most demanding super duper critial
8x-16x lupe will show it. So if you got money to burn go for it, otherwise only us
large format people with our $200 Scheider lupes can tell.
Les Jackson
BobS
Richard,
I can't seem to access anything but messages posted in the last two days
over on the darkroom forum, but I wanted to thank you for pointing me in the
direction of getting good data on the APO enlarging lenses. I will try to
see if I can get one or more of the books you recommended on intra-library
loan.
To my credit the quote from Schneider on the use of their APO enlarger
lenses being better at projecting a good image at wider apatures is only
mentioned in refererence to their APO Componon HMs (the side threads into
process and large format lenses were made by others, I had only intended to
discuss enlarger lenses...oh well).
To my dis-credit when you mentioned the lens makers published lens data I
went back and found out I had missed a page of data (there are two pages of
data not just the one I noticed at first) and the second page was the one
with data on chromatic aberrations on Schneider's web site. And boy had I
ever been mislead on that!! I only compared the data on the 150 APO HM and
S lenses and the APO looks to have about a 1 stop advantage over the S (and
for the difference in price I could buy a lot of xenon tubes for my 45A!).
Anyway thanks again for pointing this out -- you were the only one who
pointed me to concrete data rather than just here-say. I wish I could post
this where it belongs, maybe the problem with my news server will get fixed.
Bob Spencer
Richard Knoppow wrote in message <34f0900a....@nntp.netcruiser>...
> What the lens desingner tries to do is to make a lens which will
>focus a flat object plane onto a flat image plane. With a few
>exceptions, this is general with all lenses. A lens which is going to
>be used mainly for imaging a flat surface onto another flat surface,
.....
And as for your post on the flat field, this is probably similar to what
Schnider tells people who aren't satisified with the "standard answer." :)
BobS
Well, that doesn't invalidate what Mr. Levin said. Lenses are, after all,
designed for various purposes, and if you want to do macro photography then
a macro lens will probably be better than a non-macro (all other things
being equal). That said, I'll brag that my APO-Sironar-S gives supurb
results at about 4:1 next step 5:1, but I need to get out another tripod for
that :).
SPECTRUM wrote in message <34f2a2a0...@news.cybercomm.net>...
Richard Knoppow
"BobS" <b...@psln.com> wrote:
>Richard,
>I can't seem to access anything but messages posted in the last two days
>over on the darkroom forum, but I wanted to thank you for pointing me in the
>direction of getting good data on the APO enlarging lenses. I will try to
>see if I can get one or more of the books you recommended on intra-library
>loan.
>
>To my credit the quote from Schneider on the use of their APO enlarger
>lenses being better at projecting a good image at wider apatures is only
>mentioned in refererence to their APO Componon HMs (the side threads into
>process and large format lenses were made by others, I had only intended to
>discuss enlarger lenses...oh well).
>
>To my dis-credit when you mentioned the lens makers published lens data I
>went back and found out I had missed a page of data (there are two pages of
>data not just the one I noticed at first) and the second page was the one
>with data on chromatic aberrations on Schneider's web site. And boy had I
>ever been mislead on that!! I only compared the data on the 150 APO HM and
>S lenses and the APO looks to have about a 1 stop advantage over the S (and
>for the difference in price I could buy a lot of xenon tubes for my 45A!).
>Anyway thanks again for pointing this out -- you were the only one who
>pointed me to concrete data rather than just here-say. I wish I could post
>this where it belongs, maybe the problem with my news server will get fixed.
>
>Bob Spencer
>
>Richard Knoppow wrote in message <34f0900a....@nntp.netcruiser>...
My stuff snipped...
Thanks Bob. However, I completely forgot the Schneider web site
which has a good lens tutorial on it but especially it has actual
performance charts for a number of different lenses with explanation
of what they mean. Anyone interested in lenses should have a look at
it. The URL is http://www.schneideroptics.com
Another on-line source of lens information is the Graflex web page
at http://www.graflex.org This contains a lens FAQ and an excellent
tutorial by David Jacobson.
NYCFoto
If you consistently do work in the 1:2 to 2:1 magnification range then you
should consider using either macro or APO lenses ( optimised for 1:1). I have
been shooting studio still life for over 20 years, at least half of which is
in the macro range and I can tell you that there can be significant differences
in optical quality between lenses designed for 1:20 scale and 1:1 scale when
you are doing 1:1 type work. A few years ago I updated all my lenses, having
gone from a wide range of Rodenstock Sironar N lenses, to Sinaron SE ( Sironar
S) lenses. The Sironar N lenses were optimised for 1:20, the sironar S lenses
are optimised for 1:10. I also bought a range of closeup lenses, the 240mm and
480mm Sinaron APO's, and the 180mm and 300mm Sinaron Macro's. The APO's and
Macro lenses are very comparable, however the macros will allow far more
camera movements than the APO's. The 300mm macro has the ability to be
optimised for 1:3 -1:1 or 3:1 -1:1 ratios. On a flat, no camera movements used
shot, at 1:1, the APO's might do better as they are far simpler lens designs
and have far less glass than the macros. Another factor is f stop. APO's and
macros tend to go to smaller f stops and tend to be better optimised for
smaller f stops. Many very good quality general puropse lenses fall apart
beyond f 45, where as I find the my APO's go well into f64, which can be a
factor when you are doing limited depth of field work like close-ups.
Sometimes a general purpose lens may seem as good as an APO when you are doing
closeup work, but that may be due to the use of camera movements that go beyond
the effective range of the APO.