A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.
This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.
The Leica has 8 elements vs the Nikons 17 (!). Plus Nikon has an AF that moves two groups of elements.
I’m not a lens engineer but I think the modern “big three” primes are just totally over-engineered for crazy edge-to-edge sharpness with very low chromatic aberration, which means LOTS of lens elements. Throw in a silent AF motor and potentially image stabilization too, and you have a Quaker Oatmeal can sized lens.
Yeah. The sharpness in the corners of my nikon Z primes, even when shooting wide open, is seriously impressive.
Carlinwasright has your answer!
Another example: The Nikon F 50mm /1.4 AF-D has 7 lenses in 6 groups. Thats 10 lenses less than the Nikon Z. BUT: Even in old times the step from 1.4 to 1.2 was relativily huge, the 1.4 weighs around 260g, the 1.2 around 380g...thats nearly a 50% increase
The modern prime lenses for digital have - in the lab! - much better optical qualities than the old primes like Leica or Zeiss that are around for literly decades. If anybody can see this differences in real life is a complete different discussion.
Yeah, even the Nikon 50mm 1.4D vs the 50mm 1.4G the difference in image quality is night and day. The D is also tiny compared to the G. Unfortunately, it's a somewhat immutable fact of physics that good quality optics are big and heavy.
My Nikkor 50 f1.2 is many things. Sharp isn’t on the list at f1.2.
lol, I just get them for low light when needed. Otherwise I add filters or literally just finger grease to reduce the quality
Had a good chuckle at “Can of Quaker Oats”.
Not just one AF motor! My Sony 50 1.2 GM has FOUR!
One major aspect is autofocus and the motor systems needed to shift the large f-stop pieces of glass within the same housing whilst also offering silent motors, weather sealing, electronic control/communication and overall durability.
Historically and technically, primes are very simple designs, but, earlier designs could cut corners due to the formats they were designed for. I.e. b&w, 35mm, etc. These formats were nowhere near as detailed as digital images and so new elements are needed to refine the quality.
They also have a lot of patents taken up. The Leica and Zeiss patents for Summilux and Plannar, etc are very old. So rival designs often needed to take the long route to the same result.
But it all together and you have that behemoth of a Nikkor!
If what you’re saying about patents is true, that’s such garbage. Consumers being punished arbitrarily
That's just how patents work. And not just for lenses. Any invention can be patented in this way and any rival will need to have a variation in the design, otherwise, they're infringing on that patent.
Sorry, you misunderstood. I know how patents work! I more meant it’s garbage if it’s true that patents are the reason why they can’t be smaller.
It's really not. Old patents are expired anyways. Canon can make a knockoff of an old Leica lens (and actually used to, sort of) but what would they do with it in today's market?
More optical groups for correcting optical aberrations.
Zeiss otus 55mm is massive for a 1.4 lens
It is. I saw prints of images taken with it that were 2 meter high and the amount of details was impressive. The Nikon Z 50mm 1.2 is even more resolving.
this is a very good question.
i imagine that the physics of lenses and light play a part in this....
i wonder how much of this is a business decision?
i wanted to compare two of my better lenses.... the tiny EF-M 32 mm f/1.4 and the very big and very heavy EF 85 mm f/1.2
i put the camera on f/4 and positioned the cameras so that they had approximately the same field of view of this $100 bill. I focused in the middle of Ben Franklin's face.
i adapted the EF lens onto the M6 MkII: I wanted the same camera capturing the images. the angles of view may be slightly different. Contrast and sharpness? They look awful darn close to me.
The EF-M lens cost me a few hundred. the EF 85 cost me one or two thousand.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/73760670@N04/albums/72177720313024348/with/53362824792/
I also have some vintage 50mm 1.4 the size of a shot glass which are tiny compared to modern 50mm 1.4 lenses which resemble the size of a Saturn V.
I guess the modern glass is correcting for much more optical errors people in the 70s and 80s were accepting but won't any more today. After all there wasn't 60 megapixel resolution on 35mm film (no, don't even start!).
Maybe manufacturers could have corrected these already in the 70s and 80s but the lens would have been ridiculously expensive, or big, or heavy. Or all three.
The main difference is that the newer lenses compensate for more aspects. Chromatic aberration and corner sharpness being the most obvious ones, but potentially also vignetting (there has also been a trend for new lenses to ignore vignetting with the "fix it in post"-mentality).
I don't have any experience with the Leica lens, but I've got the Canon EF-50mm 1.2 (and 1.4) and both of them are very soft in the corners wide open and they have plenty of chromatic aberrations, which is a consequence of the compact double Gauss optical formula. The Sigma Art 50mm and the RF 50mm 1.2 has a completely different level of corner sharpness and CA.
But but I adore the tiny 2.0 sigma's...
The Sigma lenses aren’t tiny, though. A Sigma 35 f2 is only 3cm shorter than the Sony 35 1.4 GM, which is a much better lens. 3cm is barely longer than the distance from the tip of my index finger to past the first joint on that finger.
I don't think I would fit a Sony 35 1.4 on my Lumix though. ;-)
I'm very happy with my two Sigma's 35mm2.0 and 90mm 2.8 Contemporary. Tack sharp. Build like a tank.
In the old days, we avoided zooms because of all the extra glass needed to do the zoom part. A perfectly good prime lens might have 4-6 pieces of glass in it. A zoom lens a dozen of more (like a modern prime). Every extra piece of glass mattered. I guess it either somehow doesn’t anymore, or the cameras are designed to compensate in away not possible with film. I don’t know and I don’t own any of these monstrosities anyway.
But, the OP’s comparison is not really valid, since you really need to compare the weight (and hypothetical size) of 4 old prime lenses to one modern one to get close to the equivalent glass.
Why are modern prime lens so big and heavy?
Simple (not really): Every time a photon passes through a medium, like say - glass - that photon gets distorted, at least to some extent. You must now correct for that distortion and you do so by... wait for it... passing it through another medium.
Uh oh. You've distorted it in an entirely new and exciting way. Which must now be corrected for. Guess how that's done?
It's enough to make an engineer weep.
Read this: https://www.dpreview.com/opinion/9236543269/why-are-modern-50mm-lenses-so-damned-complicated
Simple (not really): Every time a photon passes through a medium, like say - glass - that photon gets distorted, at least to some extent. You must now correct for that distortion and you do so by... wait for it... passing it through another medium.
Uh oh. You've distorted it in an entirely new and exciting way. Which must now be corrected for. Guess how that's done?
So photons just started doing this in recent years?
So photons just started doing this in recent years?
They have always done that.
The less complicated the lens, the less it controls for flaring, aberrations, loss-of-sharpness etc etc.
Lmaoooo the Noctilux 50 1.2 is a notoriously aberration-filled lens, it doesn’t look super sharp wide open, there’s tons of coma and other issues with it. It is not a high resolution lens. The newer super primes you’re talking about are highly corrected designs that are much more optically “perfect.” They’re sharper, resolve more, and don’t have the optical aberrations that older lenses often have. Plus, the AF adapters for Leica lenses to modern mirrorless bodies will NOT give you the performance of those modern super primes. I tested one on a Sony A7R5 with a Leica lens and the performance was ludicrously bad compared to my Sony GM lenses. It’s not even close. Plus those lenses don’t perform well on Sony bodies—smeared corners, color cast issues, etc. The sensor micro lenses aren’t especially compatible.
That makes sense. I assumed all Leica lenses had superior optics due to the price. Didn't realize they were so compromised.
Some are decent performers. Many are decidedly not. Leica lenses are expensive because they are made in limited quantities by skilled laborers in high cost regions. Even one of Leica’s flagship lenses, the APO Summicron 35mm f2, is outperformed by Sony’s 35mm f1.4 GM (at equivalent f-stops of course). The Leica lens is impossible to get and costs USD $10,000. The Sony can be had for $1200 and be on your doorstep tomorrow.
There is literally no photographic advantage to a Leica lens versus an equivalent lens from Sony or Canon. How do I know? I had a Leica M11 rangefinder camera and two top tier Summilux lenses. In a little over a year, the body and one lens were back to Leica for service twice due to faulty calibration from the factory. The camera absolutely sucked to shoot with. Colors were horrible and needed a ton of post processing to fix. The lenses were just about adequate performance wise but ludicrously overpriced. The one, and I mean one and only advantage is the small size of the M lenses and M body. Of course you give up a ton for it. Performance, autofocus, optical corrections, reliability. The Leica bodies with autofocus are big, heavy, expensive, and the AF lenses are huge. There’s literally no advantage.
I’m in my 40s and have been shooting since high school. I had always wanted a Leica M. When I was finally able to afford one, I was unbelievably disappointed. It was one of the shortest trips from hope to disillusionment I’ve ever experienced. I will never own another Leica product, there is truly nothing except a size advantage that’s even remotely attractive. The last thing I’ll say is that my photography got worse, not better, while shooting with that god-awful system. There are plenty of reasons I can explain if you’re interested.
One word. Resolution. Optical Resolution.
Compare the Leica 50mm f/2 Summicron:
To the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.8
That's why Sony lenses are so impressive. Their 50 1.2 is 779g which is pretty close to the Leica Noctilux. With way better image quality and way faster af
You can say lenses, it’s alright
Well I don't claim to know everything (or anything really) about lens design but I'll say this: Years ago they didn't try to make all these lenses as f1.2 . This is a real sore spot for me especially lens for mirrorless. They make these nice light camera bodies and try to shove a 6lb lens down my throat. I understand that ppl doing Astro work might need/want that but I'd like some lenses under 200grams to go with the body. I'm a Nikon user for over 50 years and damn near ready to ditch them as they are a particularly bad offender
Because modern primes overcorrect for everything thing
Newer lenses need to somehow improve on their predecessors/competitors to make them marketable, and the trend has been on improving their optical performance (sharpness, aberrations, etc).
In the past, aberrations and lack of sharpness was embraced as "character" for lenses, or at least accepted tradeoffs for ultra-large aperture lenses. Heck, intentionally soft images were in vogue for a while. However, the current trend in the digital age has been toward edge-to-edge optical perfection wide open, with secondary consideration for things like bokeh quality, autofocus speed, handling. With that said, it has always been Leica-M's aesthetic to feature small lenses to go with their small cameras, and so they are willing to sacrifice some optical performance for that.
And finally, things likely have been helped by modern technology. I'm sure that having access to more computational power since the 70s has made it easier to create these more complex optical designs.
Isn't that leica lens for rangefinder?
Read about elements that go in a lens, you'll get some idea
Just like any form of miniaturization, making smaller lenses requires tighter tolerances to get similar quality. Big lenses gather more light, reduce vignetting, and more easily allow for larger apertures. When you try to make these things smaller, it requires better materials, more difficult manufacturing, and more complicated engineering. Professional lenses of any brand are expensive. Leica lenses are very, very expensive in part due to these challenges.
Did you just compare a manual lens to one with auto focus?
Then Leica is manual focus but the adapter allows it to autofocus.
I guess it's something with the quality of the glass. Modern lenses are dead sharp and have very little flaring, ghosting, chromatic aberrations and low distortion. They also focus instantly with zero noise.
Say there's a short Nikon 35mm f2 which has very bad ghosting situation, and it's resolution is miles behind modern 35mm f1.8 mirrorless.
The Leica does not have autofocus. Adding an adapter doesn't add it either.
The Leica is not an autofocus lens, but adding specific adapters does give it an auto focus capabilities.
Obsession with optical perfection. Engineered to have the best possible tech specs to appeal to pixel peepers. Plus, there always needs to be new stuff to sell.
Whether this actually results in better photographs is a different question.
New gear, like old gear, doesn't take photographs.
Hmm
Big and heavy means it’s better.
The Nikons have two autofocus motors.
Lenses with larger apertures ( the lower the f number the larger the aperture ) let in more light. That requires larger diameter elements. Notice the front element is larger on a 1.2 than say a 1.7. More glass/more weight.
