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Whatbs your opinion G Lenses Sharper Than Medium Format

I'm sorry but I can't help but contest your argument. It is like saying that a professional golfer with really cheap clubs can hit the ball better than a beginner with a really good set of clubs. Your argument is based on the photographers and not the equipment for which the original thread was launched.

Your test case of "less good technique" also does not make much sense. MF generally requires more thought than 35mm because 120 film is much shorter. MF photographers do not have the same luxury of shooting by the pound as their 35mm counterparts. In my experience, people who shoot in MF tend to pay great attention to detail.

I recently compared my shots from my 30 year old 6x9 to shots with those of a modern 35mm BW shot in a studio. My MF prints at 8x10 simply smoke 35mm.

All things being equal, MF and 35mm are not.
 
On a 20x24 print, a 645 Mamiya 80mm/f2.8 or a 645 Contax 80mm/f2 will blow away a 35mm Planar 45mm/f2. Easily. You would see the difference at 11x14. I assume you would take care to produce a competent photograph with both the 35mm and the 645 (why would you bother otherwise?). 35mm might be "adequate" for 12x18 and smaller, but sometimes "adequate" just doesn't cut it and you want to do better.
 
Now, if the original question was phrased differently, "was the G 45 so much sharper than the Mamiya 80 so much that it can defeat the latter in a 20 x 24 by sharper optics alone ?" I wouldn't believe it either. It must be one of the other variables I named: technique, film, printing. The medium format must have some edge, but that edge can be buried in poor printing for ex&le. I do not want to say Coodeville's associate was telling a lie or something. I want to believe that incident actually happened. Hence I wish to relate that to my own experience that I have made poor prints from medium format before.

When I still shot slides with an 135 SLR, and I compare them with the same slide film in 645 format from my Fuji rangefinder, in the same slide projector (which projects both kinds of slides with a zoom lens), there was no contest, like everyone else has observed. The difference was very obvious. But I have found that this gap has narrowed (for me) in recent years, because 1, my Contax G 45 Planar is sharper than any 135 SLR lens I have previously used, but I have not upgraded my MF equipment accordingly, and 2, Frontier enlargements and digital scanning in general are the great equalizer of quality if not done properly, even by some "professional" labs.

If you have to insist that I am claiming MF's benefits are doubtful, too bad that you have to misinterpret me in that way. What I am claiming is that MF, because of its larger film area, demands more from every element in the food chain. I am saying this only to explain Coodeville's associate's findings, and claim that it is not a total impossibility if certain things are done wrong on the MF side.
 
ok, here's a possible scenario to squash the debate. Find a 4x5 camera and mount a 45mm G lens and then a 45mm 645 lens while shooting the same subject in the same ligting. run both tests with the lenses wide open. shoot chromes and see for your self... cut out the scanning and check it out with a decent lupe. I would be curious to see the results of such a test

www.tiemannphotographie.com
 
Bobby- You're essentially saying, If you do 35mm right and you do MF wrong, which is better? What kind of a comparision is that? What do you need to do wrong, and how wrong do you need to do it? If you can't focus, 35 mm isn't going to help you. What could you do "wrong" in MF that you would do "right" in 35mm? They require the same skills and the same processes. I guess if you do something wrong with 35mm (just as possible as it is with 645) then you're really screwed.

Jeff- You're test is fine but it will only tell you if the 35mm lens resolving power for a given area of film is higher that the 645 lens, which we have all accepted as reasonable (it will also show you that the 645 lens has a larger image circle). That will not give you the answer to the original question of which will provide the sharper print enlaraged to a given size like 20x24.
 
Sorry Bobby. Your argument still has no bearing on the original question. Is the G2 lens sharper than medium format? Justifying someone's results by their apparent lack of skill does not prove/disprove the original statement that the G2 lens is sharper.

Contrary to your statement that MF "demands more from every element in the food chain", because there is so much more information recorded with an MF system, it takes less work to get great results compared w/ 35mm. Think about it. Does a speck of dust affect a 35mm neg more than an MF neg? Of course it does. The only thing that I can think of that would possibly be more problematic for MF would be flatness of the MF neg compared to 35mm but even that is easily overcome. But here we are talking about process and not the lenses again.
 
Hi, my name's Malc and I'm an addict. My sad addiction is/was to 'ultimate 35mm photographic quality' and, judging by the correspondence on this site, I'm far from alone (it's great to be among so many friends though!). For years I've been chasing that elusive dream: I've bought all the magazines, digested the reviews, scoured the net - I can recite photodo, (in fact it's my mantra: "Planner 45G = 4.7, Planer 35G = blah, blah, blah". I just love comparing MTF charts and then there's the thrill of planning the system, the endless upgrades, the huge overdraft, the countless hours spent over a light table with a high powered loupe desperately searching for perfection. Been there, done that, bought the tee-shirt (several times). You too? Yeah, I thought so...

So what would you say if I told you I'd found a cure and it worked? You'd be interested, right? Just think of all the money you'd save - and you might actually have time to get out and take some pictures - yeah, I know it sounds incredible, but it's true. I can remember the day it happened; getting the envelope in the post, turning on the light table and looking, astonished... ....at my first roll of 645 film!

I guess that's where the joke ends, but I can see some of you are just too far gone to believe me, so I'll be blunt: every shot I've ever taken in MF is superior in terms of detail and resolution to every shot I've ever taken in 35mm (I'm 30+ years a photographer so that's a lot of film). There's just no contest, good quality medium format pisses on even best quality 35mm every time. Why? It's not just that the format is physically bigger, but that, for a given field of view, the image is bigger too. A normal lens in any format is roughly the same as the diagonal measurement of the format, so 43mm for 35mm, something around 70mm for 645. Obviously, a 70mm, being a longer focal length than 43mm, will produce a significantly bigger image. It doesn’t matter which format you use, this is always true.

My years as a slave to ‘ultimate 35mm quality’ mean that I know that the best 35mm lenses probably have superior resolving performance (judged in line pairs per mm for ex&le) to most, if not all MF lenses. But in my experience, it isn’t enough to make up for the format size difference. Okay, you could use your G2 with ultra slow fillm, tripod mounted and with the lens set to its optimum aperture and, yes, on a 12x8 inch enlargement, you might not be able to tell the difference to a 645 using normal film etc. But, other than to prove a pedantic point, why would you bother?! If you use the same film and settings, the difference should be noticable by 11x14 inch. Why? Because for 35mm, it’s something like a 12x enlargement, but for 645 only about 8x. When it comes to photographic quality, size wins, every time. And the bigger you go, the more obvious this becomes. To go back to the original post, yes, the G lens is probably 'sharper' but not by enough to make up for the differnce in format (I can only assume that Michael's friend had a poor Mamiya lens).

But this doesn’t mean that MF is always better than 35mm. It’s all about ‘horses for courses’. I can’t tell you how liberating it was to make this discovery, simple though it was. Now, if I want to play at being Cartier Bresson I reach for my G2; if I’m on holiday taking snaps I use my T3; for butterflies and nature work I use my Nikon F100 and a macro, while for landscapes, or where I can take my time, I use my large format camera with a 6x9 roll film back. Frankly, these days, I don’t care whether Leica M or Zeiss G make better lenses. The only thing that matters to me is whether the camera is fit for purpose, suits me and delivers quality that’s ‘good enough’.

There’s a lot of rubbish talked about whether 35mm can match MF, and a lot of time wasted on the subject. It would be great if we could get on to something more interesting… but I’m not holding my breath.

Enjoy your photography! }Best wishes Malc
 
This is almost a useless debate because although a small lens (such as the G, or any other high quality 35mm lens) is easier to design than any other high quality larger format lens, the larger film format overides this to produce a better (optical) print.

With very high quality equipment, the film is the limitation, so size wins out!

(I use the Hassy, Nikon, Leica and Contax).

Cheers :)
 
I've posted this test result before but another response here may be timely. I used to own a Fuji 6x9 medium format camera. I loved the large negative but I didn't like only one lens. When I bought my Contax 35mm I put an exhibit up at Kodak, all B&W and nothing bigger than 11 x 14 image. I asked viewers to email me and tell me which prints were from the 35mm camera and which were from the 120 camera. (Didn't dare tell them it was a Fuji camera.) Only one person got one image right. You would think it would be a 50 50 chance of guessing but more people guessed the Contax images were medium format. Thus I sold the medium format camera and bought more lenses for my Contax. All images with both cameras were taken mounted on a tripod.

I just returned from taking a workshop with Howard Bond. About 12 students were there all shooting 4x5 or medium format roll film (I was the exception). They couldn't believe my images were from 35mm. Someone said,"keep doing what you are doing."

My current enlarger is a Leica. It helps greatly.

Dave
 
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