Jean-Claude Berger - Consultant, Formateur indépendant - MCSE - MCT - MCP
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This lens has a mythical reputation. Of course, its aperture is a godsend for available light photography but what I appreciate the most is its incredible sharpness and contrast. When I was preparing some pictures for my photo gallery about Mulhouse (removed now), I was impressed by a tiny portion of this one:
Do you see the small orange area? The lens resolved some device to chase away pigeons. Those are thin needles (2 mm in diameter and 4 cm long) that discourage them to land there. Here is what gives a 400 % blow up of this zone:
Please do understand how I did this picture. I scanned the negative at 2700 dpi then I zoomed to 400 % in my image editing program and did a copy of the portion of screen. When seen with a 40 or 100 X microscope, the needles are clearly visible. Unfortunately, I don't have a 10000 dpi scanner to have you share that.
Understand too that I was at about 12 m from this point. When Erwin Puts (www.imx.nl), a lens tester guru, pretends that this lens can resolve 0.3 mm details at 7 m, he is right! Moreover, I took this shot handheld on Ilford Delta 100. This is not a very well prepared test picture on tripod and Technical Pan and all the series presents the same sharpness. A good testimonial to modern films too, IMO.
© Jean-Claude Berger, 1999