Cameras and Photography Explained

My cataract surgery went well, and I’m back to doing some work at the computer each day, though not as much as normal, so bear with me. As with my previous surgery, I got way more emails about this than for any other subject or comment in the recent past. Sorry if I didn’t reply to them all; it simply wasn’t possible. Thanks for your thoughts, support, and understanding.

I’ll be updating the cataract article next week. I’ve got one small correction, plus a bunch more notes on things to expect. Among all those well-wishing emails I got were quite a few from people who are on the cusp of needing cataract surgery. There aren’t a lot of great sources that speak to how a serious photographer might/should respond to such surgery, and I’d like to try to make my article at least a small sample of what’s needed. 

In the meantime, I’ve moved my Mac recommendations article over from dslrbodies and updated it to account for the latest Apple announcements. You’ll find it in the Reviews/Books section. Short version: stick with 16GB/512GB as your minimum and pretty much any of the M1/M2 Macs work quite decently for a photographer. It’s only the intense processors (multiple large files open and/or lots of use of GPU) and videographers that start to benefit from the Pro, Max, Ulta chips and the higher end machines, such as the Mac Studio.

News—or in this case, the lack of news—travels in strange ways on the Internet these days. 

Nikon Rumors published an article last week refreshing everyone’s memory about the eight lenses on the Nikon Z-mount Road Map with the title “Nikon is expected to release eight new Z lenses in 2023”. Which then got picked up and mostly repeated by the Japanese rumor site Asobinet with the slightly more accurate title of “Summary of Nikkor Z lenses expected to appear in 2023”. Which then triggered an article on Mirrorless Rumors whose title is “List of all rumored Nikon cameras and lenses.” Curiously, Mirrorless Rumors adds a rumored Z70 camera to the list, which wasn’t in the Asobinet article, but is in Asobinet’s 2023 Rumored products list (a different article that’s been on that site for awhile). Joining the game was The New Camera blog in the UK, also cited Nikon Rumors as “the source.” (The actual source is Nikon’s Road Map, which has been out for many months, but my point is how one article produced on the Internet tends to trigger others.)

This is the way of news, rumors, and leaks these days: everyone is using “scrapers” that dredge up any article, and across many languages, that talks about any upcoming or new products. This isn’t just true of the camera sites, but you’ll find the problem repeated in basically all the tech sites, and it’s similar to what used to happen in the Hi-Fi and auto magazines, as well. 

Developing, cultivating, and working with original sources is tough. Over the course of 30 years of supporting (mostly Nikon) cameras on the Internet, I’ve had many good sources disappear and thus have had to cultivate new ones every couple of years or so. The few of us who do have direct sources for upcoming and previously unpublished information tend to be extremely careful about releasing it these days, for fear of damaging the source. Nikon, for example, terminated their relationship with two people who had provided information to me and others in the early DSLR days. 

For the most part I no longer write about upcoming products directly and with specifics. If I do write about something I instead only hint at a direction or change rather than being specific. I do use information I obtain early to start writing stories I’ll publish later, once the information has been either credibly leaked elsewhere or released by the manufacturer. I also adhere to date embargoes from the companies themselves, even when not under a direct NDA (non-disclosure agreement).

To put my “pre writing” in perspective, as I publish this article I also have 36 stories in progress for this site, about a half dozen that include some information that isn’t currently publicly available. (Don’t bother looking for them on the bythom.com URL, as they’re not already there and hidden, but only on my office system awaiting release to the site.) I have similar lists of work in progress for my other sites, as well. Again, some with information that is not yet publicly available. 

However, let’s return to the lede and be clear about what those circular articles were writing about: Nikon currently has eight lenses on their published road map, two of which, according to statements from Nikon executives in published interviews, were supposed to appear by April 2022, but did not. Two have also have had development announcements recently (85mm f/1.2 and 26mm f/2.8). So:

1. Given the current state of supply chain and logistical issues, it’s improper to put a time frame on anything at the moment. Products will appear when they appear. To my knowledge Nikon hasn’t ever backed away from doing any product on their Road Map, though there is some indication that they might have changed the attributes of one or more of the lenses along the way. A 24-105mm was originally strongly rumored and even discussed as such privately by some Nikon employees, and a spot for that lens which was unspecified in focal length was on the original Road Map. In the end it turned out to be a 24-120mm. I now wonder if the “extremely late” 200-600mm might have seen a similar change of some sort. Product development timelines and final specifications do change, not just during the early R&D phase, but sometimes as late as the release-to-manufacturing stage. (For those of you who don’t remember, I’ve described Nikon’s basic lens cycle as being a minimum of three years from concept to production, with three major engineering check points being what I’d call Final Conceptualization, Final Optical Design, and Manufacturing Prep. At the end of any of those steps, it’s possible that rethinking occurs and the schedule for that lens lengthens as a result.)
2. Nikon very well may produce more than eight lenses in 2023, or perhaps a different eight than are on the Road Map. That was actually the case in 2021, where we got the surprise 18-140mm f/3.5-6.3 DX and 28-75mm f/2.8 lenses. Likewise, the 17-28mm was a surprise in 2022. By my count we’ve had four “surprise” lenses so far. I will say that there are at least two very specific lenses I’m pretty sure are nearing release to manufacturing that aren’t on the Road Map. But I don’t know if they’re going to actually get released to manufacturing, nor do I know if they’ll appear in 2023. But at least one of them could. In the topsy-turvy supply chain world at the moment, anything goes.
3. The game is afoot. Sony, who hasn’t tended to talk about future lenses publicly, reversed direction last week and announced that they have a target release date for a 300mm f/2.8G OSS lens “in early 2024”, which realistically is at least a year way. It seems that the recent Canon RF-mount and Nikon Z-mount telephoto parades are starting to have an impact on the FE mount with the wildlife, sports, and photojournalism communities. At over 100mm, Canon RF currently has eleven lenses, Nikon has five (plus a Tamron and three in the Road Map), and Sony eight. All three mounts have gaps that need filling, and no one wants to look “weaker” than the other in this critical high-end focal range. 

The good news is this: in the month leading up to the big CP+ show in Japan we’re about to get a lot more clarity on many of the rumored items the photography press is ruminating about at the moment. I fully expect significant announcements from Canon, Nikon, and Sony. It seems unlikely that the other camera companies would miss this home field possibility, too, though Panasonic may have just made their early 2023 major announcement at CES instead (the S5 II and S5IIX). As I’ve written before, I believe Nikon was originally going to do the same (major CES announcement), but instead backed off to just the two-lens development announcement for items already on the Road Map. That says to me that a significant product originally intended to drop at CES turned out to not be ready. Let’s hope it is ready for CP+. 

Some of you with long memories will recall that there was a time in the teens when I pointed out that Nikon, and then Sony, had gone to a “let’s announce a new product every month” schedule In order to keep their products in the photography news stories. While both still tend to want to drop some form of press release as often as possible, in Nikon’s case for sure that has tended to be more diluted lately. 2022’s press releases gave us one camera, six lenses, and seven software/firmware updates. 

Thus, what happens is that we get lulls between anything of significance, and in the lulls, this circular Internet sourcing issue keeps going on for anything that might be considered a story. Mirrorless Rumors cited Absobinet. Absobinet cited Nikon Rumors. Had there been more to the original article, I suspect we’d have seen a chain or six or more in the circle (may yet happen, as I write this almost immediately after the initial sequence occurred). 

I’m having cataract surgery on my second eye, so postings may be slim for the next ten days or so as I let my eyes relax with time away from the computer. 

However, to make up for that, I’ve added a new article in the Improving the Photographer portion of the Technique section on cataracts. Enjoy.

I've been as guilty as anyone in describing lenses. In an attempt to describe results I've often reverted to a generalization, using the term "old school" to refer to what the results look like. I'm probably past due in drilling down some as to what I (and others) mean when we try to describe a lens' overall characteristics.

Technically, a lens designer is balancing a large variety of attributes when they formulate the optical formula. No "perfect" lens can really exist—okay, maybe it might if price were no object and we could invent a few new technologies along the way—so a lens designer has to pick and choose which attributes they want to maximize and which they can ignore in the process. 

It's probably wise to describe some of the attributes that are being juggled: central MTF (contrast), corner MTF, spherical aberration, coma, vignetting, linear distortion, chromatic aberration (both lateral and longitudinal), field curvature, focus shift, spectral passthrough (color), flare (several types), to name the most important. 

If you want to dig deeper, you'll find plenty of other variables that come into play. For instance, aspherical polishing attributes. When we talk about onion-skinning in bokeh, that usually is attributable to concentric variations in how the aspherical aspect of the lens is defined. Some lenses have extreme changes in their outer curvature and more crude transitions, others have less extreme changes and more sophisticated transitions. An aspherical element may only have one surface that's aspherical (the other a normal curve), or it may have two aspherical surfaces. 

Short version: there's a lot of design variables to balance. And balance is the correct term, because as you optimize one variable you tend to de-optimize another.

In the film SLR days, virtually all lens design was done manually. It wasn't until late in the film era that we started to get computerized design tools that could model different potential designs and provide emulations of what the final results might be. Even today, those automated tools are only as good as what you've programmed into them. For instance, if you stumble upon a new way to polish aspherical elements, if that data isn't yet modeled in your program, you're not optimized to the final results. New forms of glass have to be programmed, and pretty much any new optical technology you come up with will need to be first added to your modeling and confirmed.

Even with all the computer simulation that's now available, you'll find that optical designs still tend to use known forms and known lens elements (particularly for curvature and polishing, probably because the mechanical tools for doing those jobs don't change rapidly). For instance, the following is the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 S (top) optical design versus the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8G (bottom) (ray tracing courtesy of Photons to Photos Optical Bench).

You'll notice that the optical designs are quite similar (but note they’re not drawn to the same scale). From this simple 30,000' altitude, it's not easy to see how these lenses might differ in capability. You might notice that the S lens is doing something different at the back portion of the design and that it appears that its final ray patterns seem to be a little tighter (which might produce more telecentricity at the center and less potential pixel crosstalk at the edge).

Yet despite the similarities in the basic optics of the two lenses, I find they perform quite differently. They have a very different character in how they image, thus answering our title. How so, you ask?

Well, the primary differences I found in my testing of both lenses are two-fold: the DSLR version of the lens has considerable field curvature, and the MTFs (contrast) look quite different. Here's Nikon's own theoretical MTFs (Z lens on top, DSLR lens on bottom):

The two observed differences are related. Some of the MTF difference—maybe most—has to do with field curvature, at least at the 14mm focal length. On flat subjects, for instance architectural photography, field curvature would be a real problem. Ditto on test charts ;~). On more 3D subjects, such as landscapes, the issue might not clearly be visible or even problematic. 

Which brings me to a common thing I observe in lens characteristics, and one of the things that forms my use of the "old school" shorthand: the older the lens design, the less likely it performs well as you move closer to the corners. Since many photos are framed and focused centrally (or at least in the rule of thirds “center"), the change in the corners often doesn't particularly show up in images, and over time we all formed an acceptance of center-better-than-corners that now "feels right" to many. This is the still photography equivalent to the long-established motion blur that we've become accustomed to in films and video (due to slow shutter speeds): we think it is "right" because that's what we're accustomed to. It's a "characteristic" we're comfortable with due to repeated exposure to it.

Experiments with center-and-corners-equal (and higher shutter speeds in movies/video) tends to shock the perceptual system. You'll often see people try to describe this as "too digital" or "unnatural." What they're really saying is that they've formed a perceptual habit that they don't like being violated. 

In truth, the most recent mirrorless lenses—particularly the Nikon S and the Sony G/GM designs—are just simply better in many of their optical characteristics. Sometimes startlingly so. It has nothing to do with “digital” and everything to do with better optical design that balances the variables differently.

Though that “better” sometimes comes with another compromise, because remember, optical designs are about balancing different aspects in how they handle light. 

The big difference between how I see lenses being designed now versus how they were designed last century is simple: a reliance on in-camera lens corrections. Instead of trying to balance linear distortion, vignetting, and even some levels of chromatic aberration, these "problems" are just left with the camera or the raw image processor to deal with. The "problems" that the lens designer mostly deals with these days are related to MTF (and its subcomponents). You can see that somewhat clearly in the Nikon MTFs, above: the mirrorless S lens' theoretical contrast capabilities are simply better than the older DSLR lens'. 

Indeed, that's what I'd tend to refer to as "modern school," versus film era and early DSLR lenses' being "old school." The design priority difference produces a visual character that's different.

Amusingly, for years I've been altering that characteristic—modern or old school—in post processing. In fact, I can trace this all the way back into my mid-1980's darkroom work. I spent a lot of time (and still do) working against lens designers' choices. These days I tend to add a bit of vignetting—what Scott Kelby refers to as his go-to "finishing move"—and I'll also sometimes look to destroy sharpness in peripheral areas. Back in the darkroom I tended to have to dodge against some portions of the vignetting and find ways to improve sharpness (contrast) in some peripheral areas. 

To some degree, how you view the visual characteristics of a lens and what you might do about them is dependent upon how you think your images will be viewed. I'd tend to say that the low bar of Instagram has shifted many towards a more modern school: sharpness, saturation, and contrast throughout the image, as it is not dominating your vision and the image’s periphery is just as important as its center. I'd also say that really large prints also benefit from modern school characteristic lenses, as the viewer—particularly if allowed to wander close to the print—tends to be looking only at a portion of it at a time, so that portion, whether center or corner, needs to deliver visual impact. 

It's the in between that's a bit of a problem, and unfortunately, that's where most photo enthusiasts live at the moment. From laptop to 4K monitor we're talking about something that is more midsized and viewed at a fixed distance. I notice that when I post process on my 14" MacBook I have tendency to want to do things a little differently than I do when I process on my 5K Retina iMac, whose display more than fills my central vision. (Generalized: we have vision that works best—sees detail—in the central 20°, and is defined by the primary binocular field of view of 60° where we see color and shape; everything else is peripheral vision, which doesn't have the same response as the central response and mostly sees just motion.)

Which brings us to this: does the character of a lens truly make a difference?

I'd argue: yes with a caveat. 

Remember, my primary thesis for decades has been this: collect optimal data. I'd argue that the modern school lens designs—even assuming lots of pixel correction for vignetting and linear distortion needed in post—simply produces more optimal data. I can always later compromise the data if I so desire ;~). Old school designs with compromised corner sharpness are just not optimal captures, in my book.

The caveat is this: most of you aren't close to optimal data collection coupled with optimal processing of that data. You're driven more by immediacy, and you're evaluating images via a fixed output (typically a computer screen of some sort, which could be smaller or larger or something in between). You respond to what you're seeing. And you have a built-in bias towards what you're used to seeing. Thus many of you like old-school lens designs, though without really knowing why.

"A customer is more agile than a manufacturer."

While I'm paraphrasing something I read, this is indeed true, and it's the core of many of our complaints about cameras. In recent years, camera companies have become less agile due to a confluence of factors both under and not under their control. Even the smartphone makers have become somewhat less agile in the COVID era, though I suspect some of that is that they’ve run out of the easy ideas and gains.

Thus, complaining about what companies haven’t done yet will be a feature of the Internet basically forever.

“For [phase detect autofocus] it is necessary to embed a sensor for distance measurement in the sensor, and since color information and luminance information cannot be obtained from the embedded location, the image processing engine must compensate for it… Conventional image processing has not been able to guarantee image quality that satisfied us.”

Also “…using [PDAF], pixel defects will inevitably occur.” — Panasonic manager interviews in Japanese press

Google translation didn’t do these statements any justice, but even the original Japanese didn’t explain things clearly. Moreover, there’s a lot of “avoid embarrassment” in the entire explanation. Nikon has been doing since 2011 what Panasonic said they couldn’t do, and both Nikon and Sony currently use the same approach that Panasonic is now adopting, and have for many years. I’d also suggest that an out of focus photo has way more “pixel defects” than an in-focus one captured with a phase-detect-on-sensor camera ;~). 

To clarify, most phase-detect-on-sensor is done via putting some number of secondary lenses in the microlens layer just above the image sensor. Nikon, Sony, and I believe Panasonic, do this on every 12th row of blue/green photosites. The tricky part of this approach is that some pixels on the image sensor have two potential outputs: focus data and exposure data. Because the microlenses above the PDAF photosites are different (to create the phase information), the exposure data these can attain has to be adjusted for the impacted cells to “match” the others. That was one of the things that caused banding in deep shadows on early Nikon Z6 and Z7 cameras: the adjustment was ever so slightly wrong on rows with high contrast in them.  

In short, Panasonic is trying to paper over the fact that other companies moved as much as a decade ahead of them. I and others have been saying for some time that Panasonic had their head in the sand vis-a-vis phase detect autofocus. They can try to come with any excuse that they’d like, but unfortunately, they’re trying to weasel away from the reality that they are just last to market with phase-detect-on-sensor. 

The Fujifilm X-H2S is as good as the Sony A1 in autofocus tracking. —general conclusion by many after viewing a test done by a German Photographer based upon his “bird test track.”

That video and resulting discussion eventually produced two articles and a long discussion on FujiRumors. 

The problem here is trying to summarize from limited data, and then attempting to put a spin on the data, including the headline “How 61% AF Accuracy…are Better than 85% Accuracy…” Basically, the argument is that 61% at 40fps is as good as 90% at 30fps. And that ignores the fact that there’s still a 12.5% improvement in number of sharp images from the Sony A1. I guess 12.5% less is somehow better in some alternative universe ;~). 

There’s a lot to unpack here, including the original “bird test track,” which is relatively slow and linear compared to what happens in real life, and doesn’t really take into account varying flight patterns, backgrounds, or foreground/background exposure. 

The A1, meanwhile, is a 50mp camera and the X-H2S is a 26mp camera. So we’re also not accounting for any differences in “focus” we might decide upon if we downsized the Sony images to the Fujifilm size. All of the evaluation of “in focus” in these tests is subjective (what the tester sees), not objective (measured in some repeatable way). Setting up a faux measurable test doesn’t really change things.

At least dpreview has backed away from relying on their bike test to talk about autofocus accuracy, but I’ve seen plenty of other Web sites try to provide absolute numbers for focus. For instance, there’s one that’s been stating that the Nikon Z9 has a 96% hit rate. Uh, okay. I can’t replicate that exact number, so I’d say that the testing and measurement that produced that number is not sufficiently defined to hold up to any real scrutiny. 

And that’s the problem: the camera companies don’t even begin to disclose how they test and approve their autofocus systems, and to what standards they’re using to generate that. In most machine language (AI) techniques that are being used, you establish a goal level of performance and iterate until you’re above that, then see if you can go still further without creating new common situations that fail. It very well may be that in the test pattern each camera company has established, that they’re all hitting 93%+ using their standards in their labs. 

In the field, not so much. 

However, the key point I’d like to make is completely missing in any of the discussions that are going around the Web right now: you have no control over what was missed. Yes, the X-H2S may get 24 sharp images per second, but that also means it’s getting 16 unsharp ones and you won’t know which ones those they are until you look at them later. It’s very possible that those 16 unsharp ones are the ones you really wanted.

I’d argue that I’d rather have 15 sharp images every second at 15 fps than what the X-H2S is doing. Yes, fewer images per second, but an assurance that all the images I obtained are usable. Indeed, that’s where Patrick’s (FujiRumors site owner) argument just falls on its face: The Sony A1 is producing 3 out of focus images a second in the stated test, while the Fujifilm X-H2S is producing 16. The likelihood that “peak moment” of what was collected is correct on the Fujifilm is only two-thirds as likely. I don’t like "two-thirds as likely” as a statistic ;~). I’d want to avoid that, as it means there’s far too much a chance that the image I want won’t be in focus. 

I’ll point out that I practice what I preach here. I set my Z6 II at 5.5 fps, not 14 fps, and for a reason: the way the viewfinder works and intrudes on autofocus performance on that camera. At 5.5 fps I can follow action and keep the autofocus system doing what I want it to, while at 14 fps I’ll lose framing and focus system positioning due to the slideshow viewfinder lag, and thus start getting out of focus images. Using 5.5 fps also forces me to not do long continuous bursts (though I can), but to be more selective about when I press the shutter release. As you probably have noticed, I get the image with my Z6 II. Pretty much always. Not 61% of the time, but somewhere >90%, just like I do on my Sony A1 and Nikon Z9. 

Everyone wants to declare winners and losers. Everyone wants their chosen brand to be the winner. In the end, what determines the winner is your understanding of a focus system and your consistency in driving (controlling) it to its best possible results. The “numbers game” that is being discussed on the Internet to declare winners and losers is not just misleading, but often wrong.

As if to further prove my point, today as I edit this article, Fujifilm has announced a firmware update to the X-H2S to improve subject detection and focus tracking. So it’s not as if they haven’t seen the same thing I did in my review sample.

“RAW means raw data” New York Times explanation

I don’t know why we’re still dealing with this problem, and I, too, sometimes fall prey to using the wrong capitalization due to varying uses by various companies. I think it was about 2006 when I started hearing complaints about referring to the capture of original data as RAW files. All caps is used to refer to acronyms, and there is no acronym involved here.

At some point not long after, I started trying to consistently refer to raw files as, well, raw files. My current standard in my books is to use “raw” to refer to such files generally, NEF to refer to a Nikon raw file specifically (and no, it’s not NEF raw, as NEF is always raw and doesn’t need the add-on). 

The problem is that camera and smartphone companies continue to misuse the language. For instance, the NYT didn’t catch that Apple actually refers to their iPhone raw file format as ProRAW. Why RAW is capitalized in that name, I don’t know, particularly because Apple’s video formats are referred to by Apple as ProRes. Sony, meanwhile, uses the term RAW generically for their ARW files, apparently to match the capitalization of JPEG and TIFF (both of which are acronyms, by the way). As does Fujifilm. The only company that might be justified in capitalizing their use of RAW is Panasonic, because that’s their actually file type (extension), and extension names are usually capitalized. 

Canon actually goes mansplaining on you, much like the NYT did: “It takes the name “RAW” because the data is raw.”  Yeah, really useful explanation there. It would be like me saying my name is THOM because my name is Thom. I call this concept negative data. There’s less information presented than needs to be presented ;~).

Which brings me, and likely the New York Times—though again, they missed what Apple calls their format—to have to come up with a standard by which to document things. Basically, we follow “style sheets” to try to come up with a consistent usage for our readers. 

Merriam-Webster is a common dictionary we writers and publications use, and they define “raw” as (2c) "not being in polished, finished, or processed form", which is exactly what a raw data file is. M-W’s definition is not capitalized. Adobe even gets this right: ACR is Adobe Camera Raw, not Adobe Camera RAW because you don’t put an acronym within an acronym (oh lord, why do I think some science fiction writer is now going to say to themselves, why didn’t I think of that, and thus come up with names that are names within names?*). Wikipedia gets this mostly right, though for some reason they call it “Raw” rather than “raw”. 

I will try to continue to be consistent, though being the sole editor of everything I write I do make mistakes from time to time that I don’t catch. I’m sure you’ll remind me when I get it wrong ;~). I’ll use the term raw to refer to the type of file generically, and I’ll use RAF, NEF, CR2, ARW, DNG, etc., when referring to the specific file type (and most of those are acronyms, thus justifying the capitalization). 

*Update: it was pointed out that GNU, PHP, SPOOL, HAM, and a few other of the more geeky sides of Unix take on this recursive form. I should have remembered that, as I was once one of those geeks.