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Something is rotten in the S2 lens lineup

John Black

Active member
F2.x is plenty fast for a portrait lens because of the larger digital negative and larger FOV. For a tight portrait you'll step into the shot 2, maybe 3 steps closer than you will with a 35mm FF-dSLR. Stepping into the shot shortens the DOF. On a 645 system F4-F5.6 works well for shallow DOF for portraits. Since the S2 sensor is smaller, maybe F3.5 to F4.5 instead.

Another way to fill the frame is to use a longer lens. 200mm fills a 645 negative nicely and works well for head shots. The Mamiya 200mm F2.8 APO has a very thin DOF @ F2.8. The attached image is F2.8 with the Mamiya 200mm APO on a P25 back.

 

Jack

Sr. Administrator
Staff member
Carsten, et al:

Here is an image from my P45+ that illustrates John's point. This shot was taken with my 150 at f8. I focused on the model's left eye (our right) and note how much oof her hair is.

Full image for reference:



Hilighted area at 100% and straight out of the camera with no post sharpening -- remember this is f8. Note that my camera position has my sensor almost (but not quite parallel) to the plane formed by her eyes, and the tip of her nose and cheeks are oof on the near side and her right eye is starting to fall out on the far side of the DoF zone. (Sorry for the 1600 pix wide crop, but I needed that area to show the oof transition):

 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Here a great example with the Mamiya 150mm 2.8 lens shot at F12 which sounds like a lot of DOF but watch the hair completely out of focus. Mf is completely different than 35mm . If i shot this with the DMR say in the same focal length to achieve the same look F8 would be a good guess. Now this is the P25 plus full image. I added the right side image also
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
No lack of detail there. LOL Shot with a Broncolor Para BTW but even if you look close it starts to fade out right after her eye brow. So reality is a 1.4 would never cut it really. Here is a quicky I shot of my nephew at 2.8 with the 150mm. See how thin the DOF is
 

EH21

Member
Yes when you move to MF from 35mm you'll need to wipe out your mental algorithm for DOF, light settings and all that. I've found that to get the same DOF I'm needing 3 more stops and really 4 times as much light with my Rollei.

Btw - if you want fast medium format lenses check out the Rollei 6000 series which work with the Hy6 and AFi too. There's an 80mm f/2.0, 110mm f/2.0, 180mm f/2.8 These have leaf shutters and can sync to 1/500 but some of the lenses will go to 1/1000

Mamiya also has an 80mm f/1.9 too, and Marc or someone can tell you what's available for Hasselblad.

Anyhow, probably a f/2.5 in MF is going to appear faster than a f/1.4 or even a f/1.2 in 35mm terms so the new Leica S2 lenses are going to be plenty fast.

Eric
 
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