Ok with all this talk of lens sharpness what do you think is the sharpest lens of all?Forget the creamiest etc etc i,m talking detail, every wrinkle , can read a license plate from 100 miles away ,that sort of sharp. Oh and if you shoot colour then what film are we talking about??? B & W for me is tech pan

-- Tim Robinson Photography (timphoto@ihug.com.au), July 21, 2001

Answers

The 100mm Apo Macro at F8 and at 1 meter. Close up portraits done this way will make you very unpopular. For film, my pick is Delta 100. Very fine grain and solid acutance. With the combo above you can duplicate medium format performance up to 16x magnification. After that, the film grains shows and tonality, close up, deteriorates. Tech pan is probably higher res, but is lower acutance and invisible grain make it look less sharp.

-- pedro lastra (plastra@webmail.bellsouth.net), July 21, 2001.

Summicron 90mm APO asph M. Hands down, no contest. You get cuts on your eyeballs from looking at the images this lens produces.

Tech pan is awesome, yes, but more practical choices are Delta 100 and T-max 100, 'cause they are about as sharp.

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), July 21, 2001.

In Leica R: Either of the current 180 APO lenses - Summicron or Elmarit; in Leica M: 90 APO ASPH Summicron. Tech Pan is not a general usage film, but is incredibly sharp. I probably would go with Delta 100 for general usage. Kodachrome 25 is the winner where contrast is concerned, but is discontinued. Provia 100 is probably next best.

-- David Page (pagedt@attglobal.net), July 21, 2001.

Somebody on the LUG said a Leica Rep told him it was the 28 SummicronM followed by the 90 APO SummicronM. Personally, I'm more interested in how the lens handles color.

-- Bud (budcook@attglobal.net), July 21, 2001.

Hubble Telescope

-- J London (jlondon@astronomy.com), July 21, 2001.

COMPLAN lens on Minox B

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 21, 2001.

My current 50 Summicron and 90 Elmarit, especially at f5.6 to f8.0, are pushing the theoretical limits for 35mm camera optics. My other resolution champ is a 25 year old Nikon 55 f3.5 Micro Nikkor P-my sharpest Nikon lens. The detail that thing can resolve at f8.0 may be even be a bit higher than any of my Leica lenses, especially with subjects closer than about 10 feet.

-- Andrew Schank (aschank@flash.net), July 21, 2001.

Tim:

You just said lens. Ok, the two sharpest l have used are:

1. Zeiss 1 x

2. Leitz, APO, 100X oil immersion.

Both quite expensive, but very sharp.

Art

-- Art (AKarr90975@aol.com), July 21, 2001.

I just got from Glazer's in Seattle, where they're having a Leica Day. The rep said 28 Summicron M, then 90 APO Summicron M.

-- Fergus Hammond (fhammond@adobe.com), July 21, 2001.

Great lenses:

Now, don't hold me to these names since they are coming from deep in my memory. I think it was something called a Welby, 75 mm Acculux [60's]. They dodged the problems with air to element by only using one element; they circumvented the problems of glass formulation by using plastic.

Unfortunately, we can't test one because they appear to have biodegraded. :))

Art

-- Art (AKarr90975@aol.com), July 21, 2001.

Acording to some writing found in the net, the US army rated the Summicron 50 D.R. as the sharpest, this in the sixties, and for aereal photography I guess.

-- r watson (al1231234@hotmail.com), July 21, 2001.

I believe the Nikon Ultra-Micro-Nikkor line of lenses was designed for extreme resolving power for copying circuit board microchips. As for Leica - Apollo (Command Modules?)used the M-Summicron 50mm for sighting stars for tracking purposes.

-- Collin Orthner (corthner@home.com), July 21, 2001.

My sharpest lens is a 50mm f:1.4 SMCP Pentax, followed closely by DR Summicron. The Pentax has better contrast, too. The new Canon 50mm f:1.4 is in the same ball park. Great Bokeh on all three.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), July 21, 2001.

I have tried lots of Leica lenses. For the M series the sharpest to me still seems the good old 50mm Summicron. For the R, I was blown away with the 280/4 Apo Telyt.

Recently I have found the Zeiss 35mm Sonnar which happens to be in the new Contax T3 to be one of the sharpest lenses ever! Certaintly is as good as the 35mm Summicron ASPH at f5.6 and beyond. Maybe even f4! What a lens!

-- Mike Foster (mike567@acgecorp.com), July 21, 2001.

Performance per g

Performance per gram is an index = lpmm x format dimension divided by camera weight in g

The following is a few examples

    CAMERA      lpmm   format length   weight   performance per g
    Minox TLX    170       11           98        17
    M6+50 'LUX   95        36           835        4
    Hassy 503cx  75        56           1520       3



     Minox TLX not only has the sharpest photographic lens, but also
has by far the highest performance to weight ratio  of 17 vs only 4 
of M6

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 22, 2001.

Martin, did you think that up all by yourself? Clever, but let's not forget to state the units: lines per gram.

-- Bob Fleischman (RFXMAIL@prodigy.net), July 22, 2001.

"Lines per gram"? Sounds it should have more to do with mirrors and razor blades than lenses and test charts...

-- Paul Chefurka (chefurka@home.com), July 22, 2001.

Unless you're shooting on TechPan, Gigabit or possibly Kodachrome 25, it doesn't make any difference how sharp the lens is, the information on the negative is limited by the resolution of the film.

-- Bill Mitchell (bmitch@home.com), July 22, 2001.

Silly me, who though we were talking about lens sharpness. I said:

1. Zeiss 1 x

2. Leitz, APO, 100X oil immersion.

When you take into account the scope and all of the attached computer equipment, I would lose on the lines per pound basis. ;<))

Art

-- Art (Akarr90975@aol.com), July 22, 2001.

Paul - 50 points!!!!

-- Andy Piper (apidens@denver.infi.net), July 22, 2001.

Remember when the Space Shuttle made its first flight? If so, you'll also probably remember that at that time the Navy was taking 8mm (Yes, 8mm! I knew a guy on the P-3 Orion that photographed with it.) movies of it from something like 250 miles away, and noticed that one of the ceramic heat shield tiles had fallen off.

So, attention Martin: I seem to remember the tiles were 4" x 6" in size... What LPM would the lens have to resolve to be able to see a missing 4" tile at 250 miles?

And the bigger question is then: Does anybody know what lens was used on the Navy's 8mm spy cameras in the early 80's?

-- Jack Flesher (jbflesher@msn.com), July 22, 2001.

Canon 50mm macro breach lock

-- Sanford (sanford@usa.com), July 22, 2001.

Bob, great idea lines per gram

lines per mm x mm / g = lines per gram !

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 23, 2001.

Bill, you are right, I am shooting Techical Pan, enlargeable to 10x12" with hardly visible grain.

I also shoot Agfapan apx 25 ( I saved two bulk rolls ) and PanF plus.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 23, 2001.

Bob, yes, I cooked up the idea of performance index two years ago when comparing the efficiency of various camera.

I forgot to list Minox GT-E, it has a performance efficiency of 13 lines per gram--- the hightest efficiency full frame 35mm camera.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 23, 2001.

I prefer as a unit of a performance efficiency "lines per litre".

-- Victor Randin (ved@enran.com.ua), July 27, 2001.

Victor, good idea. As lines per gram penalizes metal camera in favour of plastics.

-- martin tai (martin.tai@capcanada.com), July 27, 2001.

Are we limiting ourselves strictly to general photography lenses or are we also talking about other lens applications loosely related to photography. ..

If former, I have no idea... my cz 50/1.4 serves me well, if latter S-Planar used by the semiconductor industry.. ofcourse you have no diaphragm and only one aperture usually less than 1 and it weighs a *&expletive and costs millions but yeah, I think it gets the job done as far as sharpness is concerned resolving some of the micron-level detail required. Perhaps I should experiment with this thing on a large view camera and gigabit film.....

-- Ravi Nagpal (nagpal@mindspring.com), September 04, 2001.

Sharpest lens of all, probably is in the eye of Chuck Yeager. Otherwise, you should be out shooting some film instead of wasting your time worrying if you spent too much money on your lens purchases. Yes, I just shot 3 rolls of film 2 B&W , 1 color. Seems funny that only LEICA shooters have to wonder if their 90 F2 is good enough or if they should buy the 100 2.8 macro.If we laid 2 11x14 prints sideby , I'll bet you could'nt tell which was shot with LEICA, or one of those inferior japanese lenses.

-- Brian Harvey (bharvey423@yahoo.com), September 28, 2001.

Lets say that you do have the sharpest lens available. Do you think that will magically turn you into Henri Cartier-Bresson? The sharpest lenses, and film, I've seen in the last twenty years are those used by Sebastiao Salgado. Try your best to see "Imigrations."

-- Leicaddict (leicaddict@hotmail.com), September 28, 2001.