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MTF Introduction
This page is intended to provide a helpful layman’s guide to reading MTF charts. For an in-depth discussion of MTF, see H.H. Nasse from Carl Zeiss in part 1 and part 2.
MTF is a useful but limited starting point: nothing beats making real images to assess lens performance.
Modulation transfer function or MTF simply means how much contrast at a specified resolution. In essence, what MTF means is “how black is black” and “how white is white”. With real lenses, all real images are shades of gray, by optical physics.
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Diglloyd Making Sharp Images articulates years of best practices and how-to, painstakingly learned over a decade of camera and lens evaluation.
Save yourself those years of trial and error by jump-starting your photographic technical execution when making the image. The best lens or camera is handicapped if the photographer fails to master perfect shot discipline. High-resolution digital cameras are unforgiving of errors, at least if one wants the best possible results.
- Eases into photographic challenges with an introductory section.
- Covers aspects of digital sensor technology that relate to getting the best image quality.
- Technique section discusses every aspect of making a sharp image handheld or on a tripod.
- Depth of field and how to bypass depth of field limitations via focus stacking.
- Optical aberrations: what they are, what they look like, and what to do about them.
- MTF, field curvature, focus shift: insight into the limitations of lab tests and why imaging performance is far more complex than it appears.
- Optical aberrations: what they are, what they look like, and what to do about them.
- How to test a lens for a “bad sample”.
Intrigued? See Focusing Zeiss DSLR Lenses For Peak Performance, PART ONE: The Challenges, or (one topic of many) field curvature.