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Case Study: Focus Bracketing with a 15mm Lens on Nikon D800E
For peak sharpness from high performance lenses like the Zeiss 15mm f/2.8 Distagon, a demanding standard is required: there is no “infinite depth of field”, not even with a 15mm lens.
High resolution digital cameras already have photosite sizes smaller than 5 microns. More will follow in 2013 and beyond, and so the issue only grows in performance.
Film vs digital
In bygone days where film curled and warped and had significant thickness and accepted acute ray angles, and resolving power was often limited by grain, and perception of sharpness was enhanced by acutance without actually being all that sharp, one could get away with such stuff with a straight face. But a critical eye with a 10X loupe revealed the truth, as I often found with my Linhof Technorama 617 SIII with its 72mm and 90mm lenses (very wide angle).
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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.
