Picture about Leica 3D and Plasticity. (5 Viewers)

[Alexis Powell]

All of that is true Canip but it is not the full story, at least for my eyes, because just looking at the man's face I can see a strong 3D effect. His head definitely has a back and a front and his ear is further away than his nose. None of this is connected with the out of focus background which, as you say, is just a function of a wide aperture and small depth of field...

I think seeing 3D in a nonstereo flat media photograph is crazy talk. I'm light spirited in my criticism, but I'm serious. The only way to see depth in this circumstance is to reconstruct it from knowledge of the subject and subsequent interpretation of lighting as revealing hills and valleys. That's why photos of unusual concave objects are so easily misinterpreted as more familiar convex ones. Effects of foreshortening etc are almost impossible to judge without cues from familiar objects accompanying them. That's why it is sometimes hard to tell from a single photo if e.g. a gull actually has a short round head and short bill or whether it has its long head and bill angled slightly toward the camera.

We've got some very visually aware people here on Birdforum, so it's driving me crazy that no one has provided an objective description of the optical properties of the Noctivid, or what it is about the view through them that sometimes inspires enhanced feeling of depth or greater depth of field.

--AP

 

[Binastro]

I see 3D in certain images, where different colours are involved.
This is because of the chromatic aberration of the eye.

With a say 4mm pupil and a distance of 700mm to a screen or photo, I think that is large enough with a single eye to cause 3D effects with the pupil subtending 20 arcminutes, even in lower than optimum lighting levels.

Could someone post a link to the cinema photographers videos comparing Cooke movie lenses to very sharp but flat Leica movie lenses. Maybe this was a year or so ago. It needed fairly fast broadband.
The views of the male and female models faces showed the effect very clearly to me.
Literally billions of moviegoers over the last 80 years have appreciated the Cooke look.

 

[SuperDuty]

So is there something unique about the Leica or Cooke lenses that give them the ability to create depth and contrast, or can the effect be accomplished with others lenses and cameras. Is the effect more pronounced with film or digital, also, with the Leica binocular dumping its feed straight into the eye-brain interface, is that comparable to a captured image ?

 

[Alexis Powell]

I see 3D in certain images, where different colours are involved.
This is because of the chromatic aberration of the eye.

With a say 4mm pupil and a distance of 700mm to a screen or photo, I think that is large enough with a single eye to cause 3D effects with the pupil subtending 20 arcminutes, even in lower than optimum lighting levels.

Could someone post a link to the cinema photographers videos comparing Cooke movie lenses to very sharp but flat Leica movie lenses. Maybe this was a year or so ago. It needed fairly fast broadband.
The views of the male and female models faces showed the effect very clearly to me.
Literally billions of moviegoers over the last 80 years have appreciated the Cooke look.

The videos and some still comparisons are easy to pull up w/Google. Very dramatic presentation (narration), and some objective differences in bokeh and barrel distortion are easy to see, but I'm afraid I don't experience the 3D effect in face closeups that the narrator is so taken with. Often, my impression in stills was the reverse of his. From a controlled comparison perspective there are flaws. It seems that some aspects of lighting aren't fully standardized, plus there are differences in focal length for part of the comparison. Also since the t-stop was standardized, the actual apertures of the lenses (f-stops) were likely set differently which may account for some differences in depth of field (Leica, with better coatings has smaller f-stop when set to same t-stop as the Cooke).

All in all, I don't find it very convincing. Ironic too that in this movie lens comparison it is the newer Leica lens that is described as rendering the world artificially flat in comparison to the gloriously distortion-flavored Cooke.

--AP

 

[Binastro]

Hi Super Duty and Alexis,
I think it started with Horace W, Lee's Speed Panchro in 1921.
Yes, it is to do with imperfections.
The Deep Field Panchro was also well thought of.
I would say that film is still better than Digital for movies. Film is still made and used extensively, also archived copies of digital might be on film.

Leica have been copying TTH since at least the 1950s, when they took the TTH 50mm f/1.5 1943 mass radiography lens design and used it on Leica cameras. They had to put licenced from Taylor Hobson on them when they were found out.
I would not think that Cooke lenses and Leicas differ much in coatings. I think that TTH was multicoating before Leica.

I clearly see the effect described in the videos. Obviously everybody's eyes and brains differ.
But clearly Hollywood appreciated Cooke and TTH Technicolor lenses.

There are all sorts of lenses using imperfections. Soft focus, some variable and others.

Also the Minolta 58mm f/1.2 bokeh champion, which was my standard film lens.

I would think that the Noctivid is using similar effects to the Cooke movie lenses.

 

[Alexis Powell]

So is there something unique about the Leica or Cooke lenses that give them the ability to create depth and contrast, or can the effect be accomplished with others lenses and cameras...

I think that with digitization and digital editing, "depth" due to distortion and any alteration to contrast that is desired can be achieved from any lens that is good enough to provide clean data. Differences from field curvature would have to be simulated, which would be difficult and imperfect. Movie makers and the industry are likely conservative and prefer to use tried and true paths to the finished look they want, but camera designers spec radically different fixed lenses on digital cameras yet are able to get a very consistent Fuji, Sony, Nikon etc "look" from very different products via in-camera processing to get everything to come out the same.

--AP

 

[henry link]

We've got some very visually aware people here on Birdforum, so it's driving me crazy that no one has provided an objective description of the optical properties of the Noctivid, or what it is about the view through them that sometimes inspires enhanced feeling of depth or greater depth of field.

--AP

Hopefully Kimmo will be posting just that kind information soon.

Henry

 

[SuperDuty]

I was going to put the image in Lightroom and play around with it, but I ended up just adding and removing some sharpening with my Kindle, nothing else was changed. I'll let others comment on any effect it may have had.

 

[kabsetz]

Henry,

I will oblige when Lintuvaruste gets the next batch in. The firs thing I'll do is some upside-down viewing.

Kimmo

 

[elkcub]

I was going to put the image in Lightroom and play around with it, but I ended up just adding and removing some sharpening with my Kindle, nothing else was changed. I'll let others comment on any effect it may have had.

The right picture looks more vivid to me, and viewed with one eye produces an improved stereo effect. The left picture isn't as crisp and seems out of focus.

Ed

 

[elkcub]

Henry,

I will oblige when Lintuvaruste gets the next batch in. The firs thing I'll do is some upside-down viewing.

Kimmo

You're going to stand on your head?

Ed

 

[Binastro]

Kimmo may go to Australia to get the results he is looking for.

Maybe looking at the upside down Moon.

Actually, I often test binoculars upside down to see what happens.

Also, on the Moon, craters sometimes look like hills depending on the lighting.

 

[Hermann]

A quick question: Has anyone actually seen a detailed drawing of the Noctivid? Or, better still, a model where it's possible so see what kind of construction they use?

I couldn't find anything.

Hermann

 

[Troubador]

A quick question: Has anyone actually seen a detailed drawing of the Noctivid? Or, better still, a model where it's possible so see what kind of construction they use?

I couldn't find anything.

Hermann

There was this one released at launch time.

Lee

 

[Binastro]

With regard to what is possible optically, Minolta had the 24mm f/2.8 VFC variable field curvature or control lens. This was a very sharp wide angle lens. It had a control ring that enabled the field to be sharp from highly convex to normal to highly concave.
It was used particularly for advert photos of things in different planes.
Leica used several Minolta lenses rebadged as Leica with stringent quality control.

There was also the Minolta varisoft 85mm f/2.8 and the shift CA 35mm f/2.8.
I am not sure if any of these three were used by Leica.

There are many tilt and shift lenses by many makers also.

The Leica Noctivid designers would know all of these optical possibilities.

 

[SuperDuty]

This image I took many years ago has a completely out of focus background, so I tried the same over-under sharpen manipulation with it, probably nothing of note to be seen. It was a Canon 3.2 megapixel point and shoot, I didn't realize the ant was there until after I got the image on the computer. :-O

Robert

 

[kabsetz]

I actually do not expect the field of the NV being deliberately asymmetric. I doubt that tilting of the focus plane to bring the bottom of the field to focus closer while top of the field is in focus farther from the center would be easy to do without compromising the overall optical quality of the image. But since checking for it is easy without even having to travel to Australia, I will do it when I get the opportunity.

Kimmo

 

[jwillson]

This is a perfect sample about the Leica 3D and plasticity.

Leica M9 and Leica APO Summicron 90mm ASPH.

And this is what i can see with the NV and there is no other binocular who makes it.

Just only my Zeiss Oberkochen 10x50 have it.

The picture is mine so fell free to download and check it.

It's a very nice image, but I'm not sure what the Leica 3D and plasticity is from this image. Obviously, the contrast is very good. It's hard to tell anything about microcontrast and resolution when you are looking at a web image, but I have owned that lens in the past and I know what it's capable of so I'm comfortable supposing the resolution is good, at least within the limitations of the rangefinder focus. Subject isolation is good since you shot this at, I assume, f/2 and it's a moderate telephoto.

Tell me what you think we should be seeing in this image. Are you describing depth? There isn't much. That's a good thing--narrow depth of field is how you isolate the subject. The lapels are in focus, but the left sleeve is outside the depth of field. Ears appear to be as well. All that is exactly how I would hope.

There is lots of contrast in the image with very clearly defined edges. Generally this adds "pop" to the image, and your picture certainly has that. Is that what you are referring to with "3D" and "Plasticity"?

Perhaps if you showed us a second image that DIDN'T have the "3D" look you are describing we could understand better. Frankly, I suspect that what Leica and some others are referring to when the describe the tremendous plasticity of the images is really contrast. The Noctivids certainly have lots of contrast--just like your photograph. They do a very good job of stray light suppression, and as a result contrast is significantly higher than in any other binoculars I have used.

- Jared