Digital BW, The Print

Back in 1999, I discovered how good a Canon zoom lens could be with the  
original Foveon prism camera, which caused me to sell all my Hasselblad gear  
withing 6 months. Hasselblad also sold the firewire version of that same camera  
as the "Dfinity" in europe, so they must have, in effect, agreed with me  
decision to abandon Zeiss lenses and medium fomat film in the process.
 
That 3-chip camera has a 6 micron well site pitch, which DEMANDED 83 line  
pairs per millimeter of resolution from the glass. The only time that number was 
 approached was at f/6.3. I was only able to make that camera have moire 
issues  ONCE, at this "sympathetic" aperture and a synchronous subject frequency 
(a  shark's tooth jacket).
 
Since each camera comes with it's own unique "solid state emulsion", it  MUST 
now be considered as part of the optical system.
 
The reason full frame Philips/Dalsa sensors worked so well with MF glass  was 
because the avoided the edges of the field where performance fell off and  
where the "angle of approach" on the part of the light radiating from the rear  
element was more perpendicular to the surface.
 
This whole concept was part of the "marketing science" campaign by Olympus  
with the introduction of their E-10 camera about 3-4 years ago. They claimed 
the  their optical path, in totality, would only allow perpendicular rays at the 
 edges of the frame.
 
Since then, camera  manufacturers have used various microlenses, low  pass 
filters (single and multiple) in unique configurations to solve various  
problems.
 
This, in concert with various imager sizes and well site pitches makes up  
the recording side of a digital camera.
 
Thus, not all pixels are created equally with this myriad of optical paths  
and recptors, even with the same lens.
 
In my experience (as owner of 23 different digital cameras in the last 9  
years) the smaller the well site pitch on a sensor (CMOS or CCD), the more it  
demands of the lens. The smaller the sensor size, using full frame 35mm optics,  
the less of the "corner nasties" one gets to see.
 
For those who would demand the highest performance possible from a beast  
such as a 1Ds mark II (I have a 1D mark II and a 20d), I would recomment the  
50mm f/1.4, the 85mm f/1.2 L, and the 135mm f2.0, and the 200 mm f/1.8 L lenses  
as the finest glass possible with that very demanding camera. Everything else 
is  an optical compromise  for the sake of convenience or dollar savings.
 
Claude Jodoin
working photographer
Tech. Editor of Rangefinder Magazine


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]