oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

now that i understand the post i decided to see which group of sloppy shooters i fell into

Hand held 7100, no VR, sitting in a chair i shot three lenses at 6 feet. lines and spaces were equal width good contrast. i judged a good image as having crisp, sharp, high contrast edges with no blur.

$1000 lens = 25 lines/mm
$1600 lens = 33 lines/mm
$2500 lens = 50 lines/mm

(the line to space ratio could be altered to yield maybe a 25% increase)

It would appear the statements in the book are conservative but essentially true.

Guess i'll have to go through life now knowing i'm only a fair-to-middlin shooter.

amehta Loc: Boston

Nothing says that you must stay in the same category. I shoot with a much higher level of precision now than I did 5 years ago.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

flipping back to nikonians bug: the lower limit for photon collection in a facet of the compound lens is around 27 micrometers which makes his high contrast spaces between facets about .015 mm or 40 times the gap i was trying to photograph. I had chosen .0004 mm gap because that is the size of the jumping spider facial hair i had measured using the lab scope at work and i wanted to know if my hardware could even see it..

obviously i need to make lots of improvements but since 6 months ago i couldn't even shoot the whole fly much less aspire to shooting his whiskers i think i'm getting closer.
Its time to admit my hand-held shooting isn't what it was 50 years ago.
Guess i'll put my keychain flashlight back in my pocket and start learning how to properly light my subjects.

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

I'm pretty sure it was Nikonian who set me on the right path with his flash/bracket/minisoftbox set up for close up photography. What I'm learning is that the flash freezes the moment in time independent of shutter speed, giving you a much sharper image than you would otherwise get, allowing you to shoot hand held and sharp!

Ted Liette Loc: Greenville, Ohio

I don't know what the hell everyone is talking about and I don't care. All I know is in the morning I'm leaving on vacation, I have all my gear packed and sitting behind me. And I plan to take as many shots as possible and I promise I won't be thinking about how many lines there is in each photo.

mechengvic Loc: SoCalo

We're all just trying to come up something to occupy our minds so we don't have to think about the fact that we're NOT going anywhere. Have fun. ;)

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

To date, you have not posted a single photo on UHH. Why would you insert a comment into a discussion about image resolution?

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Too technical. If you get so-so images from a 100 lines/mm lens, how would you do with a cheaper, 50 lines/mm lens? I think his point is that, although the lens is good, the photographer still has to do his part in getting a good image. Better lens = better pictures.

I hope there isn't software that evaluates images according to lines/mm. I prefer to look at a picture and evaluate it that way.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

Jerry, i'll bet you are one of those people who turned off the the little "happy-bell" that rings when you are focused.

wj cody Loc: springfield illinois

i have always thought lens "quality" and "resolution" had absolutely nothing to do with the final image. in my modest collection of photography annuals from the 1940' and 1950s, there are photographs taken with schact lenses on exakta cameras that i would give my eyeteeth to have taken.
the real issue, even with such gimmicks as "image stabilisation" is knowing how to properly hold your device and when a tripod is necessary - all depending on shutter speed, asa and aperture - and what you wish to have appear in that final image. pretty much any lens will provide you with a remarkable image if you know that you are pointing it at.

oldtigger Loc: Roanoke Virginia-USA

Having run the handheld test, proving i was lousy, and having a few hours to kill before the sun came up; i repeated the test using a tripod.

The resolution doubled and tripled for every lens.
Big whoop-to-do, we all know tripods rule.

But as the man on the radio used to say,"and now the rest of the storey"

When i blew the shots up to the customary 400% every white line was really three columns of colored phosphor clumps, bright and clear.

Every black and white pairing that i was calling a line of resolution was really 6 seperate lines. And the camera was recording more than i could see.

Bottom line is:
Careful technique will get you a picture.
A tripod can get you something worth looking at.
A medium quality lens is probably all most of us will ever need.

Kuzano

I modified your post slightly, as it is a commendable post for this forum.

I have always had the impression that somehow, the thought of using a tripod is so offensive to some people who loudly claim that they can handhold up to 20 seconds at f1.4 aperture. I've seen it, believe me, in 5 years of taking photos.

Mostly proclaimed by muscle bound, mouth breathers who think using assistance to stabilize the camera make them somehow "sissy".

In addition to the addition of the tripod, and as I learned in one of the chapters of the New York Institute of Photography (NYIP) that I took in the 70's and repeated two times since, even the accurate use of the tripod is not without further improvement.

As the course showed me, there is an added bullet on the list after you mount your camera to a tripod.

I suggest it would go like this, somewhat as the chapter indicated:

*Make sure your tripod has a center hook and add your camera bag to the upright tripod for another few lines of L/MM.

Me, I carry a net shopping bag in my camera bag, or pocket. I fill it with rocks or rubble on site and hang it on the tripod hook.

NYIP said it was so, and that has been my experience for many years.

Carry a tripod and a way to further use gravity to stabilize it. I don't rely on any in camera stabilization system when I want the best IQ. Tripods have proven more effective for over a century in my estimation.

clh3RD

I have enjoyed this discussion. It is not just of passing interest to me even though now I shoot for my own satisfaction. When my boss told me in 1965 that I would be the company photographer, he sent me to a store on Broadway just south of Times Square. The salesman was extremely helpful to me and set me up with a Zeis Ikon Contaflex. Oh what a camera. I miss it even today. My challenge then was the same as today. I usually need to crop the photo, sometimes substantially. So the importance of image resolution is a big deal. Pretty photos can turn ugly really quickly as I zoom in. Even so I think that my skill has rarely pushed up to or beyond the camera capabilities. I still miss that Zeis.

dickwilber Loc: Indiana (currently)

Corect

dickwilber Loc: Indiana (currently)

Oops! I'm having a problem with my keyboard. What I meant to say was that Amheta was correct, resolving power refers to the number of lines per millimeter the lens can project on the film or receptor surface, using a specific industry standard test target. It is but one of several criteria used to evaluate lenses. The number will be less the farther you are from center of the image. And it does not relate directly to what you might achieve in a real photographic situation, but it does give a numeric value to compare different lenses. And, yes, everything else being equal the lens with the higher number is a higher quality lens.

In the real world, most people buy based on reputation and don't know what resolving power any particular lens has. I own a dozen or so lenses in different formats and have no idea what their test numbers were.