How can I compare the relative light transmission of different lenses with a digital camera?
Asked 10/24/2015
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I want to compare the relative light transmission of several lenses and lens/modifier combinations. My plan is to photograph a uniformly lit target under constant illumination using the same camera body, fixed RAW settings, fixed shutter speed, aperture, ISO, and distance.
Can I use the resulting RAW files to compare brightness at selected points and estimate relative transmission? Are values from Adobe Camera Raw or similar tools linear enough for this, and how would I express the difference in stops/EV? What variables do I need to control for a fair comparison, especially with issues like vignetting?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
10y ago
2 Answers
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In a nutshell: no, you cannot use your camera to accurately measure light transmission. The problem is with the way your ISO control works on a digital camera. ISO is not a generic "amplify signal by X amount"; it is designed as a compensation adjustment to match the exposure index of the equivalent film stock. Therefore ISO 100 with one lens is not the same as ISO 100 with another. The ISO setting is far more esoteric than most people realize.
Let's say you were shooting at ISO 3200 at f/1.4 and 1/100, and with this camera, anything above ISO 3200 looks really terrible. If a lens with terrible light transmission was shot at those settings, the ISO portion of the exposure would boost the signal amplification to match whatever it determines "ISO 3200" should be at, meaning you're introducing a ton of signal noise. If on the other hand you shot with a lens with great light transmission at the same settings, you'd will still have the same exposure, but it would look cleaner: this is due to lower signal amplification.
Even worse, although ISO is standardized, you can measure it in a number of different ways; this means light transmission values will vary across different sensors, and not in a linear fashion. And this is just the tip of the iceberg; ISO values are computed in a myriad of complex ways that take into account the sensor, the sensor size, the resulting brightness of the image, and all sorts of computational processing.
Instead of using a camera's imaging sensor to measure light transmission you need to use something designed to measure actual light reception, not gather light into an image.
Edited for clarity.
Originally by user45063. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user45063
10y ago
0
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You can use a camera setup for a rough relative comparison, but not as an accurate absolute measurement of lens transmission.
Key points:
- Camera ISO behavior and RAW processing are not guaranteed to be a simple linear light meter, so a brightness number from Adobe Camera Raw should not be treated as a precise transmission percentage.
- For relative comparisons, it’s better to compare RAW image data with histogram analysis or a line/profile scan in image-analysis software.
- If you compare two measurements from the same workflow, convert brightness ratios to stops with: stops = log2(A/B). So a 2:1 brightness ratio is 1 stop; 1.26:1 is about 1/3 stop.
- Keep illumination, shutter speed, aperture setting, ISO, distance, focus, framing, and processing identical.
- Vignetting matters. If you sample only one point, lens edge falloff can skew results. Use a uniformly lit target and compare the same image area, or evaluate the whole frame/histogram. Center measurements are usually safer.
- For many lenses, published T-stop measurements may already exist from testing sources.
So: useful for relative testing under tightly controlled conditions, but not a rigorous way to derive exact transmission numbers.
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