Bob Blaylock
Senior Member
Aperture/Depth_of_field Relationship -- Vivitar 85-205mm f/3.8 Tele-Zoom
It got into my head to set my ancient Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 Tele-Zoom lens up on a fixed scene, and take pictures at different aperture settings, to show the effect of aperture on the depth of field and image quality. I ended up doing it twice, with the lens zoomed all the way to 205mm, and again zoomed in to 85mm.
This is an ancient, non-AI lens built in the late 1960s or early 1970s. See also, this thread for a similar treatment of my equally-ancient 50mm ƒ/1.4 Nikkor.
[In case anyone is wondering, the text that is lost in the glare in both of the above pictures, just clockwise of the serial number and counterclockwise of the “Vivitar” name, is “AUTO”.]
Aside from depth of field, this lens has some rather interesting distortions that occur at wider aperture settings.
So, here are the results. Note that aperture setting, focal length, and other lens-specific characteristics are not correctly recorded in the EXIF data of the following images, due to the fact that this is not a CPU lens, and does not provide these data to the camera.
ƒ/3.8:
ƒ/5.6:
ƒ/8:
ƒ/11:
ƒ/16:
ƒ/22:
It got into my head to set my ancient Vivitar 85-205mm ƒ/3.8 Tele-Zoom lens up on a fixed scene, and take pictures at different aperture settings, to show the effect of aperture on the depth of field and image quality. I ended up doing it twice, with the lens zoomed all the way to 205mm, and again zoomed in to 85mm.
This is an ancient, non-AI lens built in the late 1960s or early 1970s. See also, this thread for a similar treatment of my equally-ancient 50mm ƒ/1.4 Nikkor.
[In case anyone is wondering, the text that is lost in the glare in both of the above pictures, just clockwise of the serial number and counterclockwise of the “Vivitar” name, is “AUTO”.]
Aside from depth of field, this lens has some rather interesting distortions that occur at wider aperture settings.
So, here are the results. Note that aperture setting, focal length, and other lens-specific characteristics are not correctly recorded in the EXIF data of the following images, due to the fact that this is not a CPU lens, and does not provide these data to the camera.
ƒ/3.8:
ƒ/5.6:
ƒ/8:
ƒ/11:
ƒ/16:
ƒ/22:
Last edited: