Lenses and Optics

Have You Seen My Acutance?

Published June 13, 2009

Have you seen my acutance? A few words about sharpness and MTF charts

Many of you know one of my pet peeves is strident internet arguments between photographers who are splitting hairs or misinformed. One major cause of these arguments is terminology: people use a nonspecific term which means something different to each of them. Others join in because the term means something slightly different to them. Pretty soon all are convinced all the others are idiots who just don’t understand. Its amazing, really, what a poorly defined term can do to take an interesting discussion and turn it into a screaming match. As Justice Stewart once said when describing pornography: “I can’t define it, but I know it when I see it”. Unfortunately, we all see things a little differently. When we can’t define a term, even though “we know it when we see it”, pretty soon we’re comparing apples and oranges.

One of the terms we photographers use that way is sharp. Seems simple enough—we all know a sharp photograph when we see it. Everybody wants a sharp lens. But it really means different things to different people. Lets be very superficial first. I have a friend who says his Canon 28-135 is very sharp. I’ve shot with several copies of that lens and never thought it was more than adequate. But he hardly ever makes prints, he posts his photographs online. And he shoots on a crop frame camera. I make mostly large prints of the shots I like (11 X 14 and up) and shoot on a full frame. So there’s the first misunderstanding. My definition of sharp is “What does it look like shot on a full-frame camera and printed to 11 X 14.” His is “What does it look like downsized and displayed on the web.” But sharp is a term that can lead to a lot more misunderstandings than just that.

Lets get a bit more scientific here. What does “sharp” really mean in photography? This is quite a complex topic if you want to get into it: we could discuss circles of confusion, Airy patterns , even Nyquist-Shannon theory and Rayleigh criterion. We could, but we’d all be bored to tears. Especially me. (And truth be told, I’ve read about that stuff a dozen times and I’m still not sure I understand half of it.)

So lets go for a more practical definition. There are two related, but slightly different things that determine ‘What is sharp?” They are Acutance and Resolution. Once you know what those are you will understand related terms like microcontrast. One more paragraph and you’ll understand that ultimate photography term modulation transfer function (MTF). And with just a little more reading, you’ll understand what those “MTF charts” really tell you about a lens.

What I’m offering you here is a veritable Rosetta Stone of sharpness terminology. After reading this little blurb, my friends, to the amazement of your supporters and chagrin of your adversaries you (YES YOU!) will be able to log on to your favorite photography forum and say things like “As you can clearly see from the MTF chart the lens has excellent acutance and microcontrast in the center but is going to exhibit softness and distortion at the edges and corners that would limit its usefulness for landscapes. Plus it will have harsh out-of-focus highlights wide open”. Is that great, or what?? Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’ll also be able to make better choices about which lenses you want to try without relying on someone else’s opinion quite so much.

Acutance and Resolution

Sharpness, as we discuss it in photography, is made up of two components: Acutance and Resolution. Acutance is about how sharply an edge transitions. Look at the figures below. Figure 1-1 has a high acutance, the transition from white background to black bar is sudden and complete (it represents a very good lens). Figure 1-2 has a bit less acutance and figure 1-3 still less (representing a not very good lens). Now here’s the take home message about acutance: Figure 1-4 is just figure 1-2 with a moderate amount of sharpening applied in Photoshop and figure 1-5 is just figure 1-3 with a high amount of sharpening applied. When we sharpen, either in postprocessing the image or with in-camera sharpening, we have increased the acutance, one of the two components of what we refer to as sharpness.

Figure 1

If we make the bars from figure 1 thinner and closer together eventually we will reach a point where the lens can no longer tell that they are separate black and white lines — they will just look like a gray area. We can measure this point for a given lens (assuming we have a good camera, so its not the camera sensor that is the limiting factor) in ‘lines per millimeter’. (In case you’re curious, the terms ‘line pair’ and ‘line’ are used interchangeably for this purpose.) Resolution therefore is an actual measurement, given in lines per millimeter, of the smallest details a lens can resolve. It, along with acutance, is what we perceive as sharpness. Some people will refer to high resolution (the ability of a lens to show small objects clearly) as ‘good microcontrast’.

Figure 2

One important point about resolution and postprocessing must be made. Figure 2 is similar to the one we used to demonstrate acutance, but this time the lines are much smaller and closer together. Notice that figure 2-3, our symbolic not-so-good lens, is at the limits of its resolution: you can sort of tell the lines are there, but it really looks more like a gray box than black and white lines. Like we did with the first set images, figures 2-4 and 2-5 are the best Photoshop sharpening I could get from figures 2-2 and 2-3. Unlike the acutance example above, however, postprocessing can’t restore resolution very well. Figure 2-4 is better than Figure 2-2 but its still clearly inferior to 2-1. Figure 2-5 is a bit improved over 2-3, but not much and there are obvious artifacts. Unlike acutance, resolution (AKA microcontrast) can’t really be improved in postprocessing. If the image doesn’t have it, you’re not going to add it later, no matter how good you are. (BTW—resolution is very important in large prints, but not so much in online jpgs. For those acutance is much more important.)

MTF

MTF (modulation transfer function) is simply a way to measure how much resolution and acutance a lens has. The formula is simple: (maximum-minimum/maximum+minimum). To make it simpler lets say white = 1 and black = 0. For any line pair in Figure 1 and for Figure 2-1 the maximum for each pair is 1 (the white line of the pair is completely white, at least in its center) and the minimum is 0 (the black line is completely black). Therefore the MTF of a well resolved line pair is (1-0/1+0) = 1. When I check figure 2-2, however, the maximum reading in the lightest area is 0.67 and the minimum reading in the darkest area is 0.33 (the lens can no longer completely separate black and white bars, they’re both shades of gray). The MTF therefore is (0.67-0.33/0.67+0.33) = .34. Figure 2-3 has an MTF of .08.

So MTF gives me a number that tells me how well a lens can resolve black and white lines: 1 means it completely resolves them into pure black and pure white. Lower than 1 means they’re blurred enough that the white isn’t completely white and the black not completely black, but at an MTF of 0.5 for example, the dark part is twice as dark as the light part. I could still tell them apart.

If I tested the lens with two different size lines, say one set at 10 lines/mm and another at 30 lines/mm (remember the terms line or line pair both mean one black and one white line) I find two different types of information. The ability to resolve large lines clearly shows the lens has good acutance (AKA good contrast). The ability to resolve small line pairs (30 l/mm) shows the lens has good resolution (AKA good microcontrast). The two MTF numbers give us an idea of how well the lens resolves large and small objects.

MTF charts

The MTF number we discussed above tells us about one point on the lens. Lets assume the MTF test we just did was at the lens center and found the MTF for 10 lines/mm is .95 and for 30 l/mm is 0.7. That’s something I can compare to other lenses measured at their center. But as we know, lenses give their best resolution in the center — the edges and corners may not be as sharp. If I test the lens for MTF at various distance from the center I can graph the results and get a nice chart that shows me how good the MTF is from the center all the way to the corners, at both 10 l/mm and 30 l/mm. By convention, MTF graphs use thick and thin lines, like Figure 3 below, to represent the MTF of thicker (10 l/mm) and thinner (30 l/mm) lines. (Not every manufacturer does it, but it would probably be a good idea to also test the lens at its widest aperture and its best aperture, say f/8 for most lenses. MTF charts that do this will use one color for f/8 and another for the widest aperture the lens has. I chose black lines for f/8 and blue for wide open for this illustration).

Figure 3

So what does this partial MTF chart tell us about our theoretical lens? It resolves thick line pairs better than thin, like every lens. At f/8 (black lines) its very sharp 3/4s of the way out from the center. After 15mm, though, performance, particularly at 30 l/mm, falls off. I’d expect the reviewers would say “A little soft in the corners, even stopped down”. The blue lines show us that wide open the lens still performs pretty well right in the center, but sharpness falls off steadily as we move away from the center. What does this mean in the real world? A landscape photographer who shoots at f/8 might tell me his copy of the lens is very sharp. So might a portrait photographer whose subject is generally in the center of the lens even if they use it at f/2.8. A wedding photographer who shoots tables of people during the reception at f/2.8 may well say the lens “is so soft its unusable” because the subjects at the edge of the picture are soft compared to those in the center. And all of them would be correct.

Actual MTF charts look a bit more complicated than the sample above because they contain one important piece of data I’ve left out so far. Real lenses have slightly different resolution depending upon which way the line pairs are oriented. If the line pairs are parallel to the radius of the lens (the radius is any line from the center to the edge) they are called sagittal lines (sometimes referred to as radial lines to help keep it confusing); if they are at right angles to the radius they are meridian lines (sometimes referred to as tangential lines). The figure below on the left probably explains it better than words. MTF charts will usually show the sagittal MTF as solid lines and the meridial MTF as dotted lines, so we get a chart like the one below.

 

It looks a bit confusing at first, but actually its not. Thick lines are MTFs at 10 llines/mm (how good the lens’s contrast is) so we’ll start there. An MTF over 0.8 is excellent, one over 0.6 is good and below 0.4 is generally not OK. So we can see from the thick lines in the chart that the lens has excellent contrast at f/8 almost to the corner (black lines) and good contrast to between halfway and three-fourths of the way to the corner at f/2.8 (thick blue lines). The thin lines (showing the lens’s resolving ability) are good, but not excellent, at f/8 (thin black lines) and really not very good at f/2.8 (thin blue lines).

So what about the difference between the dotted lines and the solid lines for each pair, the difference in resolving meridian and sagittal lines? If the dotted and solid lines are close together, the out-of-focus areas of the lens will be smooth and pleasing (good ‘bokeh’), while if they are far apart the out-of-focus areas tend to be distorted and less pleasing (bad ‘bokeh’). There are some other significances that we won’t get into today like tendency to flare and smear, and certain types of distortion. The bottom line, though, is if the dotted lines and solid lines are close together that’s a good thing.

Some MTF comparisons

Its important to realize that MTF charts, while very useful, are also very limited. An MTF chart can show you the limitations of a lens, a bad MTF chart usually means a bad lens. On the other hand, a great MTF chart doesn’t always mean a great lens for every purpose. Lens coatings, focusing abnormalities, some forms of aberration, and a host of other things aren’t going to show up in the MTF chart.

It’s also important to not compare apples to oranges. In the old days lensmakers proudly displayed the MTF charts of their creations as measured in the lab. Not many manufacturers do that today (Zeiss and Leica are the only ones I believe). The other manufacturers present their data differently and use different methods to obtain it, so it can be misleading to compare MTF data from two different manufacturers. The MTF chart may be computer generated from a theoretical model, or may only show part of the data we discussed above. Canon publishes very complete charts with separate wide and telephoto charts for zoom lenses, but even they seem to have ‘lost’ the charts for certain lenses (the infamous 17-85 EF-S lens, for example, has no MTF charts to be found). Nikon and Sigma present the wide aperture MTF of their lenses, but not the f/8 data. Tamron and Tokina tend to not publish their MTF charts at all.

Even given all of these limitations, the data from MTF charts can still be quite useful. Lets look at a couple of real world examples from Nikon.

The two charts above compare two 400mm telephoto lenses. On the left is the 80-400 VR at 400mm. On the right is the 400mm f/2.8 VR. The 400 f/2.8 VR may be the best telephoto lens made and the MTF chart shows it: from center to edge the MTF approaches theoretical perfection. The 80-400 is actually no slouch: the 10 lines/mm pair (red lines) remains above 0.8 far to the edge, although the 30 lines/mm pair separate quite a bit and the meridian line drops below 0.6 fairly early on. From the MTF chart I’d realize the 80-400 can get good shots, especially if I stay centered in the lens. The separation of dotted and solid lines also tells me the out-of-focus highlights will be a bit more harsh on this lens, especially toward the edges, while the 400 f/2.8 will be very smooth. This is indeed what we see in the real world.

The next charts compare a pair of wide angle zooms at their widest. Wide angle zooms are more difficult to design and the MTF charts reflect it to some extent. On the right is what is widely considered an excellent wide-angle zoom, the Nikon 17-35 f/2.8 IS. Notice it keeps the MTF of the 10 lines/mm above 0.8 all the way to 15mm from the center. It doesn’t fare nearly as well with the 30 lines/mm MTF obviously. On the left is what is widely regarded as the finest wide angle zoom made: the Nikon 14-24 f/2.8 AF-S. It clearly does a better job with the 10 lines/mm MTF all the way out to 20mm from center, and is also markedly better at 30 lines/mm. While we recommend not comparing MTF charts between manufacturers (they don’t all derive their numbers the same way) if you look at some other good wide angle zooms like the Canon 16-35 f/2.8 or the Sigma 12-24 you’ll find their MTF charts are much more like the Nikon 17-35 f/2.8, showing just how great the 14-24 really is.

When you get a chance, take a look at the MTF charts of some lenses you already know and see how they compare with your experience using them. Canon and Sigma have the MTF charts of each lens on that lenses page on their website. Nikon USA doesn’t publish MTF data online, but the main Nikon site in Japan does (and its in English).

Oh, and one last thing: about my friend’s Canon 28-135, here’s the MTF chart from Canon’s website at both 28mm and 135mm. (In this chart blue lines are at f/8, black are wide open.)

Notice the thick lines are really excellent out to 15mm from the center (which is all that matters on my friend’s 40D), both at 28 and 135mm? The 30 lines/mm pairs really aren’t so great, especially at the 28mm end. There you have it: my friend’s online images, with their emphasis on contrast and acutance look good and that’s his definition of sharp. My big prints from a 5D, with an emphasis on resolution and microcontrast, don’t look as good, and that’s my definition of sharp. We’re both right. But don’t tell him that—he’s busy having an argument about it in one of the forums and wouldn’t want any facts spoiling the debate.

Roger Cicala
Lensrentals.com

Author: Roger Cicala

I’m Roger and I am the founder of Lensrentals.com. Hailed as one of the optic nerds here, I enjoy shooting collimated light through 30X microscope objectives in my spare time. When I do take real pictures I like using something different: a Medium format, or Pentax K1, or a Sony RX1R.

Posted in Lenses and Optics
  • Arun Gupta

    What is the assumption about the brightness response curve of the camera sensor? Is it assumed to be or measured to be linear? No in-camera sharpening? etc.

    E.g., a camera sensor with a binary response, i.e., that recorded white for every pixel above a certain brightness and black for everything below that threshold, would change the MTF.

  • A very good point, John, and as best I know we can’t put a number on that or graph it, at least not very accurately. I always have looked at the stuff I do as sort of a screening: we want adequate resolution but that, in and of itself, isn’t everything.

  • The critical distinction between sharpness and micro-contrast is tonal separation — the ability of a lens to distinguish between tonal values in order to render the appearance of depth. We are not talking about black against white, but rather subtle differences in shade. I have noticed this is especially apparent in the shadow tones of digital captures, which can be rendered “flat” by modern lenses. Whether this can be measured I don’t know, however I can clearly see it in a direct comparison between images I have shot with different lenses of the same focal length in the same real-world scene & lighting with the same camera.

  • AJeng,

    I think terminology is always a problem in discussions like these. Separating sharpness into acutance and contrast is a good first step. Micro-contrast is a term that I always ask people to define when they start using it. Some consider microcontrast to be the same as resolution – how fine of a detail can the system resolve. Others (trying to explain it in words is difficult) are considering it how contrasty a given fine detail is. I tend to like the latter definition, just because, well, we already have resolution.

    As to 3-D pop being snake oil, no, I don’t think so. On the other hand it may be difficult to measure numerically, and unless everyone agreed on what they mean by ‘microcontrast’ there’s no way to measure it at all.

    Roger

  • AJeng

    Thank you, Roger, for the wonderful write-up on MTF, resolution, and acutance. I learned a lot today!

    Many people refer the term microcontrast as the ability of a lens to transfer contrast of very small details. And they also claim that Zeiss prime lenses have more “3-D pop” because of high microcontast their lenses have EVEN if their resolution is lower than comparable Sigma, Nikon, Canon counterparts. This view is certainly in conflict with what you presented here as you referred resolution as microcontrast.

    A blogger calls Sigma ART lenses (known for their very high resolution) produces flat images because their lack of microcontast (http://yannickkhong.com/blog/2016/2/8/micro-contrast-the-biggest-optical-luxury-of-the-world). The author said “Unlike measurable resolution, micro-contrast is perceptible not measurable.” Clearly, he is using the term microcontrast to mean depth perception, completely different than what you described here.

    Is the 3-D pop claims by Zeiss users nothing more than snake oil? Or it is something measurable?

    Thank you!

  • Roger Cicala

    Oleg,

    I read that post and I actually do agree with it. MTF, which I play with, measures one aspect of a lens – it’s ability to resolve (both in contrast and resolution). That’s very important but depending upon the photographer, subject, and technique, it may not be the most important and it’s not the only factor.

    One thing I’ve found is sometimes (not always, but sometimes) the designer DOES trade off some resolution in order to achieve a flatter field, lower a certain type of aberration (which might improve booked), etc. Then again, a great designer often doesn’t always have to make that compromise. So I can certainly agree that you might prefer a lens with flatter field or less astigmatism to a sharper lens with a curved field and more astigmatism. Or whatever.

    However, I do get a little nauseated when the marketing department has to use BS terms. It’s funny how one company waxes poetic about their 3-D look, the goal of all photographers. And another waxes poetic about their 2-D look the goal of all photographers. Etc. I agree with their facts, I get rather insulted when verbiage suggests I can’t understand the complicated optical stuff, I should just go make pretty pictures.

  • Oleg

    Roger, thank you very much for your blog, it’s so informative!
    Are you going to test Fuji lenses one day?
    I’ve recently seen a post on official Fuji facebook page saying that catalogue MTFs don’t matter in real life – https://www.facebook.com/Fujifilmxworld/photos/a.434509496621859.99836.427388394000636/923260937746710/?type=1&theater
    It’s no brainer that 15l/mm and 45l/mm graphs are not enough to determine whether the lens is good or bad. But I don’t like they don’t provide any MTFs proving the lens is good indeed, instead they just add some text. All in all it sounds like there is some magical image quality which can’t be measured which is of course untrue. Also their argument about “two dimensional subject” is weak I suppose. Also there are many lenses which don’t compromise on image border quality.
    Could you please comment on their post? It would be very interesting if you would test this lens one day to check whether it’s results are much better when focused on close objects comparing to infinity and provide some detailed MTF graphs.

  • Roger Cicala

    Sorry, Dee, I was writing late at night. There should have been non ‘mm’ in there. I think I get so used to typing that I do it in my sleep. It should be MTF of 0.5

  • Dee

    Roger,

    Thanks for the quick reply. Please forgive me if my phrasing is odd, since english is not my first language.

    What is ‘0.5mm’ you mentioned in this comment –
    :”The point at where the 30 line pairs /mm graph crosses under 0.5mm is where (on most cameras) you are beginning to lose fine detail that you just can’t get back. ”

    And later in that paragraph, for a high pixel-density camera (36 megapixel full frame), the pixel width is about 4.8 microns. So the fine line pair to identify the resolution limit should be close to the pixel width. Is my understanding correct?

    Dee

  • Roger Cicala

    Dee, Brandon’s not around tonight so I’ll tackle most of the question and let him get into Fourier Transformations. MTF does give us a measure of both, if I understand your comment properly. The 10 line pair data correlates well with what we would call contrast or ‘punchiness’ in the photograph, AKA acutance. We like for the 10 lp MTF to be up above 0.90. You can sharpen and image and increase acutance pretty well, though.

    For most cameras the 30 line pair data correlates pretty well with resolution or fine detail. The point at where the 30 line pairs /mm graph crosses under 0.5 is where (on most cameras) you are beginning to lose fine detail that you just can’t get back. That’s more to do with resolution. That being said, for a high pixel-density camera, like a 36 megapixel full frame or 24 megapixel crop sensor, the 40 or even 50 line pairs / mm data may be a better measurement of absolute resolution.

    That’s the plain English version, which, as verbiage must when explaining mathematics, contains some generalizations. I’ll let Brandon give a more mathematical and accurate explanation later.

    Roger

  • Dee

    Roger,

    Thanks for your post. It’s really helpful for better understanding the concepts of sharpness and mtf for a rookie as myself.

    I’m still a little confused on separating resolution and acutance on 30 line/mm MTF chart. Since worse acutance means the edge between black and white drop slower, which is one of the impact factors to lower contrast for tighter line pairs (reduce mtf). To me, mtf is an indication for resolution and acutance combined together, isn’t it?

    I also read in some books that people measuring mtf by taking Fourier Transform of line spread function. It is equivalent to to take more data points in frequencies (line pair) at certain location instead of just two points (10 l/mm and 30 l/mm) as shown in mtf chart?

    Thanks,
    Dee

  • http://wordpress.lensrentals.com/2009/06/have-you-seen-my-acutance

    Hello Roger,

    There is a glass of algorithms called image deconvolution which actually do increase resolution in post processing, including resolving some detail beyond diffraction limits and 0% MTF. The science of image deconvolution is over half a century old. Two classic references are:

    Richardson, W.H., “Bayesian-Based Iterative Method of Image Restoration”, J. Optical Society America, 62, 55, (1972).

    Lucy, L.B., “An iterative technique for the rectification of observed distributions”, Astronomical J., 79, 745, (1974).

    The research by Richardson and Lucy led to the impressive Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution algorithm that has been in use for decades in many fields, ranging from the tiny (microscopy) to the mega (astronomy). A google search with terms like:

    image deconvolution beyond the diffraction limit

    or simply

    image deconvolution

    will show many references.

    From a practical standpoint, I have been using the Richardson-Lucy image deconvolution algorithm for many years in my digital post processing work flow. In general, on a low noise image I can improve resolution about a factor of two. I have a couple of articles on my (non-commercial) web site:

    Image Restoration Photography Using Adaptive Richardson-Lucy Deconvolution part 1
    http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/image-restoration1/

    Image Restoration and Down Sampling Using Adaptive Richardson-Lucy Image Deconvolution Part 2
    http://www.clarkvision.com/articles/image-restoration2

    Also, a comment on your unsharp mask example. I feel it is a little deceptive because it is only black and white bars. One is able to clamp the levels back to black and white with unsharp mask quite easily. But one could do that too with a simple stretch. Try the following:

    To a gray scale image, value = 128, add bright bars with value = 220 and dark bars with value = 30. Then blur with Gaussian blur. Now try and restore the image with unsharp mask. The result will not be pretty. Black and white bars are not a realistic imaging scenario, not even with zebras.

    Roger Clark

  • Eugene

    I’m wondering how easy would it be to see MTF differences in your photographs. As I understand, digital cameras first blur the image (to prevent aliasing), and then sharpen it in post-processing. So if you look at the RAW image with no sharpness enhancement, then everything will look blurry. If you look at sharpened RAW images (which is what most people use), then differences in acutance might have been removed by the sharpening process. So how do you properly test your lens for sharpness?

  • Anthony

    Roger,

    I was wondering if there’s any easy way to relatively convert between the MTF50 numbers you typically post in your articles, and the values in the MTF charts that the manufacturers provide? I tried posting elsewhere on a forum and got a 1200+ word essay “answer” on how Canon’s MTF charts are done (included mention of Airy Discs and comments asking if I know how to read an MTF chart or not. The general gist I’ve gotten is that either they’re two different systems and I shouldn’t be trying to compare them, or I don’t want to know the math involved.

    Thanks,
    Anthony

  • Feng Chun

    This is really a great post on MTF chart.

    I have found your site from a forum and read your blog from 2012 till now. Really enjoyed it.

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