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What is considered a good / great LP/PH value?

Photography Asked by Adrian Hood Sr on April 11, 2021

After combing through ISO 12233 and reading multiple articles, I’m still unsure what LP/PH values are considered poor, good, or great. I just finished testing a Nikon D750 with an 18-70mm lens. I’m using Imatest to do the analysis. For example, I’m analyzing 9 regions of the sensor, and I’m getting values ranging from 486 LP/PH in the bottom left corner to 1261 in the center.
According to this page:

Lens MTF Test Info

30 lp/mm > 0.5 is very sharp
30 lp/mm > 0.3 is sharp if you sharpen a bit
30 lp/mm < 0.2 is getting soft

For a DX lens, the Picture Height (PH) is 16mm.
This results in (30LP/mm)*(16mm/PH) = 480 LP/PH.
This would suggest if MTF50 > 480 LP/PH is sharp.

However, on another forum, I saw a comment that said:

I find 1400LP/PH acceptable, but 2400+ preferable.

If 480 is very sharp, why would someone fine 1400 only acceptable?

Any assistance, reference, etc. would be .beneficial

One Answer

MTF is a system measurement; it is not a lens measurement. So, what is "good" depends on the capabilities of the system as a whole and the combination of limitations. E.g. lack of lens sharpness due to spherical aberrations, image softening due to AA filter, and max sensor resolution.

I'm assuming a typo and you are referring to the DX D7500. That has a vertical resolution of 3712px, max 1856 lp/ph, 116 lp/mm. Of course, that is theoretical, based solely on sensor pixels, and would be at a very low contrast. But, it is not even theoretically possible for your camera to reach 2400 lp/ph; so applying that standard makes no sense. Also note that you may see Imatest results in l/ph... given that measure the D7500 could theoretically reach 3712 l/ph. And people mix up their units of measure all the time (or they are not clearly stated).

The very best lenses reach over 80 lp/mm on a very high resolution sensor w/o AA filter (e.g. Nikkor Z 85/1.8 on a Z7). But, in general, 30 lp/mm is considered a good level of decency. Why 30?

What 30 lp/mm means is ~ 1.4 MP recorded on a DX sensor... that probably sounds crazy low; but the CoC standard for image sharpness is .02mm for a 1.5 DX sensor. Which equates to 50 l/mm or 25 lp/mm (the accepted standard requires less than 1MP recorded on any size sensor). And 30 lp/mm exceeds the 25 lp/mm standard.
But that 1.4 MP result is also an MTF50 number, and there is almost certainly a lot more resolution at lower levels of contrast which can be improved (sharpening is just adding contrast). And it's not like the typical human's vision just fails below 50% contrast.

Nikkor Z 85/1.8 Z7 test in lp/mm:
https://www.lenstip.com/579.4-Lens_review-Nikon_Nikkor_Z_85_mm_f_1.8_S_Image_resolution.html
Nikkor Z 85/1.8 Z7 test in l/ph:
https://photographylife.com/reviews/nikon-z-85mm-f1-8-s/2

Answered by Steven Kersting on April 11, 2021

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