Bill Pearce wrote:
> Perhaps I am wrong, but recently a list member posted his dissatisfaction
> with the 14-45 in terms of edge softness and distortion.
>
And others have been happy with theirs. All i was trying to point out is
that tarring everybody with the same brush may not be accurate. And Oly
has dropped the 14-45 in favor of the 14-42. So they are getting better,
apparently.
> This is all about marketing, and didn't just happen with DSLR's the major
> manufacturers noticed that they were selling lot of bodies and not so many
> lenses. A trip to a mass marketer showed that it was more often than not
> that a body from one of the names was paired with a lens from someone else.
> That wasn't because the lenses were better, but because they allowed a lower
> price and a higher profit. I would hesitate to say they were the worst, but
> Ritz certainly was a big offender.
>
> Then, Canon paired "competitive" lenses with an advertising campaign that
> asked if you were buying their camera, why would you not buy one of their
> lenses?
>
Sure, I remember all this, and Ritz was not alone. And yet, that was
many years ago, and the situation has changed. Improvements in design
resources, materials, glass, etc. have made it possible to make a cheap
lens that it pretty good optically.
> Yes, there are choices. I prefer to make mine informed, but living where I
> do, it isn't easy. If a store has a lens, they don't often have two. There
> is no one that carries large lines. I doubt that I am unique.
>
I suppose I have better than usual access, living in a big metro area,
but the stores with any breadth and depth of stock are over the Bay and
through the traffic and parking, so I don't visit them. I've been doing
my lens research and buying on the net, and haven't come a cropper so
far. I've bought five AF lenses in EF mount without ever having seen
them in person and am happy with them. Well, actually, more than just
happy with the Tamron 17-35, 28-300 and 90 mm macro lenses.
> I know, I know, the history of photography doesn't go to a better and better
> quality image.
Again, the fractious Moose disagrees. The 5D makes better images, in at
least most respects, than any 35 mm I've ever used. And I'll bet it's
better than all but a few, expensive MF camera/lens combos.
And look at the history of 35 mm. It started out as a way to make
cameras small, light and quick enough to do work that was difficult to
impossible before, at an obvious cost in image quality. Yet IQ improved
dramatically over the years with improvements in cameras, lenses,
coatings and, perhaps especially, film. I've never used a really early
35 mm, but I've used a 50s Exacta, and it's sure harder to get a good
image than with a 60s Topcon or Nikon or a 70s or later OM. And I've got
some film from even earlier. Kodachrome slides from the late 30s still
retain pretty good color, but the grain is big and the film was so slow
that even sunlit shots are often affected by motion blur. Shots in the
same place decades later are brighter, with better color, way less grain
and sharp.
> If it did, we would all be shooting LF.
Well, yeah, maybe. Except for all the shots that LF can't make that a smaller.,
lighter, more flexible system can.
But go ahead and enjoy grumping about how the world is getting worse. :-)
Moose
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