On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Terry and Tracey wrote:
|> I know that John Shaw shoots
|> almost exclusively with zooms. How does he get such great shots (besides
|> having a good eye and lots of time?). Three words: tripod, tripod, tripod.
|>
|> Matthew
|
|Thisis interesting. I have his first book, 1984, where he bags zooms. I've just
|got his landscape book (1995?) and he praises the latest versions. His comments
|were that the quality of them has increased so much in the last few years.
He is not being inconsistent. As Terry and Tracy has
indicated, the quality of early zooms was initially crappy
for pro level work. Hence, the prevailing prejudice of
photographic "purists" against their usage.
However, the quality of zooms have increased to the point
that the best are considered pro level material now. Still,
the only zooms I am aware the John Shaw owns is the
venerable Nikkor 80-200mm/4 (4.5?) and a sharp 50-135mm/3.5.
His bread and butter lens has always been his 105mm/4 macro.
I recall from Shaw's books (I have owned three of them) that
he favors the zooms for travel, convenience (e.g., it is
easier to carry a single 80-200mm zoom and a couple dual
element dioters in one's pocket when hiking up a
mountainside than a range of fixed focal length lenses), and
those times when zooms are the best choice (e.g., when it
is impossible to get closer or farther away from the main
subject, only a zoom provides the flexibility of using
several focal lengths from a fixed position).
Still, zooms cannot compete with similar quality prime
lenses in sheer sharpness because of the relative abundance
of optical elements in their design; this abundance of
elements ultimately robs them of critically fine contrast
compared to their fixed focal length counterparts.
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