Lens performance is a very complicated issue. Once Pop photo also
found out their highly praised Tamron 35-105/2.8 (or 28-105/2.8?) was
poor than the cheap Sigma 35-105/3.5-4.5 at portrait distance and the
different was very obvious.
Twelve years ago I was very happy with my first 50/1.4 SC with S/N
3xx,xxx since I rare use F1.4 and F2 during that time and F2.8 gave
very sharp pictures. Sometimes when the shots came out not sharp at
wide open I just thought hand shake caused the problem as I will only
use F1.4 at very low light. After I got some other Zuikos 50/1.4's I
found they are really not equal. On the other hand the SC 50/1.4 with
a later S/N is good even wide open.
I think decentering will not happen to many Zuiko's design unless they
received very high impact. I have disassembled over 20 different
Zuikos, there is no centering adjustment. But focusing and vibration
do have some impact to lenses. The slow wide angle is hard to focus
and the 200/4 is the most subject to vibration lens I have seen.
If you have some lenses and found they can satisfy your need that
would be fine, no need to worry about what other people say. If you
only own one or two lenses may be it is time to buy some more to see
how they compare.
C.H.Ling
"jlamadoo, home account" wrote:
>
> Okay, the other day I was discussing my perception of a lack of sharpness in
> the 28mm /f3.5 and two people chimed in assuring me that their examples were
> excellent. (I think one lister used the word "superb".)
>
> I've been catching up on digests tonight and noted that the widely respected
> 28mm /f2.0 was disappointing to one lister who favored a Zeiss replacement.
>
> Today, I'm seeing that my sharp, single coated 50 / 1.4 is being called a
> poor performer. I think we're all smart enough to know that a rattling lens
> may have decentered elements and that we're not complaining about "broken"
> lenses.
>
> What's going on? At first I thought some of us had higher (uhhh....)
> expectations than others but now I'm not so sure. Interestingly, the
> disagreement does not involve the variable individual abilities when
> handholding of teles.
>
> Has Pop Photo, Life, National Geo, or anyone else ever tested 30 examples of
> anything to get a fix on potential variations? To be clear, I'm not
> criticising anyone, especially those who have tested lenses. I'm grateful
> for the knowledge passed down from others but I also took lots of statistics
> and we seem to have very little hard data on variablity. Ideas?
>
> Lama
>
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