Good evening Gord,
IRRC someone once said that photodo puts an emphasis on wide open
performance. It's been a long time since I read about their test methods and
I didn't get a good understanding when I did read about them, so I can't
really say.
My experience has been if they rate a lens over about 3.5, it's almost
surely a very good lens optically. Howerver some of the lenses they don't
rate very well are considered to be top performers. One example is the Zuiko
250mm f2. Gary Reese found it performed very well and at least one of the
photo mag's also thought it was a steller performer. Gary did make comments
about vignetting at f2, perhaps that is why photodo gives the 250 f2 a
mediocre rating. On the other hand I've been asking about long telephoto's
for quite awhile. A few people have told me they like the long Tamrons more
than the big white Zuikos. Photodo rates them higher. Maybe given lots of
time I'll be able to make some first hand comparisons ;^) For now I can say
I'm very happy with the Tamron 400mm f4. Photodo gives the same rating to
the 250 f2 as to the 300 f4.5, the 400 f6.3, the 600 f6.5 etc. It's pretty
unlikely that very many people would consider their performance equal.
So for me if photodo says a lens is good (>3.5), I'll almost certainly be
happy with the lens, but if photodo gives it mediocre marks, I'll look for
more info before deciding. Keep in mind most Zuikos were designed to be
small. I doubt either Nikon or Canon had difficulty hiring good lens
designers but they designed with different objectives. For me the Zuikos are
very sweet lenses but I also have a fair number of big heavy Tamron SP zooms
and telephotos.
-jeff
----- Original Message -----
From: "Gordon Ross" <gordross@xxxxxxx>
To: <olympus@xxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Monday, October 18, 2004 10:08 PM
Subject: [OM] Re: Questions, Re: When is enough enough? ...
>
> Hi Jeff:
>
> Photo Do doesn't seem much of a fan of Oly glass. For instance the Nikkor
> 28/2.8 rates 30% higher than the Zuiko 28/2.0 - really? The Nikkor 20/2.8
is
> 15% higher than the 20/2.0 Zuiko ? I would like to hear some of our
experts
> respond to the photodo ratings. Generally, Canon, Pentax and Nikkor all
have
> superior ratings to Zuiko according to photodo.
>
> Gord
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