Hi folks,
Considering my usual big mouth, I may have been a bit conspicuous in my
absence for the last week. And I haven't replied to a few direct
e-mails. I'm still committed to 2-3 hours a day visiting and taking care
of things for my hospitalized mother. Then I received a request to do
some programming modifications and additions for my old employer on a
system I created and still maintain and update s a consultant. Not a
whole lot of work, sometimes nothing for months. But quite lucrative per
hour and a nice supplement to retirement income. Anyway, I did a core
dump of regular life, reloaded an old OS (mental, not computer) and
jumped in with both feet. Finished up this phase at about 4:30 this
morning. A lot of fun actually, and the results look great.
In any case, I only kept up with the list as far as going through the
incoming and deleting everything I didn't think I might want to read or
view when I had time and/or reply to. Still too much and some will just
have to go by the boards, but there will be some replies to older post
for a bit.
Wayne Culberson wrote:
>For example, for someone shooting
>98% of their pics on auto and 90+% of their pics less than wide open, the
>whole business of comparing Zuikos to 3rd party lenses, or any test of lens
>performance, is basically pointless, as most any lens performs well in
>mid-range apertures.
>
And where was you tongue when you wrote this, Wayne? So... I'll bite anyway:
1. Shooting mostly on Auto has nothing I can see to do with lens
quality. (Or is it a hidden value judgement; those who shoot in Auto
aren't really serious and will be happy if the shot comes out as a
recognizable approximation of something familiar at all.) What I meant
was that it just means I don't care as much whether f-stop markings are
consistent and accurate as might someone using a non-TTL meter.
2. Like horsepower, staying power in the sack, large power tools,
firearms, and all those other things so dear to the testosterone driven,
it seems important to have it at hand for those occasions when it is
needed, even if the likelihood of their occurance approaches zero.
3. In many lens lines, and certainly for Zuikos, the faster lenses were
the premium lenses, with generally better performance at most or all
apertures than their slower counterparts, not just wide open.
4. Some 3rd party lenses are as good as or better than the best Zuikos,
whereras some are much lesser performers.
5. Oly made some relative stinkers. My original 50/1.8 from the early
70s should be labeled unsharp at any speed. OK, I couldn't resist that
line; it wasn't too bad stopped way down, but from f8 up, it couldn't
hold a candle to the miJ version (or even the 35-70/3.6). So even if I
never used it wide open, I would still get poorer results on many shots
than with a better lens.
By the way, most of this only applies to the MF lenses from the OM era.
The rules have changed dramatically in recent years.
> By the same reasoning of discouraging careful scrutiny
>of Olympus flash performance, we could also discourage careful scrutiny of
>Zuiko lens performance. I think the flash performance would have at least as
>much effect on the final image.
>
Where did this come from? I though we were discussing differences of
less than the marked amount in moving from wide open stop to the next
stop on some lenses.
>My opinion only, and don't get discouraged sharing your knowledge of
>photographic things. :-)
>
Knowledge, opinions, speculation, strongly held wrongheadedness, you'll
likely get it all. :-) Thanks for listening!
Moose
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