Klaus Schroiff wrote in message <350317B4.E46081A6@metronet.de>...

>I'm the maintainer of the mentioned "PhotoZone". It may
>surprise you but personally I don't care too much about
>magazine lens tests anymore. They MAY provide a HINT in
>regard to the potential quality of lenses but they surely
>do NOT reflect absolute truth here.
>Even if you do care about this results you have to be
>careful. E.g. you mentioned the Canon 17-35 vs Nikkor 20-35.
>The Canon is somewhat worse at 17mm than the Nikkor at 20mm.
>However this can not be the question in such a comparision
>because a test result in the 20-35 only would provide a
>different view here.
>Personally I quite convinced that there're virtually no
>quality differences between Canon and Nikkor. The choice
>between these AF systems (plus Minolta, Pentax) is usually
>nothing more than a matter of taste.

[...]

Whew, I'm glad to hear you say the above! ;-)
When your list first appeared, I thought, "Oh, no - this
will REALLY cause a nit-pick-by-the-numbers game on
lenses!", based on what I consider flawed source material
(magazine test reports). As the maintainer of a "subjective"
lens evaluation list (mostly Nikkors, though some others are
included that were not too terrible...;-) on my web page,
I have experienced the "Is X lens, rated at 4.2, better than
Y lens, rated at 4.3?" sort of question, though I have tried
to avoid this with the written comments placed before the list,
and with some lenses. My conclusion on Canon vs. Nikkor lenses
would be similar to yours, if the highest-quality Canon lenses
are compared with the highest-quality Nikkors. But Canon makes
a lot of low-end and medium-priced lenses of mediocre quality
that have no equivalants in the Nikon line, so I would have
to say that *overall*, the Nikon line of lenses is of better
quality... (just to add a little fuel to the fire...;-).
--
David Ruether
http://www.fcinet.com/ruether
ruether@fcinet.com