On Sun, 18 Oct 1998 17:45:36 GMT, "Eton Eritas"
>>Is anyone aware of a web site, or several which contain reviews on the
>>performance of different 35mm lenses. I am specifically interested in
>>Minolta MD lens or lenses made for the MD system. Your help is greatly
>>appreciated.
>Tell you what -- tell me what lens you're interested in, and what kind of
>review you'd LIKE it to have, and I'll write one that conforms to your
>preferences. That would be 100% as useful as the various "lens test" Web
>sites!
>
>I'm not trying to pick on the original poster, who asked a civil question
>and ought to be entitled to an answer (and I'm sure he'll get several.) I
>just don't think Web compilations of 'lens reviews' can really tell you
>anything useful. They necessarily have to abstract their data so far out of
>context that you have no clue as to the reliability of the information or
>how it relates to your own photographic standards.
>
>Subjective "field test" evaluations are important for evaluating the
>practicality and handling qualities of a lens, but may be influenced by
>just about anything: the manufacturer's ad budget, the attractiveness of
>its "booth bimbos" at trade shows, the quality of the wine the tester had
>for lunch before performing his evaluation...
>
>And supposedly "objective" evaluations, replete with impressive-looking MTF
>graphs and numbers carried out to three decimal places, are still
>meaningless unless you can relate their results to the performance of
>lenses with which you're already familiar. You can't even reliably say Lens
>A is "better" than Lens B based on numerical readouts, because the type of
>image quality that YOU consider "better" may be completely different from
>what the measurements were designed to evaluate.
>
>So whether the tests purport to be subjective, objective, or both, you have
>to decide just how many "grains of salt" to apply, based on your experience
>in reading the particular publication and your judgement of how well its
>test methods match up with your own needs. You can't make those kinds of
>judgements from a 'data dump' on a Web site.
>
>Fortunately, it doesn't matter, because Net-tographers use these
>"performance review" collections mostly to bolster their pre-existing
>prejudices or to throw around in arguments, neither of which has anything
>to do with taking pictures. The whole notion that there's One Best Lens in
>any given category is irrelevant to photography anyway -- it's more of a
>religious ideal, a sort of Holy Grail concept that absolutists use to give
>themselves a sense of security amid the uncertain terrain of photography.
>
>The point of expressive photography is to make the best pictures you can --
>but that's an indefinite goal, and it's frustratingly difficult to know
>whether or not you've really accomplished it. It's much more comforting to
>immerse yourself in the quest for the One Best Lens, or the One Ideal Film,
>or the One Correct Exposure, or some other illusory but well-defined
>objective.
>
>That concludes our Rant of the Day. We now return you to your
>regularly-scheduled programming...
Ah, so, "Satire Note", even as the author of a (rather too...;-)
massive "SUBJECTIVE Lens Evaluations (Mostly Nikkors)" (on my
web page, under "I babble"...;-), I cannot help but agree with
the above... (though I do prefer to use good lenses, since it
simplifies photography somewhat [and limits my choices less],
so I did, alas, fall victim of the dreaded "lens-testing"
disease - the results of which appear in the aforesaid "SLE[MN]"...;-).