On Wed, 10 Jul 2002 13:33:28 GMT, Paul Chefurka wrote:

[...]
>The Noct is certainly sharp enough to use as a general purpose lens when
>stopped down to about 4.0 or so, but the grim secret of 35mm photography is
>that you just don't need an extremely "sharp" lens for most work.
>Paul

Yes. When I used to do a lot of commercial "quick-shooting",
It was predictable that the client would pass by all the
REALLY sharp images on the 35mm contact sheet and select the
ones that were marginal at best (by my standards, nut that I am
about sharpness) and request 8x10s from these... Oddly,
the resulting 8x10s looked fine, while 8x10s from the much
more than subtly sharper negatives looked only a bit better
when printed. The conclusions that one could jump to might
be that since a relatively poor-quality 35mm negative made
a more-than-adequate print, and a very sharp 35mm negative
made only a slightly better same-size print, then a very
sharp 35mm negative could make a very good very large print,
and also a very sharp larger-format negative would also make
only a marginally better small print than one made from a
poor 35mm negative. Neither conclusion is true, though...
Along comes the concept of "tonality"...;-)
(Even with all this, I still select lenses for sharpness,
sharpness nut that I have admitted to being... See:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/slemn.html for evidence of this.;-)