On 19 Jul 1998 14:29:02 GMT, "Steven J. Schiff" wrote:

>I'm really surprised at this discussion. I think it's widely acknowledged
>in the photographic press that the optical performance of zoom lenses is
>inferior, HOWEVER SLIGHTLY, to that of fixed focal length lenses. It's
>true that zoom lens quality has been vastly improved in the past 20 years
>or so, but I don't think it'll ever equal that of single focal lengths.
>How can it? When you have 14 or 15 elements, and nearly twice that many
>air-to-glass surfaces, you are going to lose sharpness and contrast, and in
>much greater amounts than with a lens that has fewer elements. (This is
>true no matter how good your antireflection coatings are.) Add to that the
>different set of distortions you get AT EACH FOCAL LENGTH, and you will see
>that a zoom lens can never be optimized across its range the way a single
>focal length lens can.
>
>This is not to say that zoom lens performance is not excellent these days,
>just that, in critical testing, they just won't equal well-designed prime
>lenses.

While I'm no fan of zoom lenses, I find they do fall into
maybe three catagories:
1) - Eeeee-yuck! (most off-brand cheap zooms, with the
occasional exception of the 70/80-200/210mm's)
2) - OK - good stopped down, and OK for bright-light/flash
work, but why bother? (most better, fairly pricey
zooms, mostly from the camera mfgrs)
3) - Wow! (a VERY few zooms that are so close to the best
primes, that they are actually worth owning - like
the Nikkor 80-200mm f2.8, 75-150mm f3.5E, and maybe
a [rare...] good sample of the MF 35-105, and maybe
the 35-70 f2.8
In the case of the Nikkor 80-200 f2.8, this lens really is
so close to the best primes that the difference doesn't matter,
even to me - if you haven't tried it, don't claim that a zoom
can't be a first-rate lens!