On Mon, 3 Nov 2003, Dario Bonazza 2 wrote: > Hi all, > > I believe I've finished adding more and more pictures to my *ist D test, > including some (I believe) interesting comparison among lenses. Those shots > partially contradict some of my previous thoughts, where I was rather > convinced that you could find little difference among different lenses and > the bottleneck of image quality is the camera.
Digital camera merchants would LOVE to have you believe that. With zoom lenses most people don't seem to be spending a lot of money on a system so the manufacturers have to get you to buy new cameras. With early digital cameras it might have been true because the quality and resolution was poor enough that it dragged all results down to the point where lens quality didn't matter. It is still the case that the upper limit of technical quality in a DSLR is dictated by the sensor (just as it is by film in a film camera) but the quality of digital is good enough now that lens performance differences certainly do show. Apparently as the individual elements in the sensors get smaller and closer together there is a real danger of exceeding the lines/mm resolution that the lenses can provide at some point in the future. > Trying more and more lenses, I could find some performing much better than > other ones. It is also interesting to notice that among the best ones, you > can find som old glories (both screw mount and M-series) Actually,the screw mounts work almost as well on the *istD as they do on any K-mount camera. What I'd rather see than a "non-crippled-mount" DSLR (pentax OR nikon) is a "Pentax Classic" re-issue line of some of their older, better optics. Fender guitars were at one point basically required to come out with a "classic re-issue" series because guitarists were buying the old ones used rather than buying the newer designs. My photo instructor once pointed out that a camera is a "box that lets in light" and not much more. The lens has the most effect on the technical image quality (assuming that the camera or photographer is technically competant) and the photographer of course controls the artistic quality of the picture. Now I've always paid for the "convenience" factors of a better camera (durability, exposure and focus accuracy, motor drive) but I've also always gotten the best lenses I could. I've always had to snicker at folks who buy a top-of-the-line camera and then put some cheesy third party zoom lens on it. Granted, for some people the "conveniences" of a good camera outweigh the performance of a good lens. For 3x5 prints, the quality difference probably doesn't show anyway. Of course it is perfectly possible to take great photos with mediocre gear, and vice versa. Most of us, however, are bothered when our great photo is compromised technically by an underperforming piece of glass. DJE
