Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/10/28
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]John Gong wrote: > > Mark, > > Unless you've used one of these lenses, your criticism is theoretical and unproven. My experiences with the zoom parallel NS's. It's a heck of a lens. Just not too sharp at f2 and f2.8 :-). This zoom and the 100 apo are the ONLY reasons I maintain an R system. Not the 50 summicron. It's a great lens, but not from any practical standpoint better than my Contax 50 f1.4 or even my Nikkor AI f1.4 . But neither of these systems has a 35-70 zoom as good as Leica's. > > John > Zooms are awfully convenient despite their size, weight, slower speed and number of elements floating or otherwise. To Zoom is to have some real plastic control over the image. I think we get as good a quality from our modern zooms with the light behind us as some fixed lenses made in the early 70's. The quality obtainable for quality zooms can be exquisite. But fixed lenses have moved along too and to compare a modern fixed Zeiss, Leica or a Nikkor 50mm AI 1.4 against a zoom is like a heavyweight fighting a middleweight. Two different classes. Not a fair comparison. They shouldn't be in the ring. Maybe Erwin will do me the favor of clobbering me if I'm wrong or clarify the parameters more incisively as he will do . There was a day that if I had zoomed my excellent 80-200 f4 Nikkor all the way in and was firing away it was a backlit situation I would replace it with my 200 fixed Nikkor for critical results. If it wasn't backlit and not a critical thing I might not bother changing lenses. If my subject matter had been jumpier like shooting sports I would have kept the zooms on I'm sure. Even the fact that the lens shade for the 80-200 lens is optimized for the 80 bothers me. I like a lens shade as long as possible. I like things optimized if at all possible. Zooms are great but lets not kid ourselves. Even Pop Photo lens tests when they used real numbers instead of colored concepts never had Zooms exceeding Primes. Mark Rabiner