[Leica] Warning! Incoming!

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

This started life as a "P.S." to another message, but it's just a rant.
It would be unfair to direct it at any one individual. If you dislike
rants, please skip.


>   >   >
For the record, camera lenses are for taking pictures. The whole notion
of scientific performance evaluation of lenses is more than faintly
fatuous. It's _photography_. In photography, to paraphrase Ctein, if you
can't see the difference, it doesn't count. The way to evaluate
performance is on performance...literally, how the lens performs for you
when you use it.
    People need to look at more historical pictures, is all I can say.
Some of the most optically beautiful photographs I've ever seen were
taken decades ago, some many decades, and some more than a century.
Conversely, I'm not aware of any audience that knows, cares, or can
recognize when you use a lens that gives you the same performance at
f/2.8 that other lenses only match at f/4, or that resolves slightly
better in the corners, or that can resolve 7 more lp/mm under controlled
conditions with Tech Pan, or that flares less. It has _nothing_to_do_
with creative photography. Creative people adapt to their tools and
adapt their vision to the properties of the tools they're using. Sally
Mann is exploring the aesthetic effects of halation right now; William
Eggleston used old, uncoated fast lenses because he could use their
flarey properties to good aesthetic effect. Bottom line: YOU DO NOT GET
BROWNIE POINTS FOR USING A MORE EXPENSIVE LENS. And you do not get
brownie points for using a lens that is only theoretically better.
Sorry!  People will not look at your pictures and go, "well, his
pictures suck, but he DOES use the lens that all other lenses were
compared to in 1984."
    Now then. One of my best friends uses the 50mm Summicron-M. It's a
nice lens. Plenty good enough to make great pictures with; and fully
capable of taking perfectly sharp and totally crappy pictures, too. If
anyone likes it, use it.

<   <   <

Jeez, take a deep breath, Mike.

Okay, rant mode off <s>. Sorry. Back to your regular programming.