Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2012/10/17
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]==On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 11:06 AM, FRANK DERNIE < frank.dernie at btinternet.com> wrote: > That is certainly not the case for everybody. A friend of mine who was, > IMHO, one of the best motor sports photographers of the 70s and 80s, now > retired, always selected any new lens he bought from Nikon personally. He > shot a couple of films and recorded the serial numbers of the lenses he > used. He selected the best lens after examining the negatives. All the > lenses had passed final inspection and were in spec but the best was > noticeably better than the average. > Since he was almost always using lenses wide open it was an important > difference. > Frank D > > In or around 1960 I worked part time in a camera store in Rock Island, Illinois, while in high school. The store - long since gone - was a full line Nikon and Leica dealer. One day the manager and I took a roll of 36 exposure Kodachrome and put it in a Nikon body, making exposures with each focal length lens, wide open and then closed down. We rewound the roll and put it in a Leica body. wound it forward and repeated the test with Leica lenses. When the film was developed we projected the slides and saw clear variations in color rendition between the various Nikon lenses but not so with the Leica lenses. I wonder what would happen if the same test was performed today. No, wait, you couldn't. Kodachrome is gone. --Bob