Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1997/03/07

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Subject: Lens Standards
From: Marc James Small <msmall@roanoke.infi.net>
Date: Fri, 07 Mar 1997 17:51:31 -0500

At 04:39 PM 3/7/97 -0500, Ernie Nitka wrote:
>For any of you who still get Pop. Photog. ( I get it as a freeby -
>wouldn't actually pay $ for it willingly) there's an insipid letter from
>a reader complaining that his 1947 Summitar doesn't stack up to a Konica
>lens of recent vintage proving how much hype there is to the Leica Lens
>Lore (LLL for short).  To their credit the magazine responded fairly by
>stating that the writer's comparison was hardly Apples to Apples.

And THAT is the entire problem with photographic reportage in this modern
age.  The proper response SHOULD have been:  what do you mean by 'stack up'?
State your standards and give quantitative results.  Or, conversely, stick
to emotive responses and simply say, 'I don't find the Summitar produces
results I like as much as those from my Konica', in which case the standard
is purely subjective.

The difficulty here is that these morons from Pop and its ilk (including the
'Bug) ENCOURAGE the logically insipid attitude that there is ONE proper test
by which lenses can be judged.  And, of course, there isn't any such thing:
different lenses are designed to meet different criteria, and a Summitar was
designed for ONE set of parameters and some Konica lens for another.

Marc


msmall@roanoke.infi.net  FAX:  +540/343-7315
Cha robh bas fir gun ghras fir!