Tube bokeh

[Nick Hunter <nhunter1@mindspring.com>]

>It's not the Leicas; they don't weigh very much. It's the McIntosh and
>Marantz amps!
>
>Bill

Funny you should mention tube amps. A friend at work sometimes brings in
old Stereophile magazines and I've always been struck by the similarity of
Hifi audio testing and lens tests. Both technologies purport to reproduce
reality and both run into similar questions, such as:

Do we really want a realistic reproduction , or are we more attracted to an
"improved" reality? (i.e. supersaturated Velvia).

Can an objective standard be set? will everyone agree on what is "best"? (I
think Hifi types have about given up trying to reach a consensus here.)

Will the "best" remain so for all applications? Will the same, say, 35mm
lens be best for b&w or color, Slide or print, scan or traditional? What
about different subject matter?

From Erwin Puts post:

> if the corrections of the sharpness plane are
>extremely well done, then the visual or perceivable diffence (that is the
>gradient from sharp to unsharp) will be quite steep. This happens with all
>modern Leica lenses of the recent (3) generation. Older lenses have a
>smoother gradient, not because of any special characteristics  of the
>unsharpness rendition, but simply because the in-focus-sharpness was not as
>well corrected as it is today.

Marc James Small has made similar statements about the "glow" resulting
from earlier, less well corrected lenses. (pardon my paraphrase)

I often see it written that tube amplifiers, while they have much higher
measurable distortion than solid state designs, may still sound more
pleasing. Perhaps we are discussing an optical analog to this in the Bokeh
thread.
maybe a lens can be, objectively (oops, no pun intended!) speaking,
improved in design over its predecessor, yet still somehow less pleasing to
some, in some circumstances?

verbosity attack over,

Nick H