On Lens Testing (and snobbery) (Mike Johnstson - The Online Photographer)

February 19, 2007 6:46 PM

This is from Mike Johnston, a very fine writer on cameras (and music and hi-fi gear).
Click to See his blog: The Online Photographer


(In truth, lens connoisseurship can sometimes actively interfere with photography…I’ve become so good at detecting the visual cues of aberrations that I zero in on them all too quickly when looking at pictures, and I personally find it very difficult to find lenses I’m wholly satisfied with.) Secondly, I have come to deplore “drinking wine by the label,” and the eternal necessity of fighting against snobbism, prejudice (the word in its literal sense, of “judging in advance”), and a phenomenon I don’t have a name for, the hardened tendency of so many consumers to believe that more expensive things must be better (and their assumption that I—rather than they—must have some ulterior motive if I don’t automatically accept that view).

The post goes on to identify his favorite 50mm lens, the new Zeiss Planar T, and to make a nod to the 50 I own, the Konica M-Hexanon.
You can see its handiwork here:

Click to see images

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