Too much agonizing over little things

Stacey_K wrote:

Depends on the scratch/scratches.

Two examples, I had a 4X5 lens that had one pretty deep scratch on the fairly large front element. It was a VERY expensive lens but I got a great price on it because of this scratch. The old guy I knew who had shot professionally for year had told me just to fill the scratch with black magic marker/ink and it would have no effect on the images, he was right.

The other was a medium format TLR I had, when viewed from the back the taking lens looked like an ice skating rink from all the cleaning marks. Some of my best images were taken with that camera, I just had to use a lens hood and avoid shooting into the sun.

Like the original post said, dust inside a lens is just a non-issue too.

I agree with the OP, learning to "see light" is so much more important than studying the results at DXO. I do try to learn where my lenses sweet spots are and understand what I am giving up when I venture away from them, at what point in the iso scale that the sensor noise will "ruin" a final print etc.

--
Stacey