Alright Andy, this really does look like bias

They know how to run the business and sell products.

ljmac said:

I've defended DPR against claims of bias in this forum in the past, but the review of the Nikon 16-35 really has me wondering.

It has record breaking barrel distortion, massive misalignment (and resultant edge softness) at the long end, serious corner softness at the wide end, and serious problems with flare.

Yet it gets an 8.5 for image quality, which is the same rating as the Olympus 9-18 - and it had only one significant optical flaw (CA), which is largely endemic to wide angles anyway, and easily corrected.

What's more, despite being more than twice the price of the 9-18, it gets almost the same rating for value.

We're comparing apples with apples here (two ultrawides), so I really just cannot see how theses discrepancies can be defended.

I have a great respect for your reviews Andy, but you really need to explain this.

Click to expand...

If they are biased or not, who cares? Why is that bad for your photography? If you use Oly be happy with the 9-18 if you like that lens. However, if you use a Nikon FF the 9-18 is pretty useless and the 16-35 must be used instead.

Just as a side note, without having used the 16-35 I can't comment a lot more than some guesses about the lens qualities, but 16-35mm is considerably more than 9-18... Remember that 16mm is 16 mm on an FF while 9 mm is equivalent to 18mm, which is quite different. Also, to compare in vignetting you have to set the 16-35 to 18mm f/8 and there the vignetting is totally gone.

When it comes to sharpness or CA, the 16-35 beats the 9-18, except in the extreme corners, but you have to look at the charts to see that.

That's the way I see the charts, maybe I see it the wrong way, but I am pretty sure someone will correct me if I am wrong. In any case, we can always wish for something better, but please don't say the 9-18 is better...

As for the scoring, what’s the point? To me scores are the least valuable part of any review.

Just out of curiosity, have you (or anyone?) ever seen a good image but you pause and think 'That would have been a great image if they had used 'x' lens'?

Or a poor image that would have been a good or great image but for the lens used?

buy it, do test/review and come back to us.

i've seen images that i thought were pretty good by most criteria, and then looked closer and thought, hmmmmm....there's something wrong here. and usually it was something to do with an image needing a tack-sharp rendering and not having it----which a lot of times pointed to hand-held but on occasion had to do with the lens. i started picking up on the lens bit with LF images....sometimes it's a flare problem.

conversely, i've seen images that cried out for an old-fashioned soft-focus lens.

now, this has never had anything to do with brand. more recently, i've become more receptive to shallow DOF than i ever used to be (i always used to think it was a gimmick or a hurdle to surmount...). in this case i've started becoming far more conscious of the OOF rendering. undeniably a lens thing.

I've taken a fair few where I stretched myself beyond the ability of the lens to deliver. It's not that hard.
--
Mithandir,
Eternal Amateur
http://www.shooting43.com/

Unless stated differently, any image I post is licensed under CC-by-nc

rovingtim said:

Just out of curiosity, have you (or anyone?) ever seen a good image but you pause and think 'That would have been a great image if they had used 'x' lens'?

Click to expand...

Yes, that can actually happen. Some times you can see an image which could have been better with 'x' lens than 'y' because 'x' is wider or faster (or both) than 'y'.

That is, if you by 'x' don't mean the brand but the actual lens parameters.

rovingtim said:

Or a poor image that would have been a good or great image but for the lens used?

Click to expand...

Same as above, it is possible. Also, in some cases the characteristics of the lens can destroy an image. Those characteristics can not be fixed at PP because they might depend on the lens, like the bokeh. Please note that I am not talking about narrow DOF or anything like that.

gezus thats gobbledygook for you

rovingtim said:

Just out of curiosity, have you (or anyone?) ever seen a good image but you pause and think 'That would have been a great image if they had used 'x' lens'?

Or a poor image that would have been a good or great image but for the lens used?

Click to expand...

Im sure Ive seen both

Ive seen any number of beautiful images from Canons 16-35 L, but they were taken carefully with regard to its weaknesses. I guess it depends what you need to do with a lens most often, b/se in some circumstances you dont have the option of using its best settings, and have to apply the settings you need.

--
Riley

any similarity to persons living or dead is coincidental and unintended

I have to agree about bokeh. I think it is one of the most under-represented test characteristics of lenses. Sharpness is relative to final use and size (and the standards around it) but ugly bokeh is apparent at all sizes.

Same thing can be said for poor colour.

When I asked, I was thinking about the test Andy just did , the debate on his conclusions, and just how important these considerations really are.

Well, yes. When I asked I was wondering about the test Andy did and the concerns about his conclusions relative to the Oly lens and how important these considerations really were.

I frequently test the limits of my equipment, but I think anyone pushing will naturally end up at the limits no matter what equipment they use. I'm wondering if the shots people get with whatever they are using are more important than the shots they don't. Does that make sense?

I guess I wasn't clear enough. Agree with the rest.

Though I'm not quite sure it's as conscious as you imply, but I do believe your description is well hung with good support from the facts. Some may think your arguments are biased and possibly tyronnical, but they seem well endowed with logic to me. Everything hangs right.

rovingtim said:

Just out of curiosity, have you (or anyone?) ever seen a good image but you pause and think 'That would have been a great image if they had used 'x' lens'?

Or a poor image that would have been a good or great image but for the lens used?

Click to expand...

Most images I see that suck, or are mediocre, have nothing to do with the equipment. They're just boring/uninteresting scenes (to me), suffer from missed focus, or photographer error (inapropriate DOF, undesirable motion blur, etc., etc.).

If the scene is interesting, the viewer will often not notice, or forgive, any number of technical failings. Pics I've seen in NG (National Geographic) are a great source of examples for my opinion on this point.

In my office, I have quite a few framed pics from 8x12 inches to 20x30 inches, from compacts to FF (and two of the 20x30 prints are cropped from 4 MP compacts). No one has ever commented on the IQ differential between the displayed pics. Of course, being a pixel peeper myself, I can tell on some of them . But no one else has cared even after I pointed out the differences to them .

However, many have commented on my use of shallow DOF, which goes along with your comment about bokeh and color (although, unless you're a jpg shooter, and sometimes even then, color is a matter of processing, rather than a matter of equipment). People have also commented on my use of metallic paper for some of the prints.

But, again, no one has commented on the IQ differential between the images.

Of course, I have only printed and displayed my best images. As one might expect, I get more keepers with better equipment than I do with lesser equipment, and I can get more keepers in a greater variety of circumstances with better equipment. But, given that I literally have a thousand keepers (or more) to every pic that gets printed, one has to wonder what the point is.

I guess the answer to that is that I like lots of keepers, whether or not I print them.

These issues don't affect most here, but they do affect those just starting. I read a wide variety of reviews (bodies, lenses, etc) to determine what system would work best for me. I ended up going with Olympus because I could get better gear with the amount of money I had to spend than with other brands. I based this decision in part on the reviews. So, if certain brands have unjustified higher scores on their reviews, it taints these sorts of decisions and makes one more likely to go with (in this case, Nikon) than I may otherwise have been.

As far as the value goes, that's value to people who own Nikon gear, since one probably won't purchase the 16-35 to use on 4/3 or M4/3.

To a Nikon owner, the ZD 9-18 or 7-14 isn't a good value, because they can't use it at all.

ljmac said:

I've defended DPR against claims of bias in this forum in the past, but the review of the Nikon 16-35 really has me wondering.
...Andy, but you really need to explain this.

Click to expand...

I love how grandiose this sounds.

Yes boss...I'll get right back to you.


--
'I have no responsibilities here whatsoever'

I oft see people in reality witch use Nikons and say's my lens has soo many points is sutch review and whan thay see what zuiko can deliver for mutch cheaper thay are wondering and some are thinking thayer "peace" must be a bad sample, but it isn't... It's the reviews witch make false assumptions.

And the most funny think is FF should actualy be better for wide lenses than 4/3, while the lens is 2x more expensive and worse

1) somebody has metioned 4/3 F is 2x as on FF.

In all reviews thay compare ISO100 verus ISO100 4/3, FF and thats why you have to compare f4 versus f4 regarless the senzor size ... (you get some expositure)

useing a wide lens for low DOF shots is rare ... not the comon use of the lens, so bigger DOF is actualy a advantige.

What I don't understand are the result points

Optical Quality: OK this is discutable as both lenses behave diferent. Zuiko better in corners and weaker in center. Wide lenses are mostly use for architecture, nature .... so actualy corner sharpness metters a lot. Thats why I whould say even optical is Zuiko better than Nikon (becouse for sutch type of lens you need sharpnes from corner to corner and thats something Nikon doesn't deliver on FF)

Build Quality: In most points is the Nikon better than the zuiko .... but huh Nikon wights fast 700g zuiko 300g!!! size metters!!! especialy in this case whan the nikon 16-35 should be the "small" lens instead of nikon f2.8. So yah Nikon is better in over all quality of build but is 2x bigger havier.
Autofocus: well I whould say is good ....

Image Stabilization: By zuiko it depents on witch body you mount it .... by nikon it's irelevant, so is hard ... but I whould say some ...

But now are comening the 2 points I don't understand at all:

Ergonomics : 2x hevier, bigger lens has some, more points as 2 leighter, smaller lens witch deliver similar optical quality!

Value: some the 2x cheaper lens has some points as the 2x more expensive witch doesn't deliver anything better ....

ljmac said:

I've defended DPR against claims of bias in this forum in the past, but the review of the Nikon 16-35 really has me wondering.

It has record breaking barrel distortion, massive misalignment (and resultant edge softness) at the long end, serious corner softness at the wide end, and serious problems with flare.

Yet it gets an 8.5 for image quality, which is the same rating as the Olympus 9-18 - and it had only one significant optical flaw (CA), which is largely endemic to wide angles anyway, and easily corrected.

What's more, despite being more than twice the price of the 9-18, it gets almost the same rating for value.

We're comparing apples with apples here (two ultrawides), so I really just cannot see how theses discrepancies can be defended.

I have a great respect for your reviews Andy, but you really need to explain this.

Click to expand...

... so we are speaking about a different type of lenses. The Nikon is also stabilized, the Olympus is not if you mount it on a Lumix camera. That can affect image quality too and is usable if you shoot video.

I suppose because of the fact that the Nikon is wider the distortion is more forgivable. The Nikon is also a 2.2x zoom, the Olympus is 2x zoom. And of course the Nikon can be mounted on a FF and on a APS-C camera, some people regard this as a positive feature, because this makes the lens a more "flexible" tool.

That's why I think that you cannot compare this two lenses, too different tools for differrent markets.

Edit: and looking to the charts here on DPR: the softness on the longer end is only at f4. If you step down the lens to f5.6 wich is the maximum aperture on long end of the Oly the Nikon becomes sharper...
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/graveur/

--
emil
--



http://theory.uchicago.edu/~ejm/pix/20d/

I can't help but wonder as I read all the stuff in this thread, are any of these people actually optical engineers or such who may have been schooled in the science of lens construction and properties?

Bob
--
DeWitt
http://www.rdewitt.net