Lens quality issues - why no 'standard' benchmarks?

[LondonLeftie]

Now you've admitted that CPUs ARE speed binned, perhaps you could point to an example where the faster clocked versions of the same CPU are sold for the same price as the slower ones.

I was never unaware of this fact - I posted the very same comments given by a user from yahoo answers to make this very point. It's a system that works very well - you seem to think it wouldnt work with lenses? Why on earth not? It works with cars and CPU's! For many years now too!

When I buy a 'slow' CPU I know what I'm getting. When I get a lens I get 'reasonable' quality (so you say) but with no metric to prove it! Imagine the same situation with CPU's!! "Errr no sir, don't know how fast it is but it seems ok - try browsing the internet and see if you like your new CPU" - what a stupid system it would be!

Once you figure out that this doesn't happen, that you need to pay more for the higher rated part, you need to ask yourself how much more a lens given a rating of "excellent" would have to cost before you would think about buying one marked only as "good" instead. Unless the manufacturer provides a big enough price differential then they won't sell any lower rated parts. The lenses cost the same to make, and the manufacturer wants to make a profit on whatever they sell, so the lower rated parts would cost about the same as the unrated lenses sold at the moment and the high rated parts would sell for a lot more.

Indeed pay more for a better one - we are all capable of making this judgement call for ourselves based on our photographic wants and needs and the cash that we have available. Why do you seem to this that I need Canon to decide for me with some sort of communist socialism in place where I pay the same and 'get lucky' or not! This is capitalism! Better things sell for more, and worse things for worse! Don't you get it? Don't you ever pay for more something better? and if you do, then you like to know HOW MUCH BETTER it is - by using a metric of some sorts?

Are we there yet? You're looking rather silly, but then I appreciate your comments as they only help to illustrate my point. Thank you.

--
http://www.lightmatter.co.uk

Performance related pay? Nah, pay related performance!

 

[LondonLeftie]

Does anyone know if the release of the D800 (36mpx) means that there are now a whole slew of lenses that 'won't resolve' the native resolution of the next generation of sensors? (and how we know which lenses will?)

 

[Deleted1929]

These extreme resolutions require extremely good technique to exploit. The lenses are less the problem than the circumstances under which you can employ the technique required, IMO.

--
StephenG

 

[GMack]

Seem to recall they had to send some astronauts up to fix the Hubble telescope eye once it was in orbit. Bad mirror or lens.

Maybe NASA should have ordered 10 Hubble space telescopes from B&H Photo and sent back the other nine once they sorted them out for the good one? Too make only one lens to specs and have it fail is pretty bad.

LensRentals had some stat chart on the lenses they use in their bank. They are all over the place in sharpness in a batch. Even Zeiss made some real bad ones like their 18mm Distadog.

Mack

 

[RossAndrew]

You may have got the lens that they made just after lunch on a Friday, there never any good.

 

[LondonLeftie]

'they're', but I hear you
--
http://www.LIGHTmatter.co.uk

Portrait Fashion Beauty Photography

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[increments]

Take a look at this article by Roger Cicala over on Lens Rentals. It should help.

http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2011/10/notes-on-lens-and-camera-variation