carstenw
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 p.2 #4 · What's your biggest dissapointment (lens)? | |
JohnJ wrote:
It's not an easy question, we've all had disappointments, but which one is the biggest? For me it's probably the Leica R 50/1.4 E60 which I intended to buy, compared with my own R 50/2.0 E55, and found too similar to justify. It doesn't make it (Leica R 50/1.4 E60) a bad lens, but it was a big disappointment relative to my expectations.
Interesting thread idea, but I have to disagree with your listing of two of the lenses you chose: the E60 50 Lux-R and the Contax 85/1.4. These are both really fantastic lenses, and the fact that you failed to explore them enough, or read up enough on their respective strengths/weaknesses doesn't make them deserving of such a label. I do agree with you about the 80 Lux though, one of my all-time favorite lenses, and I really should get one again and Leitax it to my Nikon.
Rant aside, I am going to make the same faux-pas now myself  I usually do enough research to avoid things like this, but one time I really failed, with the ZF.2 50/2 MP. Everything I read made me believe it was a mini-100MP but nothing could be further from the truth. Extremely weak far corners (just a few percent), nasty field curvature, too much DoF at f/2, and a total lack of the magic which makes me love the 100MP so much. It took me maybe 1 month to admit to myself that I really didn't like it, and another month of heavy experimentation to find good enough reasons to keep it anyway. It is really strong for certain applications, and I keep it for that, but I do not love it.
Another big disappointment for me was the Hasselblad 203FE. I love the lenses, I knew that already, and I love the Hasselblad form factor in general, but this camera just disappointed me. I know a few people who thought it was the perfect MF film camera, but I just find it weird, difficult to use, with a couple of design niggles which annoy me to no end, to the point that I am now in the process of replacing it with a Rolleiflex 6008i.
A mild disappointment was the result of acquiring a Linhof Master Technika. I find it too heavy, too chunky and the movements too limiting to justify the extra cost over, say, a Charmonix 45N2. I will sell the Linhof sometime in the coming months and get the Chamonix.
Other than that, I have generally managed to do good enough research to avoid these disappointments.
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