millsart
Offline
• • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.40 #2 · Announced: RX1R II with 42MP sensor and EVF | |
Jeff Kott wrote:
Millsart,
Keep in mind that not only are you a very experienced photographer - you're a pro - and obviously very confident that you can judge a lens just by looking at photos that you've taken with it.
Unfortunately, new lenses that are not properly centered are out there and photographers who are not as experienced as you may want to do an objective test to see if their new lens is properly centered.
My issue is that between work and my family obligations with a young toddler, I don't have as much time to take photos as I used to and, especially with our winter rains, I will not have a chance to take and review enough photos during the 10 day return period to make a good judgement on the lens. So I did a couple quick tests to get comfortable.
I think we should each do what we feel we need to do to get comfortable with our new equipment, whether that's a little testing for decentering, just looking at photos or something else, and not be so judgmental as to what others are doing.
...Show more →
That really is my point though, one need not be a pro, or know what things like "decentering" even means to simply take pictures and look at them.
Its when people start trying to "test", doing thing like shooting a brick wall without the proper means to ensure they are squared to it, that they start finding issues that 1) may not really exist and 2) wouldn't show up in actual shooting.
Take the Fuji X100 camera for example. Those of us who have owned a few of them, are regulars on forums et al., know that the lens is pretty soft at minimum focal distance wide open. Just the way its designed, and its not a macro after all.
What happened a ton though was people wanted to "test" their lens for sharpness, so they'd tape a newspaper to the wall, stick the camera in front of it, at very close distance, and then see soft results and think they got a "bad" copy.
I'm all for trying gear out thoroughly before using it for assignment, or before return periods are over, but believe the "test" should be similar to real world usage, not attempted lab setups.
All one need to is walk around the neighborhood a bit, take a bunch of photos. Does everything seem out of focus ? Does one side seem out of focus ? Is most of the frame fine but the corners are a little softer than the middle when your shooting wide open ?
Going back to the RX1 example, its a camera that I think we can all agree produces exceptional results. Almost everyone who owns one seems to love its overall image quality and rendering (maybe not battery life and AF lol). But, as I mentioned, we could make our RX1 pretty bad if we did a DPR style "test".
One could get the camera, set it up for a test inside, see results like that and end up returning it, before even getting to shoot any real subjects and see that beautiful rendering it produces.
Problems make themselves quite apparent without needing to work hard to find them IMO
|
