RustyBug
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 p.38 #13 · Sigma 45mm f/2.8 DG DN Contemporary Review | |
philip_pj wrote:
Art and aesthetics - a huge and virtually untouched area of interest. We can actually look for lenses that draw slightly OOF subject matter well, as a travel/culture guy I rate this quality very highly.
Reviews tend to 'mistake the map for the territory' and become an end in themselves, not as a measure of in-service lens quality or drawing style. It's largely a techno field these days, and reviews are the means of selling lenses, but so few offer actual collections of real world imagery so readers can see with their own eyes what it can do, for what it was designed for in the first place.
People using photographic equipment tend to see the world through the sharpness filter, it's something deeply embedded in their mindset - it's the pathway they use to approach the activity. Maybe at some stage people will have enough sharpness and the conversations can move on to something more useful for crafting high quality imagery. Even the terminology needs development. As pointed out, 'rendering' is vague and open to wide interpretation. Bokeh to many equals softness, and so on.
I miss the strong European influence we had in earlier times here. As a final comment, Sony's 55/1.8 designer said the Japanese design community loved how the European designers would leave an imperfection in the lens if it assists the image-making, all but admitting perfection might not be the best thing to aim for - if beautiful images are your goal....Show more →
+1 @ slight oof draw, etc.
Optics are always a series of trade-offs ... one man's imperfection is another man's gold. Things like sharpness (absolute, and transition between zones) and bokeh rendering are often diametrically opposed, with many uber sharp lenses having nervous bokeh. Yet, there too ... one person thinks nervous bokeh bothersome, while another finds it interesting.
Quibble over the awesome stuff, but choose your poison(s) wisely. Some are merely quid pro quo for that which you love. Others are problematic for what you dislike. The quest for perfection has taking the size and cost of lenses into areas that the joy of handling them (and buying them) has receded into an interference as much as it has gained technical accuracy ... just a different form of "quid pro quo".
The size and aperture ring of the 45/2.8 make it seem like it would be a nice handler. But, in downsizing, the engineering for AF speed may be the sacrifice for physical construction and/or for price point. If single AF is still good, but it's not a great continuous tracker, it could be that it is well suited to zone focusing or manual focusing, with an AF for "those times". Rather than being engineered for continuous. I don't shoot much continuous, so that doesn't put me off. Others, who do ... well, it may not have been made for that application. A camry isn't a racecar, nor pickup truck, either. All are vehicles, but they aren't all built to the same use, nor same customer.
Choose your poison(s) ... they all have some. Even those who benchmark as optical perfection ... size, weight, cost and handling are different forms of quid pro quo.
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