In reading all the posts here, I think there are a couple of points that should be reiterated and expanded upon, perhaps even considered as "rules" for ratings.
First of all, ratings are relitive, but generally relitive to what each poster knows, or has paid, and therefore highly variable.
The problem is, within the database, and this is no fault of Adam's or anyone involved in setting it up, because when you start something like this, you have no idea where it is headed.
It would be useful to have specific prompts, so that people can consider all the points, making the reviews more consistent. little things, that people often forget.
On the usability side, these things should cover the mechanics,
- aperture ring, full or half stops
- focusing throw, approximate rotation in degrees from infinity to minimum focus
- focusing collar and if appropriate zoom collar resistance
- zoom creep if applicable
- tripod mount if applicable
- controls (focus and aperture) opposite to pentax or the same.
On the lens performance side,
- How the lens meters on your camera, across all aperture stops
- comparison to other lenses under same lighting, i.e. an indication of light transmission (I have one lens that is a full stop slower shutter speed at each aperture for example)
- vignetting at all apertures or at least wide open
- CA if present
you can see where this is headed, it takes a lot of time and testing to properly review the lenses, we don';t spend this time but should for reviews
It might also be possible to consider for each lens multiple ratings, i.e. Image quality, Build quality, Useability, for example.
A lens that can produce tack sharp images but is a bitch to focus, due to focus throw being too short might score high on one scale but low on the other.
Lastly, but this may be impossible because no one owns enough gold, is to set a gold standard for each focal length or focal length range. That lens would be a 5. lenses that are better would score higher, lenses that are worse would be lower. The problem, As I started out, is no one has enough gold, to do good comparisons, and who reviews the gold standard. but I coud see an argument for using the K series lenses as the gold standard, and comparing everything to them. This would allow much more headroom to differentiate between different excellent lenses.
Last edited by Lowell Goudge; 11-19-2010 at 06:16 AM.