Originally posted by Wheatfield ClassA, if the best you can come up with is crap bordering on an ad hominem attack, I will gratefully bow out of this conversation and let you bask in your bombastic sense of superiority, especially since you have now taken the thread from somewhat on topic to not even close to anything resembling the topic.
I feel you are confusing me with someone else.
Where did I border on an ad hominem attack?
I only introduced your "SD card" advice as an example that it is not a good idea to trust someone blindly no matter how competent he/she is in another area. You are surely great in several areas and, FWIW, I often appreciate your "no BS" approach to posting in this forum. I generally like your posts. That doesn't stop me from observing that you don't always know what you are talking about (SD cards) and disputing whether your opinion of a particular lens is the final word on the matter (as others, not you, have suggested).
If you track down my early posts, they were specifically addressed to the OP and I think you will agree that they contained useful advice. If I have gone over board posting very recently then it is because others have taken the thread off-topic and made claims/statements that I had a hard time leaving alone. In the future, I'll try to care less because my attempts to mean well and provide counterpoints to mistaken views offered here (e.g, about SD card wear) don't seem to be received well.
Originally posted by Wheatfield IIRC, the OP asked about portrait lenses, not how good you are at personal attacks.
I see some posts in this thread which can easily be categorised as containing personal attacks. Some of them against me. With what post did
I personally attack anyone?
Originally posted by Wheatfield But I assure you that my knowledge on the original topic comes from ownership and first hand use of both lenses in question that I know what I am talking about in this particular instance.
I don't dispute your ownership/experience but it is a frequent experience for me to care about things that other people dismiss as "insignificant". I consider the possibility that in your use of the lenses
- the differences do not occur (as a kit lens would be fine for most studio shots as well), or
- they are there but you focus on different things and regard the differences that are important to me as insignificant.
I don't see how the above makes me a bad person.
There is also the possibility the that lenses are indeed too similar in their rendering to make a fuss about it. My experience (looking at many, many images shot by others) tells me otherwise. I'm looking for an ultimate portrait lens myself. Why would I not get the cheaper DA 70/2.4 if I thought it were equivalent? Why don't I get the Sigma 85/1.4 which has a nice focal lens, HSM and seems to be very, very sharp? Because I believe that the FA 77/1.8 might have something to offer regarding rendering that neither of the aforementioned lenses offers. I'm still undecided regarding the Sigma 85/1.4 vs the FA 77, but I've seen enough from both FA 77/1.8 and DA 70/2.4 to know that I personally would prefer the FA 77/1.8. Your mileage apparently varies.
Originally posted by Wheatfield One of the nice things about owning both is that I don't have a dog in the show you seem to be trying to run, and so can make a logical judgement of the lenses in question based on the qualities of both.
I enjoy the same advantage: I don't have a dog in the show. I don't own either lens. I argued before that while first experience is irreplaceable
one can still form an opinion about lenses without owning them, given all the sample images and even FA 77/1.8 vs DA 70/2.4 comparisons available.
Again, I hope you confused me with someone else.