Originally posted by yusuf And, this is one too, an unfair comment noticed on one of the lens review which I don't remember now:
"10 is only reserved for AF and I will give 9 just because lack of AF"
As long as that is stated, it isn't a big deal. Every reviewer has some biases, it is the ones that are unstated that are hardest to sort out.
As time goes by, I tend to review lenses harder than I did when I first got into photography. I used to assume that any photography problems were the result of user error. I can now tell the difference. But I like Photozone's opinion on grading, which is that you have to be hard on lenses, otherwise your reviewing scale is meaningless. If a "C" is an average score than most people should get Cs. But I think most people have the opinion that an "average" lens will score 7.5 or 8 and that only leaves a couple of points to sort out the above average lenses. (I really hate grade inflation).