Originally posted by IgorZ Thanks for posting this. Is this based on your experience over time, or you have some side by side photos that you can share?
It experience over time actually. I got the DA17-70 as my first lens used for quite some time (maybe 2 years ?) and now I'am based on primes only. Recently I given the DA17-70 a try for a week of travel and my feeling comes from that.
I can give photos, but they are not going to be of the same subjects. And as I keep only the images that I find to be great, the difference isn't going to be that visible. Let's say the DA17-70 give me quite lower keeper rate, in particular in difficult lighting conditions or that I need to do more work (for example to remove the flare artifacts, add more constrast). But hopefully you are not going to see a big difference if at all on the final image.
Better gear doesn't mean that much better photos, but mean you are going to get great photo more easily, with a less post processing and that you'll get nice results in a bit widder range of use cases. It like better AF. You can do just fine by doing the focus manually but you get more reactivity and more keeper on moving subject with great AF performance. Of course in that precise case (DA17-70 vs ltds primes), there the max apperture difference. FA77 at f/2.5 is going to have a different look than the DA17-70 @70mm f/4... More subject isolation and better low light performance...
FA77, f/2.8
FA77 f/5.6
FA31 f/5.6
DA15, f/11
DA15 f/8
Examples for DA17-70 are in attachement (I didn't upload them to flickr yet). Respectively 70mm f/8, 36mm f/8, 19mm f/7.1. The sunset, I had to edit it to remove the flare artifact.