Originally posted by rparmar You nailed it: Bombay Sapphire is the perfect gin. But the perfect martini I have only had once in a bar in Toronto. It was insanely good and only cost twice what a normal martini costs.
What is it about Toronto and martinis, one of the best and most expensive (though it was large) I've had was also in Toronto. However, in the spirit of this thread I have to note that ordinary Bombay is as good gin as Sapphire, if you stop down a bit and taking bokeh into account.
I've wrestled with these sorts of questions for a while, in audio, record collecting, and photography and equipment collecting. Here's a couple of bits I'd like to add to the conversation.
Measurements tell a story, but they don't tell the whole story. And, you get what you measure... we've all seen that in action in large organizations, no? Technical measurements perhaps correlate with visually significant characteristics better in cameras than they do in audio... However, as in audio, the actual connection of technical perfection to aesthetic experience is taken on faith. You believe it (and therefore get what you measure) or you do not. Has anyone shown scientific evidence that a particular resolution/contrast transfer function in a lens, when coupled to a particular sensing medium and processed via specific, standardized algorithms, invariably results in an image that can be judged 'better' in all conditions and dimensions that 'better' can take?
I've seen first hand the differences in lens quality, zoom, prime, cheapo prime, cheapo zoom. I've educated myself - for myself, and yeah a little bit to be able to speak with some authority on the matter. For me, the differences that exist are positive: sometimes I want to use a lens with different transfer characteristics because I want a specific look. But I also know which lenses to reach for when I want to approach that fractal resolution within resolution look.
In this context, the zoom lens produces fully acceptable, even excellent photographs. Does the fact that my 43 is 'better' than my 16-45, and quite obviously so, mean photos with the 43 are invariably 'better' than those with the 16-45? No, not at all. They are different, but they communicate and they connect emotionally, and you can tell who's who and what's what. Definitely not a martini glass bottom vs. the Hubble of lenses.
The thing us
ignorant consumers do is this: we make a fetish out of equipment, and ranking that equipment. After all, there isn't a good way to rank / measure the actual output (our photographs), so we displace this quality onto the hardware. With the marketing industry's full encouragement, I may add. We therefore obsess with this being better than that - besides displacing aesthetic self-determination, we're displacing pack pecking order onto the hardware - we are giving outlet to innate needs otherwise dangerous to display.
We yearn for the 'inside info' and search for security in having the 'best', or the 'unknown bang for the buck' or whatever it is... And there are always writers or speakers who manage to entice us to believe in
their opinions as better ones. We, who have to manage compromise and inadequacy in our real lives, can live out our Walter Mitty existence as lens photographer of exquisite taste (as measured by the esteem our equipment has).
Building a couple of amps cured me from some of this crap in audio. I no longer had to look at the things as black (or silver) boxes, and examine quality via the examination of the output. In other words, I began to see the compromises and balancing required by the designer (not the consumer), and appreciate even more the importance of emotional engagement with the whole process.
Yeah, I'd love a fantastic amp or certain loudspeakers, and a K20D or K40D when it comes out, and the 'best' lenses, and a complete vintage leica, no make that Hassy system... but I don't need them for what I'm about.