[BarryE]

... but don't we just love to spend time nestled up with laptop (or similar) wasting time over analysing, over analysed reviews, rather than getting out and actually using the gear which is way more capable than most of us can benefit from. I know I do and it must stop. I can sense a new year resolution about to be written ...

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Last edited by BarryE; 12-18-2021 at 08:18 AM.

[Eric Auer]

Spend a week or so shooting with a Holga lens. Suddenly subjects matter more than the lens. As it should be.



City Frame-209 by Eric Auer, on Flickr

[BigMackCam]

... but don't we just love to spend time nestled up with laptop (or similar) wasting time over analysing, over analysed reviews, rather than getting out and actually using the gear which is way more capable than most of us are can benefit from. I know I do and it must stop. I can sense a new year resolution about to be written ...

I think we're all guilty of this to a lesser or greater extent. It's cold here, but the weather's beautiful. I've got a fresh roll of Fomapan 400 in one of my film cameras, and I've spent at least half the morning on here

I've just finished lunch, but when that's settled I'm heading out to make the most of the afternoon before an early Winter sunset steals the last of the useful light. The forums will be here when I return, of that I can be sure...

[Cerebum]

^^^ This.

A few years back, I noticed during testing and AF fine adjustment that a lens I'd bought wasn't perfectly centered and, as a result, was a little softer in one quadrant, especially in the corner, at wider aperture settings. I spoke to a reputable lens technician about servicing it, and he joked that such problems never existed in the days of 35mm film, as you just wouldn't notice such a small issue. Even in the earlier days of digital, the lower-resolution sensors weren't capable of resolving the minor issues we now see all too easily with 24MP, 36MP and even-higher-resolution sensors.

The simple fact is, very few lenses are perfectly aligned - even those we think are. Roger Cicala at LensRentals has plenty to say on this, and of all people, he should know. If you look hard enough for problems, the chances are you'll find them on most lenses. The problem is, we've become used to examining and editing our images at 1:1 reproduction on 24" high-definition monitors whilst sitting 30cm away, and in those conditions some of us will notice even the tiniest optical deficiencies. I don't worry unless I can see them when a photo is scaled to fit my 24" BenQ QHD monitor and viewed at normal working distance...

Now that is music to my ears. I have a 1959 auto takumar 35mm that is slightly decentered. It is so slight, I didn't notice it and had to have it pointed out. I was going to write it off. Now I am going to re grease the helicoids and enjoy it

---------- Post added 18-12-21 at 07:17 AM ----------

I think we're all guilty of this to a lesser or greater extent. It's cold here, but the weather's beautiful. I've got a fresh roll of Fomapan 400 in one of my film cameras, and I've spent at least half the morning on here

I've just finished lunch, but when that's settled I'm heading out to make the most of the afternoon before an early Winter sunset steals the last of the useful light. The forums will be here when I return, of that I can be sure...

Good call. I need to get my pushed agfa apx processed so I may stalk town wards with my spotty and Rollei 400 retro. Film gives you such a great feeling doesn't it

[3by2]

I've got one decentered lens, which I never noticed was decentered until I got my KP. Now I look back at my K5 images and I think, oh yeah, it is. It's currently away awaiting a new front element set. It doesn't take bad images for a decentered lens though.








And it's soft on the left, probably see it more on the last picture, maybe. It just so happened I didn't see it at all until I took a perfectly symmetrical picture of a bridge and then thought, hello!

[AstroDave]

less yapping, more snapping,

Love it - will be my mantra for the day!

[JohnMc]

Spend a week or so shooting with a Holga lens. Suddenly subjects matter more than the lens. As it should be.

The Valiant and Lina had sharper... box graphics.

[normhead]

I have one lens that I paid good money for that I consider unusable, our Sigma 18-250, a lens that is seriously decentered. Not one of my 20 odd Pentax lenses has failed. Last time I read a reliability analysis from an unbiased 3rd party tester with a large sample of lenses, lens rentals, Pentax was either the top or very near the top.

Given that my SMC 35 3.5 screw mount and SMC 50 1.4 screw mount both work like new, and I have an FA 35-80 and F 70-210 the total age of my lenses is somewhere north of 300 years, I always find these assertions somewhat amusing. All I can say is, some people are extremely unlucky. But I have way to large a sample size to be concerned about failures. (Not to mention that I've covered every focal length 4 times.) Anyone who has seen my gear, knows, no babying was involved in compiling these stats.

Like everyone else, when I think there's an issue, I scream bloody murder, though sometimes I'm doing something wrong, not the gear. Like the news, good news is ignored, bad news is amplified. Only you can decide what to pay attention to.

[RICHARD L.]

The only lens that ever "died on me" was an FA 80-320 mm. The diaphragm doesn't close anymore due to an inner electrical problem. I read this happened to a few other owners of this particular lens. I had paid just 115 $ for it and repairs are impossible for lack of spare parts (according to my Camera Service provider). It was never a spectacular performer but gave me a few excellent pictures over the years. I replaced it with an HD DA 55-300 mm ED and never looked back. This "newer" lens has proven outstanding compared to the older FA. Maybe I should offer the FA lens "for parts" on eBay ...



Taken with my old FA 80-320 mm ED lens.

[wm_brant]

Earlier in this thread BigMackCam noted that Steve Cicala of Lensrentals had some worthile things to say about lens quality.

Here's a link to one of his better blog entries on the subject, which I feel is well worth reading:
Lens Rentals | Blog

Back in the film days, I became concerned that I was becoming *too* obsessed with lens quality and started to experiment with cameras and lenses that were - to put it mildly - less than perfect. I shot with Holgas, Argus C3 and C4, Agfa folding cameras, CZJ Tessars and others and found that they could *all* produce beautiful images, limited only by my artistic abilities. Ok, so shooting with the Holga was a bit more of a challenge, but it could still produce arresting images when shooting the right subject in the right conditions.

I decided to not worry about whether a lens is *the best* or not, and instead concentrated on capturing beauty in my photos.

[normhead]

The only lens that ever "died on me" was an FA 80-320 mm. The diaphragm doesn't close anymore due to an inner electrical problem. I read this happened to a few other owners of this particular lens. I had paid just 115 $ for it and repairs are impossible for lack of spare parts (according to my Camera Service provider). It was never a spectacular performer but gave me a few excellent pictures over the years. I replaced it with an HD DA 55-300 mm ED and never looked back. This "newer" lens has proven outstanding compared to the older FA. Maybe I should offer the FA lens "for parts" on eBay ...



Taken with my old FA 80-320 mm ED lens.

My lens like that was the Sigma 70-300. The zoom ring stopped working for no apparent reason. I could use it as a push pull lens, but a lens like that needs to be perfect. The image quality just doesn't justify messing around.

[kypfer]

Spend a week or so shooting with a Holga lens. Suddenly subjects matter more than the lens. As it should be.

Fascinating … was unaware of that option!

I've got a Prinzflex branded 35mm f/5.6 fixed aperture and focus lens that actually "converts" into a 2x adaptor … to suggest that it's "optically challenged" would be polite, but maybe I should look at it from a different perspective
I also went to the extent of sawing the front off a Brownie 127 camera and gluing the result onto a PK T2 adaptor for something in the region of a 60mm f/8 … again the results were unimpressive, but I think I might see where I was going wrong!
I was trialling them in colour … I suspect in b&w they'd show their true characteristics … something to play with next time I'm out

[kiwi_jono]

Yes you do see a few here but I think the problem is much more in some non Pentax branded lenses. I have had a couple of old Pentax lenses that were not quite perfectly aligned but certainly more than usable. Where as I have had much more serious issues trying to get a Samyang 14mm that is not badly decentered (gave up after getting 2 bad copies) and also a couple of Sigma lenses that had signification issues (one new and had to be repaired). While I have quite a lot of second hand Pentax lenses, the only brand new lenses from Pentax I have got (so far - DFA 21 coming!) is the DFA 28-105, DA 55-330 and DA 18-55 - and all perform well.

In any case you do tend to hear about the issues a lot more than the successes.

[leekil]

Spend a week or so shooting with a Holga lens. Suddenly subjects matter more than the lens. As it should be.

Should we be afraid to look at your photos before this? 🙀

[Oldbayrunner]

I've been using Slr type cameras for over 60+ years Dslr for the last 17 of those years, since "auto fine tune" has been added I haven't used it or felt the need to use it on any lens I have purchased. Guess I am just one of those lucky ones and believe if it ain't broke dont try to fix it. I find correcting My mistakes overtly takes president over trying to think it my gear needs correcting, unless my inadvertent carelessness has damaged it.

Negative posts of defects on products in social forums always greatly outweigh positive ones and yet if they truly are defects in reality those usually are miniscule given the multitude of what has been sold and are usually taken care of under warranty by a well thought of manufacturer.