Originally posted by gaweidert Back in the late 1960's my major at Rochester Institute of Technology was "Photographic Science and Engineering". The students taking Professional Photography as their major had a saying. "If you can't make it good, make it big. If you can't make it big make it color."
That statement, and I recall it being bandied around when I was starting photography in the early 1970s, related purely to composition. A blah photo could theoretically be made impressive through extreme enlargement, and colour photography was, at the time, new enough that joe average compositions could be improved with it.
Sunsets universally fall into this category.
Consequently, this little aphorism really sidesteps the gist of this thread, which seems to be more about quality of lenses.
The irony of bringing it up is that in order to make it big, equipment quality, especially lens quality has to be above par and photographic technique also needs to be well above average. Failing that, going big makes a mundane image into a hot mess of technical deficiencies.
An image that fails because it's a boring image might fail less if it's displayed really big, but it will fail entirely if the degree of enlargement shows up a bunch of equipment or technique quality problems that were masked by being displayed small.
We knew that at the time, but we didn't have a fifth column of semi luddites pretending that a pinhole stuck on a body cap was as good as a high quality lens, and we didn't have craptastic zooms to deal with. That didn't happen until somewhat later when the dumbing down of photography got rolling.
The "kit" lens of the day was a 50mm f/1.8 that was more than likely a very high quality lens, though it might have had to be stopped down a bit to get there.
I've had this exact thing happen. I was hired by a local store to supply some very large photographs, IIRC, 40"x60" (100cm x150cm) images for a display. One of the images I submitted, based on looking at a 2x magnification 4x5 inch print, was a mess at the enlargement specified. In this case, camera shake killed the image, though at the proof size it looked quite good. There was just enough camera shake to kill it at larger print sizes.
Time also moves in only one direction, and the demands for high technical quality equipment have changed with the ability of manufacturers to put higher quality equipment on the market.
Were this not the case, lenses such as the Pentax * lenses wouldn't exist. Why bother to make them is something like the FA50/1.4 is all people are asking for?
Why bother making prime lenses at all when a cheap low resolution kit zoom can take the "same picture" as a high quality prime?
There would be no point at all were it not for the fact that people want, and have always wanted, imaging equipment that is capable of giving high quality results.
---------- Post added Apr 27th, 2022 at 08:41 AM ----------
Originally posted by jgnfld And routing a table edge with only chisels CAN be done, but it's not really the way most would want to go!
At least in carpentry we have sandpaper to fix some of the problems that a dull tool can cause. I'm not sure if the same tool exists for photographers. It seems to me that in photography if a sharp tool is needed, then there isn't really anything that will fix an image taken with a dull lens.
I suppose it helps that in carpentry we are making the subject as smooth and soft as we can while in photography we generally want the subject to be sharp.
Originally posted by jgnfld While I have some other lenses, my basic kit that I most often select from is:
Pentax:
16-85
55-300PLM
SMC 100 macro
40 Ltd
70 Ltd
Sigma:
10-20 (slo-version)
You can mix and match this set to a LOT of outings. Sailing? Usually just the first two. Hiking? First 2 plus 100 if in deep woods for shrooms/buds/and so forth. Plus 40 or 70 will fit in a jacket pocket if expecting golden hour. City? 40 and 70 are plenty. 10-20 for buildings, etc.
But this is NOT the greatest selection of lenses for a studio. Or really even outdoor portraits/weddings. Or specialized macros. Or fisheye photos. Etc. Etc. Etc.
You are actually fairly well set up with what you are listing. No, you aren't well equipped for some really specialized stuff, but few people are unless the specialization happens to be what they do and they go out and buy equipment specifically for doing it.