Originally posted by starbase218 I'm also unable to answer your question whether it is a coincidence that you sold nothing from the 16-45, but I do wonder if the answer really matters.
Of course it matters. It matters, if for nothing else, in sales. If you were selling three cookies, on two of the cookies sold, and one did not, would you wonder if it mattered? After all, it's unlikely you'd be able to prove, scientifically, on the basis of physics, that the two cookies that sold were better than the third. I'm a pragmatist about such matters, as I think we all are when we're not arguing on behalf of some
ill-considered doctrine.
Originally posted by starbase218 I do object to your statement that there are things that can't be measured that still affect image quality. I mean, it's all physics, really. It may be that reviews don't measure certain aspects of lenses, but that doesn't mean that those aspects can't be measured.
Even if true, it's largely irrelevant. In practice, some things are easily measured, some are not. If we adopt the attitude of
anything real can be measured, in practice this can easily evolve into the (tacit) view of
that which is more easily measured is more real. But even more to the point, photography is essentially an aesthetic discipline, and how photographs look to human perception always trumps whatever tests may be applied to the equipment used to make that photography. To be sure, the tests will often correlate with our aesthetic experiences. But the correlation will rarely be 100%. Occasionally, there may be very little correlation, and the tests will mislead those who place too much faith in them. How cameras and lenses produce images, and how people perceive those images, is a very complicated matter -- far too complicated to ever be adequately measured. Different lenses render color differently. That's even a "scientific" fact which can be corroborated via a spectrometer. But there's no perfect correleation between spectometer tests and what people see in the resulting images. That's because how colors are rendered by multi-coated glass is very complex. Designing tests for color rendition is not really practical, and so it isn't done. So one critical aspect of lens performance is largely ignored.
Rather than becoming misled by tests, It's better just to look at the images produced by a lens, because that's what counts. And that's what serious photographers tend to do. They evaluate lenses by how they actually perform in real world photography. Tests may be useful for red flagging potential issues. But if you're selling images, or entering contests, your image will be evalutated on how it looks to human perception, not how it manifests various laws of physics in sundry tests. Perception is essentially qualitative, immeasurable, aesthetic. Even if it were true (per implausible) that all subject matters could be reduced to physics, it would still remain impractical, and inhuman, to sacrifice human experience, particularly human aesthetic experience, on the altar of measurebation.
Originally posted by starbase218 Just as the look and feel of really solid lenses could affect perception of images taken with those lenses.
Really? Do you have any evidence of that? Keep in mind: metal lenses are generally going to feature high end glass. No one any more makes metal kit glass or metal consumer grade lenses. So if people think a metal lens is a good lens, even if it's not based on an actual discrimination of the lens's qualities, they'll probably be right in any case. Or are we to assume that they have been deluded all along; that, in short, the DA 18-55 is just as good as the limiteds, only we're too deluded by build quality to perceive the similarity? I would say that the far more plausible thesis is that if someone can't perceive optical differences between the DA 18-55 and the limiteds, they should probably have their eyes checked.
I actually see far more examples of people being misled by tests rather than by build quality or the price of a lens. Take the old M 85 f2 for example. That lens got a very low resolution score from a
Modern Photography test back in the late seventies. If you read some of the remarks on this lens during the early days of the internet, back when everyone was shooting film, complaints about its sharpness dominate. Even though everyone wasshooting film and couldn't pixel peep, yet we find so many photographers confidentally asserting that the lens was "soft." Then a few years ago photographers who knew nothing of the old Modern Photography tests or of all the complaints about the lens on the internet bought copies and began using them on their DSLRs. And they discovered, not by consulting tests, but by looking at actual images (what a concept!) that the old M 85 f2 was actually a superb lens capable of producing stunning, contrasty images with intensely bright, vivid color.