Originally posted by Rico Try shooting an object from across the room with a telephoto lens filling the frame with the image. Then take a picture of the same object filling the frame but much closer up with a 50mm Macro lenses. Then compare which image is sharper with more detail and less noise.
I fear this is likely to veer off into a distraction from the topic at hand. I would rather see this as a separate thread with examples from you posted to support your contention.
Sharper and more detail does not really translate into less "noise" but I can see people confounding the two in a comparison like this. The MTF of the 50mm Macro may well be better than the 75mm lens (say an FA 77?) but the difference is unlikely to be seen as noise in
most situations. Also I doubt that within the zoom range of this zoom that the lines per millimeter are so drastically different as to be a confounding factor. However there could be some bias due to the slight change in lines per millimeter resolved. Moving closer does have the advantage of keeping the optical path performance the same, so it might be an interesting exercise but I doubt the results will be drastically different.