Michiel Schierbeek
Well-known member
Well put. And there are even some legacy lenses that render images with character which are also rather sharp and crisp.Tullio,
So, in short, old glass makes images on digital sensors without crisp and pure clinical rendition, but can give us instead some of the "character" called for in certain images.
-bob
Not all of my dearest photographs are made with those crisp and clinical (kit)zooms, but when you need that they are great.
I would never be able to get some of the results, I meet with old lenses, with one of the perfect lenses of nowaydays. Furthermore some people like to investigate the charms and quality these older lenses can have. It is just a matter of taste and interest.
If I look through some pictures in my library with just the simple subject flower I see some nice and perfectly sharp, colourful and with a nicely blurred background shots with the Olympus SWD 12-60 lens but I prefer to look at a picture I took with a € 5 Aus Jena 50/2.8 lens. How can that be?
May be because perfection is boring and leaves no room for coincidence, which is of main importance for photography. Serendipity one could say; create the best conditions to meet unique coincidence. Besides place and subject, one of those conditions can be an older lens.
Of course this doesn't work if you run into something in action and you need to react fast. Then you wish you had a fast kitzoom. Solution; 2 cameras.
Art is actually very democratic in the sense that everybody can and has an opinion about it even if one knows nothing about it. And that will remain so, I quess.
Some people post a lot of pictures and some post a lot of opinions and some do both and that results in a sort of automatic hierarchy of authority in forums which can be irritating but are just natural.
It all adds to our knowledge, so that's good.
Michiel