larryepage wrote:
I will not pretend to speak for professional photographers. But as a photographic hobbyist, I will observe that every hobby seems to have its proportion of practitioners that can only be described as perfectionists (or in some cases frustrated perfectionists). They seem to know a little more than others, spend more than others, work a little harder than others, carry their noses a little higher in the air than others...you get the idea. I am also a model railroader. In model railroading, those folks are called "rivet counters." The name is descriptive of the disease. The thing is, those folks generally don't tend to be "better" model railroaders than others. In fact, as often as not, their trains don't run as well as those of less obsessive modelers, because time that could be spent on operational considerations or basic maintenance tasks is instead spent fretting on whether battery compartment grills on a particular locomotive model have 10 rows or 11 rows of openings.
Of course, the idea of model railroading is to represent a full-size railroad in miniature...usually in 1/48, 1/64, 1/87 (actually 1/87.1), or 1/160 scale. A reasonable level of accuracy is necessary to do this with a meaningful level of realism. But in truth, very few people, especially old people, are ever going to see the difference between 10 and 11 rows of holes on a 1/160 scale model.
I would maintain that in the case of today's lenses, there are many things that are more important in the appearance of a photograph than whether a zoom or fixed focal length lens was used, at least most of the time. I would also maintain that where there is a difference, that difference may not even arise from the optical designs. I have two older AF-D lenses...an 85mm f/1.4 and a 180mm f/2.8. I would expect that either of these would produce better images overall than the 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom which covers their same focal lengths. The reason is simple...these lenses are smaller, lighter, more agile, and just generally easier to manage than the 70-200. They likely have a simpler optical design, but that may or may not provide a real-life advantage.
What is not debatable, though, is that the focal length of each of these two lenses is very confining. If it's right for the task, it's great, and each lens will do an undeniably great job. But for either lens, that focal length very quickly becomes not right for the task. Now I also have a 50mm f/1.4 AF-D lens. It also is a fine lens that does a fine job. It also has a wider working area...a wider range over which it can be usefully used. The same is true for my 35mm lens, but the opposite is true for the 300mm f/4 that I bought as my first really long lens many years ago. While it's a very nice lens and was quite reasonably priced (bought new), there just aren't that many times that it gets to come out and play.
For me, the absence of any real MEANINGFUL optical advantage from my fixed focal length lenses, combined with the tremendously greater versatility of my zoom lenses, even the 3:1 zooms, means that the fixed lenses stay in the shelf most of the time. There was a time in the last century when this would not have been true. Zooms thirty of forty years ago really were huge compromises, and were quite expensive besides. But it is no longer the last century. And it is not fair or justifiable to apply 20th century truths or biasws to 21st century lenses. I think it was the Luddites who were pretty famous for doing stuff like that.
I will not pretend to speak for professional photo... (
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That was an absolutely terrific response to this thread! Especially the last sentence!😜