[Leica] S2 Lenses MTF & Resolutions

[pklein at threshinc.com (Peter Klein)]

Frank makes a really good point which applies to serious amateurs as well 
as "industrial customers."  I must admit that I view some of the drooling 
over the S2 with the same bemusement that I view the megapixel race, the 
MTF race, and the rush to sell one's Wunderbrick Mark x to get the 
Wunderbrick Mark (x+1).  At some point, unless one has unlimited dollars 
and unlimited time, there comes a point of "enough, already."

Keeping up with the Joneses in digital photography is a money pit.  No, a 
black hole.  Or a dog chasing his tail.  If you're a landscape photographer 
who needs to resolve individual needles on a fir tree 7 kilometers away, 
OK, more power to ya (and I can see why Doug would love to turn an S2 on 
some of his feathered friends).  Me, I'm finding that the 10 megapixels and 
no AA filter of the M8 is plenty good enough for me.

There are things that I'd like to be better, but I've about hit the point 
of diminishing returns in terms of how much I can (or am willing to) spend 
on further incremental improvements.  Yes, if an M9 came out with a 
D700-like sensor that gave me ISO 3200 at the M8's current ISO 640 quality, 
I'd probably get in line. But failing that, I'm pretty happy with what I've 
got now.  I'd better be--buying the M8 was already a stretch.

The ability to pixel peep at 100% is a marketer's dream come true.  It 
makes us always want *more.*  Klein's First Law of 
Photography:  Sufficiently blown up, all images suck.  Many (most?) of us 
would probably be happier finding the sweet spot of image quality at the 
size we usually print at, buying that, and then just take pictures.

I still read the news about the latest and greatest, but it's more and more 
out of habit than real need.  And I've found that sometimes I like to use 
older lenses, precisely because they have imperfections.  So I satisfy my 
vestigial gear lust by picking up an occasional pre-1960 50mm lens and 
seeing what pictures I can make with it.

None of this is intended as a criticism of people who know they can truly 
benefit from a better body, or lens, or whatever. But sometimes I think 
that gear lust saps energy from actual photography.

--Peter

At 08:01 PM 12/20/2008 -0800, Frank Filippone wrote:
>Why would a Industrial customer ( including a magazine) want superb image
>quality when the images to be printed, in a magazine or newspaper,  are
>8x11?  Or even 17x11 ( double page spread) ?    Good enough is good
>enough....