Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/05/25
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]As far as I and supposedly many of the week-end photographers on this list are concerned, a good lens is the one we have been happy with and was in our hands when we got nice images with certain combinations of camera/film/subjects/light/atmosphere/et al.. However, we are 100% sure that such satisfaction could not be realised with other lenses. In my experience a "test" using several other lenses with good reputation on a tripod has ended up in revealing some noticeable differences which do not explain the "absolute superiority" of the good one. One explanation would be the good lens lead you get nice images, or in other words, generated the decisive moment. The lens had "AURA". In this context, Leica optics are great, and this is a norm the majority of us share to varying degrees. It appears to me that before the results of the most "objective tests" we agree on final evaluation of lenses when we have similar subjective norms and disagree when we have different ones. With some tolerance, this variety makes our discussion more interesting and comfortable (at least to me). Just imagine a situation where we all have or are forced to have a unique norm! Leicalement, Mikiro Mori Strasbourg, Europe http://members.tripod.com/arbos3/cigogne/index.html