[Leica] Sex and the lens-test chart

[Mike Johnston <michaeljohnston@ameritech.net>]

Well, I guess we've had enough fun with this.

I think the poster who said he didn't learn anything from Erwin's site
went too far. I've certainly spent time at Erwin's site, enjoyed it, and
learned from it. I do appreciate Erwin's work. I also think it goes too
far to say that everyone must test his or her own lenses. Technical lens
testing is very important; it's also interesting; it's informative; and
it has its place.

But it has its limits, too. It doesn't tell the whole story. It reminds
me of the high-school sex-education classes that teach the mechanics of
bodily reproduction with charts and diagrams of fallopian tubes and
whatnot. All true and scientific; but it doesn't tell the whole story of
sex, eh? Because there's another side to the same things, other way of
experiencing the same things, other ways of looking at the same things.

The sort of "test" or trial I'm proposing has its place, too. No, it's
not everything. No, it doesn't mimic or replace technical optical
testing. No, it won't "prove" anything--merely indicate something.
Maybe. And if we _were_ to take it and gussy it up and torque it around
and make it oh-so rigorous and scientific and well defined, all its
messy variables nicely slotted away and accounted for as if it were
scientific, then it would become useless--because then it would not tell
us what we want to find out. Because then we'd have Erwin and the others
getting out their magnifying glasses and their resolving charts or
whatnot and measuring this and that quality and deducing logically and
scientifically whether one lens is resolving this or reaching that level
of contrast and concluding that lens A must be such-and-such and lens B
must be that-and-so.

And that's not what we want to find out.

This is more like a field-trial, and it falls under the heading of
empirics--it has to do with putting measurements aside and finding out
whether what we're talking about has any obvious practical effect when
it's experienced as intended. That is, whether one print looks really
swell and another one looks kinda average, and whether *that*
distinction can be chalked up to anything consistently. That's all.

It's not a trivial question, and it's hardly an illegitimate mode of
inquiring about it, as some of you seem so anxious to assert (I've never
heard such a load of nervous excuses in my life! Pontifica-ca about
religion and the like--puh-leeeeez!). Some of the most influential and
innovative photographic experiments of the century just ending were
conducted just this way--the work of Loyd Jones and C.E.K. Mees, the
just-noticeable-difference method of tone discrimination and the
determination of optimum print contrast upon which the contrast-control
system we still use today (in b&w) is based (Ansel Adams based the Zone
System on his simplifications of the work of Mees and Jones). Many of
these tests were carried out by making up batches of prints and showing
them to viewers and asking questions about them.

A fine lens is a pleasure. Certainly, one of the best ways of assuring
oneself of the pleasures of quality is to buy from the best and most
reputable companies. But then, I'm not exactly threatening to take your
fine lenses away from you here, am I? Am I really threatening your
cherished beliefs so direly? I'm just asking you to have a look at some
prints and answer a few questions. Are those of you who object to that
so terribly insecure that you can't stand the thought of being wrong?
Heck, you've demonstrated that you've got bristling phalanxes of excuses
all ready to deploy if needed. And even once you see the prints, you're
still not under any obligation I can think of to answer the questions or
play the game. Sheesh! How can I make this any more painless?

Lastly--aren't any of you in the skeptic's brigade the least bit
_curious_?!?

- --Mike