[Leica] Price of glass and other foolish arguments

[dorysrus at mindspring.com (Don Dory)]

During the discussion RE the 75 Summilux comments were made mostly in
the negative about the price of glass, especially expensive glass.  My
thoughts are that a lens is a tool.  Frequently, the expensive lens is a
valuable tool as it can capture an image in conditions that the less
expensive version can not.  This applies whether you are talking low
dispersion glass, large apertures, image stabilization, and extremes in
wide angle or telephoto.

Many times, if you spend the money for the "exotic" lens you will spend
less money over the long haul.  You buy the 90 F4 because it is
inexpensive, however, it is not that sharp and you have to use 1600 ISO
material to take images indoors.  So now you end up purchasing the
faster, newer lens after all.

For Doug Herr, the 280 APO is both faster and much crisper than the 400
he had been using.

For Ted and Tina, the Noctilux allows the creative freedom to fix images
on film that you could not get otherwise.

For me, the 21 SA focuses closer and has no distortion allowing me to
create images that I could not create with other lenses.

Besides, after $2500 for the good stuff, $200 for the 40 Summicron or
$50 for the Jupiter 3 is not a problem to justify when you want
something small and disposable.

Keep taking pictures, the vision thing will happen.

Don
dorysrus@mindspring.com