[Leica] Re: Marked lenses

[lrzeitlin at optonline.net (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:43 PM, Hoppy wrote:

> If you have a choice between two similar lenses, one cheaper but  
> with some
> marks that may not affect the output significantly and one pristine  
> but more
> expensive, which one do you buy (to use or collect)?

For years we were told that bubbles were a mark of quality lens glass  
and would not affect the quality of the image. When I worked on a  
newspaper our equipment was tossed haphazardly into camera bags and  
actual gouges on front lens elements were common. They only caused  
flair when shooting towards the light without a lens shade. None of  
Ted's nonsense about shooting from the shadow side. Real men took  
pictures from straight on using a #6 flashbulb. Our photo techs  
"corrected" the worst gouges by applying a drop of black paint. It  
eliminated the flair at the cost of a miniscule loss in speed. But  
they had a real horror of using a dry lens tissue to clean the front  
element. The faint spiderweb of scratches from vigorous cleaning was  
just like using a soft filter. It made it much harder to get the  
crisp, high contrast pictures that the newspaper liked.

Larry Z