I'm reading all these lens reviews that go on about resolution and MTF charts and numbers and I'm wondering... at what point does it not matter at all. Specifically... will my picture (as a regular joe consumer, not a professional) look any different with say a $400 lens v.s. a $2000 lens.
Here's why it's a complicated question (instead of the obvious "yes").
1) lets be honest about our audience, my audience and the audience of the regular "consumer" is almost exclusively civilians looking at photos on computer screens. Most posted images will be the size of computer screens or less, so right now that would be less than 1920x1080 on average, i.e. about 2mp max.
2) lets assume we're using the correct focal length lens for the picture we want, we frame what we want properly while taking the picture, only very minor cropping or trimming is required. This is a relatively safe assumption given how easy it is to get say a 14-150mm zoom lens.
Lets assume...
- A $2000 lens may get every single pixel right on a 12mp sensor.
- A $400 lens gets blurry pixels smeared across 2 or even up to 4 pixels...
once I scale a 12mp image down to 2mp, won't they look awful close?
Does it mean that for digital-viewing people, it's worthless to buy professional grade lenses?
Does anyone have a $2000+ lens and a $200-$400 lens they can take 2 photos of the same thing with and post scaled down versions for us to pick at and wonder if it shows any real difference scaled down?
(This was inspired by reading reviews of the olympus 150mm F/2 super high grade lens... it has desire factor, but I doubt it's practicality value.)
Here's why it's a complicated question (instead of the obvious "yes").
1) lets be honest about our audience, my audience and the audience of the regular "consumer" is almost exclusively civilians looking at photos on computer screens. Most posted images will be the size of computer screens or less, so right now that would be less than 1920x1080 on average, i.e. about 2mp max.
2) lets assume we're using the correct focal length lens for the picture we want, we frame what we want properly while taking the picture, only very minor cropping or trimming is required. This is a relatively safe assumption given how easy it is to get say a 14-150mm zoom lens.
Lets assume...
- A $2000 lens may get every single pixel right on a 12mp sensor.
- A $400 lens gets blurry pixels smeared across 2 or even up to 4 pixels...
once I scale a 12mp image down to 2mp, won't they look awful close?
Does it mean that for digital-viewing people, it's worthless to buy professional grade lenses?
Does anyone have a $2000+ lens and a $200-$400 lens they can take 2 photos of the same thing with and post scaled down versions for us to pick at and wonder if it shows any real difference scaled down?
(This was inspired by reading reviews of the olympus 150mm F/2 super high grade lens... it has desire factor, but I doubt it's practicality value.)