davidkilpatrick
Member
Gilbert, please read the thread. It's an old thread, but I only found this forum recently. I am not the one who mentioned Zeiss, or raised the contentious opinion that the Minolta 20mm f2.8 was a bad design. Fritz Müller did so:
"The Minolta 20mm Lense cant be used for Large prints, or you have to close aperture at least to 8.
I would consider a Sigma or Tamron lense if you wanna buy such a 20mm Lense.
I would rate this lense as not so good and compared to a Contax lense as a bad way spending money."
I was merely replying to this very extreme trashing of a good lens design.
All matters to do with testing lenses, or photographic equipment, are a matter of opinion. Fact barely enters the arena. I started testing lenses for PHOTOGRAPHY magazine in 1973, aged 21, using Geoffrey Crawley's Paterson test target (then the best around) and a stock of Panatomic-X generously donated by Kodak. For a decade or more I continued to think that what I was doing was objective, even vaguely scientific. I would actually dare to quote real figures - lppmm - and make definite statements about lenses.
In the 1980s, I visited Minolta in Japan, and learned much more about lens making from others including Zeiss (I have been a guest of Hasselblad twice, before they closed Gothenburg). I began to see that variability of s&les overrides almost any test you can do on lenses unless they are well beyond even the parameters of Leitz and Zeiss in their heyday. In the 1990s, my wife did a Masters in Colour Science (establishing methods for matching prints between radically different printers, dye sub and thermal wax, before ICC profiling was introduced). I acted as her assistant and began to grasp the rigorous process of genuine scientific investigation - dozens of s&les, thousands of readings, blind tests, checks, statistical analysis. I'm not a scientist or mathematician myself.
At the end of this all, I realised that even the most pseudo-scientific 'tests' in magazines (like those I had written for years) and on websites (like the most popular resources around) are not really worth much more than opinion. They look scientific, but they fall far short of the most basic standards of research.
Consequently I am happy to state my opinion, admit that it's my opinion, to be sceptical about all absolute statements, and never to wish to plague the world with a test chart again. The results are all that counts.
I do remember, well enough, that a 20 x 16 architectural mono exterior shot on the 20mm Minolta was part of my MPA Associateship submission - which was successful - at a time when the judges would have thrown it out had they known it was on 35mm. They assumed it was medium format. The lens was good enough to do that. I just pressed the shutter button.
If you ever find a 1975 copy of MINOLTA MIRROR, inside it there's an article on the structure of wide-angle images by a 23-year-old me, with one full mono gravure image taken directly from a Tri-X negative shot on the 21mm f2.8. The 54-year-old rather more disillusioned me can't hack that quality any more and when Fuji sent me their latest 400X slide film I realised I did not even want to use it; digital has destroyed my interest in real photography.
But whatever I have still to offer, it's based on over 30 years editing photo magazines and testing hundreds (maybe thousands) of items of equipment, attending countless seminars and press conferences and every photokina but one since 1972, and also on using the Minolta system since 1974. If my opinion is worthless to you, so be it.
David
"The Minolta 20mm Lense cant be used for Large prints, or you have to close aperture at least to 8.
I would consider a Sigma or Tamron lense if you wanna buy such a 20mm Lense.
I would rate this lense as not so good and compared to a Contax lense as a bad way spending money."
I was merely replying to this very extreme trashing of a good lens design.
All matters to do with testing lenses, or photographic equipment, are a matter of opinion. Fact barely enters the arena. I started testing lenses for PHOTOGRAPHY magazine in 1973, aged 21, using Geoffrey Crawley's Paterson test target (then the best around) and a stock of Panatomic-X generously donated by Kodak. For a decade or more I continued to think that what I was doing was objective, even vaguely scientific. I would actually dare to quote real figures - lppmm - and make definite statements about lenses.
In the 1980s, I visited Minolta in Japan, and learned much more about lens making from others including Zeiss (I have been a guest of Hasselblad twice, before they closed Gothenburg). I began to see that variability of s&les overrides almost any test you can do on lenses unless they are well beyond even the parameters of Leitz and Zeiss in their heyday. In the 1990s, my wife did a Masters in Colour Science (establishing methods for matching prints between radically different printers, dye sub and thermal wax, before ICC profiling was introduced). I acted as her assistant and began to grasp the rigorous process of genuine scientific investigation - dozens of s&les, thousands of readings, blind tests, checks, statistical analysis. I'm not a scientist or mathematician myself.
At the end of this all, I realised that even the most pseudo-scientific 'tests' in magazines (like those I had written for years) and on websites (like the most popular resources around) are not really worth much more than opinion. They look scientific, but they fall far short of the most basic standards of research.
Consequently I am happy to state my opinion, admit that it's my opinion, to be sceptical about all absolute statements, and never to wish to plague the world with a test chart again. The results are all that counts.
I do remember, well enough, that a 20 x 16 architectural mono exterior shot on the 20mm Minolta was part of my MPA Associateship submission - which was successful - at a time when the judges would have thrown it out had they known it was on 35mm. They assumed it was medium format. The lens was good enough to do that. I just pressed the shutter button.
If you ever find a 1975 copy of MINOLTA MIRROR, inside it there's an article on the structure of wide-angle images by a 23-year-old me, with one full mono gravure image taken directly from a Tri-X negative shot on the 21mm f2.8. The 54-year-old rather more disillusioned me can't hack that quality any more and when Fuji sent me their latest 400X slide film I realised I did not even want to use it; digital has destroyed my interest in real photography.
But whatever I have still to offer, it's based on over 30 years editing photo magazines and testing hundreds (maybe thousands) of items of equipment, attending countless seminars and press conferences and every photokina but one since 1972, and also on using the Minolta system since 1974. If my opinion is worthless to you, so be it.
David