Think you can spot the differences between cheap and expensive lenses?

[enny]

 

 

[majoraxis]

Thanks for sharing this!

The question it answers for me is how to spend my shooting budget.  My thought is to spend it on lights and sound before spending it on renting or purchasing a lens that cost 5 times as much.  Now, if you have the choice of lens with similar prices, then pick the one with the features that will preform under the shooting condition you anticipate.

[gh2sound]

Glad you said sound It baffles me still why people buy cameras and lenses - aside from Tax and company profit reasons - cameras especially, are monthly usurped, unlike audio, which relies solely on the operator, so why buy? Hey ho ! Sure the usual suspect companies are most happy people do !

[AaronChicago]

You're spot on with sound. Hire a good sound person. It will give you way more production value.

[Damphousse]

 

I think the commentary at the end was very useful.  There is a lot more to a lens than just image quality in a handful of poorly shot scenes.  First of all the build quality difference between the plastic fantastic Canon 50mm and the upper end Zeiss lenses is a world apart.  If I was shooting a multimillion dollar project I would not depend on the Canon 50mm in a remote location.

 

Also I think anyone who is interested in lenses and has a photography background already uses several sites that give good reviews.  The test chart thing is a strawman.  What site solely tests their lenses by using test charts?  Every site I look at uses test charts AND real life examples.  They note the differences between lab setups, what you see zoomed in 100% and what you can actually see on the print.

 

I like the commentary about things like flares and corners.  A lot of the time various lens/body combinations work fine.  But eventually you run into situations where a certain lens/body combination ruins a shot.  I use a BMPCC with various canon lenses and I run into limitations all the time on various shots.  Now I won’t be able to pick out a particular lens on any given shot but I do know if I run into an issue like flaring in a particular shot I can try a different lens to eliminate the problem.

 

So in a way this test is informative and educates amateurs but in a way it is useless to people who have experience because we know that at times you run into situations that need a specialized solution and that solution sometimes costs $15,000.  It’s not always about the equipment…  but sometimes it’s only about the equipment.