Have Your Thoughts On Buying Lenses Changed?

Old fashioned American Independence Day Parade (click to enlarge)
Nikon D700; 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens @ 38mm; 1/800th sec. @ f/11; ISO 800

Question.  If you are considering buying a lens is your current standard for lens resolution and image sharpness, as well as overall image quality, different now than in past years?  

The reason I ask is that I believe mine has changed in the past year or so.  In the past, I always desired to own and use only the very best lenses.  I would save my money and buy the best professional lenses I could find for my camera system.  That included both Leica M and R lenses when I shot with Leica.  I spared no expense.  I wasn't going to settle for second best.  That is just the way I felt.

Today, my thinking and opinion has changed.  I will and have purchased lenses that are not the absolute best for the system I'm using and I'm now happy with these 'lesser' lenses.  What changed my mind?

Once I had the opportunity to use and understand Topaz’s Sharpen AI, that plug-in changed things for me.  Psychologically, at least.  I can edit an image in that software and sharpen it, remove slight motion blur and generally improve the image to the point where a mediocre 'just missed sharp focus' image is now an excellent image.  (As an aside, over the years I never had deleted my 'just missed' focus images as I was hoping one day a piece of software such as this would come along.  Since then I've gone back and re-edited many images, bringing them into sharp focus and now having the ability to show them.)  

I find myself now thinking I no longer need the best lenses and am largely unwilling to spend the extra money for the best lenses when a good lens can be 'improved' using these AI based plug-ins.  That said, the one thing I do insist upon is accurate focusing if not 100% of the time, almost 100% of the time.  Even though I can use an artificial intelligence based plug-in to increase sharpness and resolution in an image, if my lens doesn't focus accurately and consistently accurately, I still won't keep it.  A case in point was my original Fujifilm 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens.  That lens, although very sharp and with excellent resolution, just wouldn't focus consistently accurately with my camera body.  I traded it in for a different copy and that new copy focused perfectly.  

There are some other considerations as well.  Don't think sharpness and resolution are the only things about a lens which I feel are important.  Various lens aberrations, distortion and vignetting are important as is lens speed, build quality and handling.  However, those things have largely been eliminated as serious issues by manufacturers building corrections into the camera's image processor or in editing software.  But one needs to be aware of them.

So, I’ll now readily consider lenses, even 'super zoom' lenses, that I would not consider in the past.  Another example is when Fuji brought out the 16-80mm lens.  I thought that a highly desirable lens for the types of traveling and photography I do.  After reading the reviews, I decided it was only an okay lens at certain focal lengths as well as not great on the edges of an image.  I definitely ruled out buying it.  Today, I would consider buying it because I can raise the “okay” image quality to excellent image quality using Sharpen AI.  And…with the improvements in technology this ability to improve image quality will only get better in the future.

Another example is the image at the top of this post.  I made this image with my 12mp Nikon D700 and the Nikon 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6 lens attached.  I bought that lens as an 'all around carry and travel lens' but I was never very satisfied with the image quality.  The image you see above was run through Topaz Sharpen AI set on automatic and the sharpness and resolution are now excellent in my judgment. (I love these kinds of images of small town America recording life in general.)

Time to time, it may be worthwhile to re-examine our biases and modify our opinions as technology, time and manufacturing techniques and materials change.  I have and my new opinions have opened up doors for me that were previously shut.

Join me over at my website, https://www.dennismook.com.  

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook  

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