>One thing about which I wonder though, is whether a Zuiko zoom, of
>1970s or early '80s vintage, is as good as what I could buy from
>Tokina or Tamron today.
>
>Granted, in general fixed focal length lenses (excluding some of the
>exotic ones) haven't gotten remarkably better (at least optically)
>over the last 20 years. But most zooms have.
>--
>Fountain Pen Michael (a.k.a. Michael Zimmet)
Primes HAVE tended to get better with the spread of cheaper (moulded)
aspherical elements. Even Leica moulds these days. Zooms have got better
for the same reason. Very few 3rd party primes are made these days except
in very strange lengths - like superwides and macros.
It depends how you define 'most.' Most zooms are the cheap AF 35-80mm
numbers sold with bodies to consumers and they are serious rubbish. Nikon
and Canon had to cheapen down to compete with all the Tamron and Sigma
bottle bottoms that were being packaged with their bodies. Think of all
those Pentax/Tamron packages you see in the magazines. Store clerks try to
talk people up to the slightly better versions and get accused of bait and
switch. The 28-80's or 35-105's are that much better but still not very
good. This is snapshot stuff. The major manufacturers including TamSig all
make seriously good zooms at seriously high prices for pros, but even some
of those nice big white zooms aren't that sharp - photojournalists who may
use something like a 35-300mm have other considerations like 'robust,
rainproof, High contrast, fast glass and very fast focussing' so maximum
image quality may be compromised as their pix are going to be 'screened'
anyway. Sharpest EOS lens I ever used was a 1989 50/1.8 (sound familiar?)
which tested better than most of the L grades and all of the L grade zooms
as I remember.
Third party all depends - I missed out on an Oly fit Tokina 70-210/f2.8
which tests as very sharp indeed (might still get it on the rebound!) and
that would be over 15 years old I think. Heavy but! You can buy a manual
brand new zoom for Oly fit now with some dubious heritage (i.e. Chinese or
Korean with a german sounding name) and it will be horrible.
So to answer - a very expensive, pro-grade, A-TX, LD, MMMC, ED, ICQ,
whatever, 3kg, f2.8 monster zoom made now will probably outperform an old
Zuiko zoom, cost several thousand, strain your back and scare the horses.
It probably won't outperform a prime at equivalent focal lengths. A modern
cheap zoom will make a nice paperweight.
AndrewF
(Who's just been out playing with the Tamron 500 SP Mirror he got cheap the
other day)
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