I would think that people who go for a high aperture lens are, on average, more 'serious' photographers and prepared to pay more for higher quality. Who would buy a low-quality high aperture lens? The normal hobby-shooter wouldn't know what to do with it and people who read photo magazines would select a better alternative. BTW: photo magazines would test across the whole aperture range. So, if you build a lens that you can use at 1.4, but with inferior results, the lens would presumably get a worse test result than if you restricted the maximum opening to 1.8 for the same lens. The economic question for the manufacturer would be what is the more important factor for the decision to buy a lens: aperture or test result... best regards Laurenz Bobke http://www.travelphoto.net/ ----- Original Message ----- > > Actually I don't think that's true at all: for example people quite > rightly pay more for medium quality Sigma lenses than for Canon junk > zooms. But the answer to the original question is surely simply that > aperture alone doesn't determine the quality of the lens. Thinking (off > the top of my head) of Canon 50mm lenses - so no "brand" distinction - > the f/1.8 is ludicrously cheap, yet of fairly high quality, since it's a > very tried and tested design, the f/1.4 costs 5? times as much, and is, > by all accounts a somewhat better lens (comparing the same aperture), > the f/1 is ludicrously expensive and not correspondingly astonishing > quality because making any f/1 lens is basically pushing the boat out. > So it seems to me you largely get what you pay for (for once). > > > Brian Chandler > ---------------- > geo://Sano.Japan.Planet_3 > Jigsaw puzzles from Japan at: > http://imaginatorium.org/shop/ >
