Horses for courses

Like Mike Reichman likes to remind us, "horses for corses". Or in other words, you use the right tool for the job, and it's often different tools for different jobs.

Here's a nice little article which reminds us that even really "bad" characteristics of a lens, like vignetting and low corner sharpness are necessarily bad for all uses.

I own the lens he talks about (Nikkor 70-200mm 2.8 VR), and it is huge and expensive ($2,000), so I was quite disappointed when it turned out that on full frame cameras it is just lousy in the corners. This article made me look at it in a new light.
(That's not to say that Nikon should not upgrade the lens, because for many uses these flaws are fatal.)

Howard sed:
A friend had one of the earliest Nokia camera mobile 'phones. She bought a removeable cover for it, which had a bevel all round the window for the lens. The quality of the images was pretty poor - tiny lens and barely 1MP - but that bevel added a lovely soft focus feel to the images! In the right conditions the images pretty cool!
Reminds me of the photography course I took a few years back. The pro taking the class said something that has stayed with me. It was words to the effect that "your brain is what actually takes the pictures, the camera is just a tool to make them permanent."