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Message: <blockquote data-quote="lokatz" data-source="post: 644298" data-attributes="member: 43924">Snowcat, I appreciate your post because it tells me that our positions  are much closer together than they seemed to be, and that we both have a wider perspective than each of us may have previously assumed of the other.  Trust me here, please: I care about my  pictures as much as you do, and I have gone through tens of different lens models (no  exaggeration) over the years in order to find those I consider the best  compromises for my shooting preferences.  I also agree completely with your comments regarding  CA and distortion - I mostly ignore those.  Sharpness is far more  important, as are the other characteristics you mention.  To me, bokeh  matters less because I concentrate largely on landscape/architecture,  where it does not matter much, and on wildlife, where it matters more  but getting a sharp shot at the right time is too crucial and cost is usually the limiting factor.I highly value  personal experience.  There are some posters on this forum, for instance <a href="https://nikonites.com/member-43545-spb_stan.html#axzz4wQVQbl6P" target="_blank">spb_stan</a> to pick but one example (my apology to all those I am not mentioning here!), whose posts I  LOVE because they ooze vast experience AND - and this is  key- they give reasons for their opinions.  Stating "I love this lens  because it is soooo sharp" is a waste of every reader's time unless  a.  he/she knows you and trusts your experience, or  b. you support it with valid arguments, such as comparing with similar other lenses and explaining what differences you found.  Your initial responses to this thread were a bit in the argument-less category, which is why I may have responded in a more technocratic fashion than I meant to.  Sorry for that.I am a German engineer who drifted off the field and now mostly works in human-to-human relations (yes, that's possible!), so while I value personal experience, I also value hard data and independent testing.  Looking at one but not the other doesn't make much sense to me. If you decided to ignore tests, I respect that, but to me it means you ignore part of the picture.  Hey, we're all different, so that's ok.  Before I buy a lens, I look at all test results I can find, watch most available reviews on Youtube, try to get my hands on copies of the lens and compare them to other lenses with similar specs by using test shots, and THEN make up my mind.  (Just did that and bought a Nikon 200-500 rather than Tamron or Sigma 150-600, by the way.) As a result of all the experience I have gained myself, from taking lots of pictures, buying lenses, and studying/analyzing what others found, I trust ColorFoto to a large degree because I found their findings to be consistent with mine in all but one cases, where I believe they indeed tested a particularly poor copy of a lens that was not representative.  As you see, personal experience again plays a big role here.Before we get too cozy here, I need to point out that you are still wrong in your rebuttal to my initial postulate, which is also the title of this thread.  There are two reasons why I can be pretty sure (though admittedly never 100%):1. Human experience-based intuition is generally poor in areas we don't normally pay much attention to.  I am sure you give some thought to zoom range when considering a lens, but I strongly doubt, and some of your previous posts also pull into question, that you look at it in a systematic fashion.  I am sure your experience is very powerful when it comes to aspects like 'How much harder it is to shoot with a heavier lens?', 'How much more distortion should I expect from a wider angle lens?', or "How sharp is this lens compared to others in its class?".  Experience nurtures the human ability to assess such things easily, often better than algorithms do.  However, whether a 3x zoom lens generally performs better than a 4x zoom lens is something you can only evaluate by thinking about it at the top of your head, based on lenses you had and trying to remember how they compared, not by tapping into your intuition.  You have no expert intuition around that unless calculating zoom factors has always been a passion of yours and you did lots of comparisons specific to that point.  Did you?  Didn't think so.2. Science shows over and over that repetitive, systematic testing of a large number of samples is the surest way to find underlying trends.  You are right that of all the lenses ColorFoto tested, each individual test may be subject to some kind of lens variance, so it may not be representative for that lens.  However, the collective number of tests they ran is very unlikely to suffer from systematic errors - the law of averages prevents that.  If you did a regressive analysis of dependency between the zoom factor and the average test score in the table I shared, you would find a statistically relevant correlation between the two that supports my thesis.  This is math nerd speak for "Yep, it looks likely that 'the wider the zoom range, the lower the lens quality' is a valid statement".Which says "Don't get your hopes up for a super-sharp super-zoom.  Buy the best lenses for your needs and be happy with them."  <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite2" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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