Pentax 12-24mm bottom of class

I've seen loads of pics taken with a 12-24 and I've been very impressed indeed. Not just for sharpness, but for general IQ.

What I would question is why one persons view of a lens would generate a whole thread, whereas if someone posted the same conclusion on a thread in a forum it would get hardly any comment at all.

Which is my perpetual point that the comments of a 'reviewer' are of no more value than anyone else's comments.


LOL

I'm an equal opportunity contempt purveyor. My contempt for 'magazines' extends across the board to all subject matter, not just photography.

The general political and economic bias and corruptness. Not to mention the undeserved extended credibility of the 'reviewer' isn't confined to the photography hobby industry

There's several people on this forum alone who have knowledge and ways of communicating that knowledge way better than 'reviewers'. They shouldn't be given less credibility just becuase they post on forums instead of having the luxury or advantage of editorial space.

Your point continues to be contradictory in that you condemn a reviewer but extol someone, anyone, who happens to post on a forum as having an equal insight.

How can this be when your reviewer has the equipment and backup necessary to do the review, the cost of which is very high by the way, plus the confidence of whoever pays the bill to do the job, whereas you have no idea who the forum poster is. He or she might be pulling your leg. Your reviwer cannot get away with that and has to abide by certain standards.

Contempt is a very final emotion, just be sure that the recipient of your contempt actually is contemptible. It's a variation on the "I don't suffer fools gladly" point of view - it's equally important to be sure they are actually fools.

You need to have the same approach to forum posts or user reviews as with formal reviews IMO. Read as many as possible and get the general 'drift' off opinion. I wouldn't buy/avoid a lens based on one forum comment or user review.

The environment of commercial magazines is inherently biased towards consumption. Magazines need to find products for people to spend their money on, on a continuous and regular basis. They tend to judge each product against certain fixed criteria; if the product meets them, the reviewer approves it with a high mark. The result is a continuing stream of products with "buy" ratings that we are expected to purchase.

Commercial reviewers tend to hide their criteria, hide their biases, obscure the economies in which they work and encourage rampant consumption of products simply because they are the next item on the agenda of a marketing department somewhere. Unfortunately so do most reviewers on blogs and community forums, because they have bought into this world view and internalised it.

Market forces work through systematic means to ensure conformity of opinion. Thus I am even more sceptical of the "general drift" of opinion than I am of one particular idiosyncratic outlook.

Precisely Robin. Look at the sitation with tripods for example, where beginners with humble needs are encouraged by reviews and peer pressure to spend more cash than they need to unnecessarily. Newbies who had never thought of getting into studio lighting are encouraged to splash out on Elinchrom rigs before they're even got to grips with an external flashgun. Need to do a quick 'rough edit' of Auntie Dot's birthday party video? Definitely buy Premiere Pro. Anything lesser is a waste of time. Etc etc.... This will all make you a better photographer. One day you might actually be able to take the camera out of Green Mode, if you just keep spending...

However if you know what you're looking for, reviews and forums are valuable sources of information.

Also pays dividends to get to know the loco's so to speak.. There are a few idiots on every forum, you SHOULD listen to, even if you have to filter out a lot dirt to find the gold nuggets of information, and the odd Pentax Expert you need to ignore advice from and just enjoy the humour... but you'd never know for sure unless to wade into the pool...lol!

Ha! Of course I was accused of exactly that in the tripod thread.

The difference is that a £500 tripod might last a lifetime. You don't need to keep researching new models and checking for upgrades. It. Simply. Works.

It would be a mistake to compare this item with a digital camera, since there might well be real technology benefits to be had with new models -- so long as one knows where they lie.

For example, it once made good sense to upgrade camera bodies to get increase megapixels, since this was reflected in image quality both printed and on-screen. But after the products hit about 6MP there were diminishing returns. Not to say you won't benefit from more megapixels, but it must be considered on a case-by-case basis. And maybe the investment is best made elsewhere... like a good tripod so each pixel is sharp!

Don't they also tend to exaggerate the differences between products that, to most people, are vanishingly small?

It really wouldn't do for a magazine to do group tests on lenses and then proffer the "Ken Rockwell" style conclusion that all the lenses are plenty sharp and it doesn't really matter which you buy. Pretty soon they'd have a falling readership and then they'd go bust as advertisers withdrew their support.

Andrew

Having looked at and/or bought a few DSRL/Photography mags it't very unusual to see anything relating to Pentax so don't bother now. Have started to put the money saved by not purchasing into a jar marked "Lens Fund" I'll be able to afford something off eBay in a couple of years

The lecture on 'contempt' aside ... the claim that reviewers reviews are superior than regular forum members reviews becuase of the reasons you give is exactly the reason why a lot of people aren't taking published reviewers seriously any more.

Just becuase someone has something published in a magazine does not by any means mean what they say is more reliable or superior than anyone else publishing their view on an internet forum.

Besides Robin has given very good reason above in the first section of this post why we should be extra sceptical of published reviews

There's nothing contradictory about my points at all. My point is pretty similar to that of Pentaxophile when he says ... "You need to have the same approach to forum posts or user reviews as with formal reviews IMO. Read as many as possible and get the general 'drift' off[sic] opinion."

I would never buy anything based upon the single opinion of one forum member let alone the single opinion of one published reviewer I like to read a whole basket of opinions from ordinary forum members and make my mind up based upon that. I'm quite capable of weeding out those who are 'pulling my leg'

I trust the combined opinion of a basketful of ordinary forum members far more than I do from the world of published magazine reviews which are traditionally biased through commercial corruptness, the cult of consumerism, etc

Further ..... why pay for something, when you can get a better result, for free, from the public?

Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s those with enough money to put a magazine into print and the employed reviewers and the monopoly on the mass circulation of information. This was an information oligarchy where a few enjoyed the power of indoctrination over the consumers. And is precisely why they became corrupt.

Thankfully those days are over and magazines are no longer the hub of information. the ordinary public has the power through the Net to enjoy mass communication and magazines and published reviewers have become largely irrelevant.

That's very interesting Smeggypants, so are you saying that all publishers became corrupt? If so, what form did this corruption take and what was its purpose?

The lead on question from that would be, how do web based publishers (of which you yourself are one, having your own website, as do I) differ? Or do you not see any difference?

paragraph 6 of my last post answers your questions

There is no "purpose" to corruption, it is merely a value judgement placed on an entity that deviates from some (generally spiritual or philosophical) ideal.

If you pretend to perform an activity for one reason (love of photography) but instead do it for another (to make money from advertisers) they you risk being corrupted. It's not an all-or-nothing process, but it does become increasingly inevitable as the size of the organisation and its monetary requirements increase.

A single person writing articles on a blog may indeed be corrupt, if they mislead their readership or do not follow their stated ethical principles.

But perhaps "corrupt" is not the best word, since this implies that there is some pure ideal from which deviation can occur. Organisations that have no ethical principles in the first place cannot be corrupted, since they are amoral institutions. (To be clear, the principle of making money is not an ethical principle.) All corporations are amoral by definition, since they privilege the organisational entity above the social fabric that constitutes and supports it. Any ethical principles they may bring to bear are incidental.

I'm sure he didn't mean it the way you're interpreting it.... being a publisher (of sorts) himself (link ) I'm guessing he meant to say all publishers EXCEPT SMEGGYPANTS... blah, blah, blah, corrupt...etc...etc..etc...

On person asks a question ( in bold above ) which wouldn't have even been asked had that person read my post properly.

Then a second person replies as if the first question, wasn't actually a question but an accurate statement about my post ( which it wasn't), and then uses that to make a tacky dig at me.

Epic fail on all counts. Embarrassing really.

But just in case you need help, I'll give you a clue ... ignoring the pedantry of the WWW becoming widely available in the late 90s

[quote="Smeggy"] Back in the 70s, 80s and 90s.. [/quote]... meant 'pre-internet' days, and was drawing a comparison between those days and modern times when ordinary people can mass communicate with other across the world with ease.

I had thought the content of my post had made that clear. It seems some didn't get it.

My post also made it clear that it was comparing commercial 'corruptness' with people with no commercial bias. Of which I am amongst the latter.

Robin gets it.