Ignore lens testers, lens reviews etc...they all have either flawed testing regimes or are biased...or often both.

Note to Mike P....stop buying lenses...

"you might as well spend your hard earned cash on the one that performs best for the money"

...why? if you cannot see any real world difference? ..and who is a realiable person to say which is 'best' anyway?

My real point is that far too many shooters spend far too much time agonising on forums as to which is the 'best' lens...thats like saying which are the best tyres for my car? ...

....there are lots of different ones, but any mass produced item, be it lens, tyre or whatever is made/designed with many compromises, as they have to design/build down to a specific price point. There is no such thing as the 'best' lens...not at any price point...only differing lenses with differing sets of pros & cons...

cheers Steve.

"Re the Samsung 12-24mm... I just spotted What Digital Camera have reviewed both this lens and, more recently, the Pentax version.

Pentax score: 91%
Comment - "Real-world pictures are very sharp and do not suffer from any obvious colour fringes."

Samsung score: 84%
Comment - "Lack of critical sharpness, fringing at corners"

....I am sorry, but you really, really cannot compare lenses using a horribly over simplified percentage score system from some dubious magazine.

Virtually all lens tests are dodgy at best. Most use far too simplistic testing methology and only use ONE example of each lens...this is a statistically speaking, very shoddy testing regime which cannot throw up any meaningful result and does not bear close scrutiny.

Everyone glosses over, or conveniently forgets that the small differences between lenses can be differences between samples, or can be impossible to see in real world useage and that of FAR more importance is the ability of the photographer to use the lens to its best advantage....give a shooter with average technical ablity a host of Leica lenses and you will still see average results...

"That's because you only need them with JPEG, every PP you do and resave your image you've quality loss"

This is an often quoted downside of JPEG...however can you actually see the so-called quality loss?

Suggest you read the JPEG v RAW article by Lee Frost in the March 2010 copy of Black + White photography magazine...it dispels some JPEG/RAW myths.

cheers..

You dont need to spend much at all....

check out this thread with my responses lower down the thread;

http://photo.net/canon-fd-camera-forum/00OVKc

cheers Steve.M.

I would cross out the PEN and enter CON instead...

John...got mixed up with other post, but this can be deleted..cheers Steve.M.

FAR FAR more important than the lenses is the photographers ability (or not) to use them. Far too many people spend endless pointless hours worrying about which lens to buy next instead of actually getting out and improving their technique...

This proves that all this so-called lens testing is an utter waste of time.