Regardless of our skill or prior knowledge, talking about photography also means talking about money. Professional photographers invest entire fortunes in specialized equipment, and prices can be so high that you can't help but wonder whether those sums really translate into performance. The folks at RocketJump Film School tried to settle that doubt a while back by comparing three lens lines whose cost ranges from 100 dollars to a chilling 25,000 dollars. Do you think you'll be able to see the difference?
An old saying claims that cheap ends up costing more, but at the end of the day, it always depends on each situation. How do we define quality? Can it be measured, or is it only verified over time? In some cases the difference is too obvious, while in others the doubt remains, even when there's a huge gap in prices. The cost-benefit ratio has always been hard to settle in the world of electronics. Manufacturers like to say that they try to cover all budgets, though we can't deny that in the process they generate quite a bit of confusion. Now let's shift that to photography. We still remember the story of the Canon EF 1200mm, but you don't have to make much of an effort to find lenses costing ten, twelve, or fifteen thousand dollars. The big question is: how do they justify such a price? Why is a five-thousand-dollar lens inferior? And what about a 150-dollar lens?
YouTube is full of lens tests, but most rely on focus charts. The people at RocketJump Film School basically decided to declare war on focus charts and do a perception test based on three lens lines: Canon EF, ranging from 100 to 400 dollars; Zeiss Compact Prime, between 5,000 and 7,000 dollars; and Zeiss Ultra Prime, with more than 25,000 dollars on its price tag. The first video invites you to run the experiment yourself: note which lens you think captured the scene, and check the results at the end.
The second video repeats the test with three participants: two digital photography professionals, and someone who has no idea about cameras. Did the 'trained eye' manage to spot the differences?
If we go by the results... no. In fact, the accuracy percentages didn't exceed 45 percent, which could cast a shadow of doubt over the world of photography and its prices. However, in defense of the high-end market, the conditions each job imposes have a huge influence on the tools a photographer needs. For example, if your next series demands crossing half the planet and spending two weeks in the Gobi Desert photographing gazelles, you don't want to go with a hundred-dollar lens, period. And logically, there's also skill and ease of use. There's a chance I'd take horrible photos with a 20,000-dollar lens simply because I don't know how to use it, while someone who's spent years with a camera around their neck will get incredible shots with the hundred-dollar lens, though they'll have to work much harder to do it. Want to add your opinion? The comments are open.
