I have difficulty to quantifies the “build quality†of one product. Whathever it is. E.g cars, kitchen equipment, computer, camera, lens etc. The difficulty that I have is that products that look descent and solid to me break easy in real life usage.
E.g my Tamron fall twice from tripod in early days when I just learned to use my new tripods and quick releases. Funny enough the lens is still function as good as new. IEEE12233 tests show no difference between shoots taken when the lens was brand new and now.
My subjective filling is that Tamron build quality is bad – well done, precise but plastic.
My feeling match most of Internet reviews of this lens in terms of IQ and BQ.
My Tokina 100Macro seems to be build as tank, however the AF/MF gets stucked when my camera back fail from 30cm on parquet floor.
Cars are other area. What is better build Mercedes from years 70s 80s or new Toyota build almost from plastic like oldie Trabants. My real life experience and ADAC fails reports shows opposite to the subjective feeling. Funny enough my feeling match most of the cars reviews.
I wonder what other PZ fellows think about it.
Regards,
Miro
PS : last week was forum discussion here about Build quality stars. I didn’t respond to it for reason described above.
Not an easy topic.
It depends on were you come from.
When you have spend some time with a D700 and 28-70/2.8 and then go back to a D40 with 18-55 - well...build quality sucks.
But when you compare the price and what you can do with the cheap one in every day situations it does not look that bad.
Same with the 55-300VR. Feels horrible plastic, but good optical quality.
I recently had an old Zenit SLR in my hands. Solid as a rock.
But you should not compare to those old metal parts.
Plastic is everywhere and it gets better every year.
Cars are made of plastic more and more as you already mentioned.
Plastic is not just Plastic. There are huge differences. Think of Playmobil for kids - rock solid and long lasting plastic, even when mistreated.
The new problem is the surface structure. With new nano structure techniques even a bad plastic can look and feel good.
So I really don't know how to judge, except by a longterm test.
anyscreenamewilldo
Unregistered
well i brought a, ahem, samsung fridge . . .
nice shiny plastic, good specs - but it failed after 3 months -
now, it has a 1 yr warranty . . . but . . . they never called me back about it, and they kept on never calling me back . . . so i put the local 'be-nice-to-me-police' on to them and now they've called me back three times - so nice of them and they say a new fridge is coming . . . is coming . . . is coming . . .
so here's hoping, but it's only been 5 weeks so far -
- yep, true story - silly me -
- local topic? -
lenses?? - so far za zeiss is v nice and sigma's so swell -
camera?? - sony is super, apart from the blue channel sometimes wanting to go it's own way . . . but no worries, ta very much
Well, we've a couple of "formal" criterias which we weight into our ratings.
- weather sealing
- constant physical length
- extends based on a mono-cam (one inner tube)
- extends based on a duo-cam (two inner tubes)
- wobbles when extended (tightness)
- body material (metal, high/low quality plasitcs)
- control ring implementation
- button implementation
These are, of course, only "outer" criterias. We've no idea about the inner construction. It could well be that a full-metal lens has lots of cheap inner plastic parts or vice versa. It is also well-known that plastic absorbs shocks much better than hard metal. Same goes for light-weight vs heavy-weight lenses. The mechanism which centers the individual elements is also something beyond our evaluation scope, of course.
Thanks for input.
Klaus
I have mixed up the build quality rating with MTBF./ Mean time between failures /
Actually these two parameters are inversely proportional. For example when we are talking about lens service experience – the people with L lenses are the most experienced people. I have never heard that somebody have broken the kit lens.
The same is valid for cars – Porsche’s ,Volvo’s or Mercedes owners have bigger experience with service than Toyota owners. At least this is what ADAC says.
ASW : I don’t have any experience with Zeiss, but old sigma’s tend to collect a lot of dust. I was keen for dust coming from the zoom barel but my experience told me that dust under the AF ring is even worse. Happily I have handy brother who cleans my sigmas once per 5 years. Internet forums are full with AF problems with old sigmas. My epxeriance with one S70-200 and S-10-20 is that after cleaning the Piezo motor the AF is spot on again.
Deroppi: I don’t have experience with Nikons. But canon cannon entry level dSLRa are well build - xxx series. This is not only my opinion. The Outdoor Photographer magazines advice to use entry level dSLRs for long trips. They said that with little care they are ready to sustain in any outdoor conditions.
I agree with you about plastic.
Thanks ,
Miro
This isn't so much of a surprise and one of the reasons why I'm also not positive about IS for instance. Other than adding even more elements, it adds complexity - especially on zoom lenses.
IS-less lenses show, on the average, a lesser tendency towards centering defects.
It is obvious:
Canon 70-200/2.8 IS II: 23 elements
Canon 70-200/2.8: 18 elements
Canon 70-200/4 IS: 20 elements
Canon 70-200/4: 16 elements
08-15-2013, 08:28 AM
(This post was last modified: 08-15-2013, 08:49 AM by mst.)
Just look at the FX review of the Nikon 70-200 VR. It may have been simply bad luck, but I never had to go through so many samples to find a good one.
On the other hand: I have handled several units of the 70-200 VR II so far, none of which had centering issues. Same applies to the 70-200/4 VR I tested, but that was just a single copy.
-- Markus
Editor
opticallimits.com
