[mvheyst]

The Photozone website is very useful for reviews on lenses.



I am looking for “Highly Recommended” lenses, and it doesn’t appear if your website has a list of all lenses that Photozone rated as “Highly Recommended”.



Would it be possible for Photozone to have a page where all the test results are summarised? (e.g. just the star ratings)

[Klaus]

[quote name='Exposure' timestamp='1310264352' post='9883']

The Photozone website is very useful for reviews on lenses.



I am looking for “Highly Recommended” lenses, and it doesn’t appear if your website has a list of all lenses that Photozone rated as “Highly Recommended”.



Would it be possible for Photozone to have a page where all the test results are summarised? (e.g. just the star ratings)

[/quote]



We are working on it but it will take a while.

The problem is that we've to transfer all the data into a database - this simply takes quite a while besides the usual work.



I reckon that we'll provide a static "Best of" list per system first.

[trefleenor]

Would love to see the best of or recommended lens page.

[mvheyst]

Dear Klaus



More than 800 persons viewed this topic. I believe this is a topic which interest many.



I believe your readers place your reviews in high regard, and it would make sense to have lists of highly recommended lenses.



The lists can be static.



Readers can also visit the " DXOMark " website for lens rankings. This website rank all lenses and camera censors.



I am also interested in pure "image quality" that a lens produces, irrespective of built quality. I believe these two needs to be addressed seperately.



(A poorly built lens may produce an excellent image quality, whilst a lens built like a tank may have a poorer image quality. The consumer should be able to make an informed choice.)



Thanks for the great work you have done with this website.

[Klaus]

We are in the process of migrating data to a database. You can already see the first results in the Micro-Four-Thirds section actually. At some stage we will have to migrate all the stuff to the DB but this simply requires some more time for preparations.

As of now I cannot project when this will all be in place.

Thereafter it will be easy to generate a list by rating or whatever (although I feel that this will be misleading to some degree).



That all said I'm sort of wondering why this is an urgent need anyway. After all we are usually talking about a handful of potential lenses for a specific task.



Klaus





[quote name='Exposure' timestamp='1316439553' post='11653']

Dear Klaus



More than 800 persons viewed this topic. I believe this is a topic which interest many.



I believe your readers place your reviews in high regard, and it would make sense to have lists of highly recommended lenses.



The lists can be static.



Readers can also visit the " DXOMark " website for lens rankings. This website rank all lenses and camera censors.



I am also interested in pure "image quality" that a lens produces, irrespective of built quality. I believe these two needs to be addressed seperately.



(A poorly built lens may produce an excellent image quality, whilst a lens built like a tank may have a poorer image quality. The consumer should be able to make an informed choice.)



Thanks for the great work you have done with this website.

[/quote]

[IanCD]

[quote name='Klaus' timestamp='1316441706' post='11654']

We are in the process of migrating data to a database. You can already see the first results in the Micro-Four-Thirds section actually. At some stage we will have to migrate all the stuff to the DB but this simply requires some more time for preparations.

As of now I cannot project when this will all be in place.

Thereafter it will be easy to generate a list by rating or whatever (although I feel that this will be misleading to some degree).



That all said I'm sort of wondering why this is an urgent need anyway. After all we are usually talking about a handful of potential lenses for a specific task.



Klaus

[/quote]

Hi Klaus,

I think maybe there are those of us who just like to see lists, e.g. where it's easy to compare key features of lenses... you might remember this was raised a couple of times a few months ago and I posted what I'd put together a while back from Photozone reviews, [url="http://forum.photozone.de/index.php?/topic/996-top-10-nikon-lenses/"]here[/url] (3rd post)

[Klaus]

[quote name='IanCD' timestamp='1316467525' post='11658']

Hi Klaus,

I think maybe there are those of us who just like to see lists, e.g. where it's easy to compare key features of lenses... you might remember this was raised a couple of times a few months ago and I posted what I'd put together a while back from Photozone reviews, [url="http://forum.photozone.de/index.php?/topic/996-top-10-nikon-lenses/"]here[/url] (3rd post)

[/quote]



Yes, sure this is understood. Such an overview is certainly interesting.



However, honestly, out of these hundreds of reviews we are usually talking about a very limited number of candidates which qualify for a certain use case. You will rarely follow the approach of buying lenses just because they are rated as being great.



Even so it is often not so easy. Take for instance the "portrait" scope. Just by the ratings you may conclude that -say- the Canon 70-200/2.8 L IS II is the best option. The 85/1.2 L II is rated much worse but from a creative standpoint it is actually superior to the zoom lens here.



So, yes, it is interesting to know the queens here but the beauties may still not be identical to those.

So rather than showing a plain list it would make more sense to provide a interpreted view.



Klaus

[IanCD]

[quote name='Klaus' timestamp='1316509546' post='11662']

Yes, sure this is understood. Such an overview is certainly interesting.



However, honestly, out of these hundreds of reviews we are usually talking about a very limited number of candidates which qualify for a certain use case. You will rarely follow the approach of buying lenses just because they are rated as being great.



Even so it is often not so easy. Take for instance the "portrait" scope. Just by the ratings you may conclude that -say- the Canon 70-200/2.8 L IS II is the best option. The 85/1.2 L II is rated much worse but from a creative standpoint it is actually superior to the zoom lens here.



So, yes, it is interesting to know the queens here but the beauties may still not be identical to those.

So rather than showing a plain list it would make more sense to provide a interpreted view.



Klaus

[/quote]

Hi Klaus,

I agree re the interpreted view...

Take UWAs for example...



A shortlist (for Nikon) - queens and others included - would look something like:

• Sigma AF 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSM 555g 106mm x 75mm [url="http://www.opticallimits.com/canon-eos/515-sigma816f4556apsc"]2010(May)[/url] Rating: ****/****/***** Highly Recommended
  
  
• Nikon AF-S 10-24 f3.5-4.5 DX 460g 87 x 82.5 [url="http://www.opticallimits.com/nikon--nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests/443-nikkor_1024_3545"] 2009(July)[/url] Rating: ***½/***/**½
  
  
• Tamron AF 10-24mm F/3.5-4.5 SP Di II LD Asph IF 406g 87 x 83 2009(Oct) Rating: ***½/***/**½
  
  
• Tamron 11-18mm
  
  
• Tokina AF 11-16mm f/2.8 AT-X Pro DX 560g 89 x 84 2008(May)
  
  
• Tokina AF 12-24mm f/4 AT-X Pro DX 570g 90 x 84 2006(July)
  
  
• Sigma AF 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 EX DG HSM 600g 103 x 87 2007(Apr)
  
  
• Nikon AF-S 12-24mm f/4G IF-ED DX 465g 2006(July)
  
  

It would be most useful to include the verdict summaries (and ‘Highly Recommended’ when it applies), with links to the full reviews, and add other fields, like filter size and APS-C equivalent FL.

With the functionality of searching on any field included, this will provide a really helpful way of accessing the relevant reviews, and referring back to them, when looking for a particular type of lens.

Ian

[sanseione]

I am a new photozone member and MFT user. I purchased an OMD 5 primarily due to size and our retirement travel. However, I am now studying photography and reading extensively. As I branch out and learn more I will want to purchase a few more lenses. I've already found my 45mm to long for some of the pictures I want to take. I read a few of your reviews and liked your somewhat critical analytic reviews. So I read on searching for the very best mft lenses to buy and found....I think only two or marginally three that met your approval. So my question is this. Is it really true that most of the mft lenses are shiet or is there another reasons why lenses other reviewers love, photozone thinks are just kinda ok? Because of the snsor size limitations I want to optimize everything with my equipment. By the way, so far I'm loving the Olympus. I look forward to your response.

[mst]

[quote name='Gary U' timestamp='1359124684' post='21527']

Is it really true that most of the mft lenses are shiet or is there another reasons why lenses other reviewers love, photozone thinks are just kinda ok?

[/quote]



Well, I guess there are two things you should be aware of. First, we use the full rating scale in our reviews, so if a lens is average, it will receive a corresponding rating here, while other review sites may rate average lenses much higher on their scale (because they probably don't really use their full scale, especially the bottom end).



In additition, please keep in mind that we do lab tests, so focus on the technical quality of a lens. Which is more or less the counterpart to "field reviews", which sort of are the other end of the range of reviews available out there.

There is no "right" or "wrong" recommendation which kind of reviews to prefer. Different kinds of reviews (and points of view) are publicly available and it more or less depends on you and your priorities concering lens quality, which approach to lens testing you prefer. Or suits your shooting needs better.



-- Markus