With the cleareyed understanding that this article is photographic clickbait/comment-bait...
Use gear that achieves the task at hand. Sometimes that needs an optically-correct lens, sometimes it doesn't. When Frank Thorp brings a Speed Graphic or a disposable camera carrying black-and-white film to the halls of Congress, it achieves a different way of seeing. The rest of the press corps brings us high-quality versions of more traditional images with modern cameras and glass. They all have important places.
For my photographic work, I'll generally prefer to work with lenses of higher optical-correctness, but understand when others don't. Bresson's “sharpness is a bourgeois concept" echoes in my mind at times as I work, reminding me that message trumps image quality most of the time.
Photography lends itself well to writing analogies -- you can write on paper with a crayon, a Sharpie, a Rotring, a word processor, a typewriter, fingerpaint, a Bic, LaTeX, a #2, a calligraphic brush, or chalk. They'll all write, perhaps even the same characters, in different ways. A master with any one of them will find ways to evoke the message they intend. So it is with lenses.
Use gear that achieves the task at hand. Sometimes that needs an optically-correct lens, sometimes it doesn't. When Frank Thorp brings a Speed Graphic or a disposable camera carrying black-and-white film to the halls of Congress, it achieves a different way of seeing. The rest of the press corps brings us high-quality versions of more traditional images with modern cameras and glass. They all have important places.
For my photographic work, I'll generally prefer to work with lenses of higher optical-correctness, but understand when others don't. Bresson's “sharpness is a bourgeois concept" echoes in my mind at times as I work, reminding me that message trumps image quality most of the time.
Photography lends itself well to writing analogies -- you can write on paper with a crayon, a Sharpie, a Rotring, a word processor, a typewriter, fingerpaint, a Bic, LaTeX, a #2, a calligraphic brush, or chalk. They'll all write, perhaps even the same characters, in different ways. A master with any one of them will find ways to evoke the message they intend. So it is with lenses.