Lens Glossary

[MartinL]

For sure, someone has started this glossary already, so just add my contribution (and yours.) This comes from recently selling some lenses and purchasing a Summilux 50, 1.4 and a 135, 2.8 for my new M9P. Along with, of course, lots of reading and trying to unfathom what on earth people are talking about. Here's my contribution:

Character is the configuration of lens flaws that makes for familiar, nostalgic rendering of images.
Clinical is a lens that is so sharp and flawless that I wish I could afford it.

 

[sepiareverb]

Bokeh is that wonderfully messy, greasy or swirly stuff in the background or foreground.

 

[Roger Hicks]

Plastic is the old term for 'giving a three-dimensional effect, akin to a 'magic window' (http://www.rogerandfrances.com/subscription/ps magic window 1.html ). Alternatively it is the new term for cheap zooms.

Drawing is the amount of distortion (pincushion or barrel), or, in some usages, microcontrast.

Overpriced may mean (a) more than I want to pay or (b) more than I can afford or (c), what I really mean is (b) but I'm trying to kid myself and/or other people that it's (a).

Sharp and tonally exquisite usually mean "Not too bad compared with an average-to-good lens on a larger format".

Then there's I like it... which can mean "I'm used to it" or "It's all I can afford" or "I've never tried much else" or "I'm a reverse snob" or, sometimes, even "I like it..."

Cheers,

R.

 

[John E Earley]

A sleeper - a little known lens with exceptional qualities and a low price or alternatively a slow but overpriced lens that I have for sale on eBay.

And I confess to having used the term.

An alternative definition of plastic - a type of sheet or roll upon which an emulsion is deposited or alternatively, the use of future labor or capital credits used to purchase photo gear today that we frequently don't need and will not use.

 

[MartinL]

Taste in lenses, as with much other photo gear, never carries a positive connotation, and is often preceded by the unspoken modifier, "crappy." Ex., "If it makes you happy, everyone's entitled to his own taste."