evermore

One thing you will find, in practical terms, is that those pinpoints of light against an even dark background is that optical aberrations like coma and astigmatism can stand out quite starkly. Even good lenses shot at or close to wide open can give you star images that look like seagulls or UFO's that grow larger as you get away from the centre of the image. As you might expect the effect tends to be more pronounced with wider angle lenses. Closing down a couple stops can have a dramatic effect. Of course this will extend exposures which may mean either going to higher iso's if you were hoping to eliminate obvious star trails, or living with funky shaped stars.

The other thing to keep in mind is that, if you are checking out technical articles about exposure it can make a great deal of difference whether the author is talking about film or digital. Film suffers from reciprocity failure when exposures get longer than about 1 second. Thus doubling the length of the exposure will no longer give you a 1ev increase in the image. How much you'll have to increase the exposure to achieve this depends, among other things, on the particular film you're using. Digital sensors don't suffer from reciprocity failure.

I concur with those who have said we can't really count the Contax G-line as a failure. It's a little like watching a ship sink with one lifeboat still tethered to it and concluding there must have been something wrong with the lifeboat because it didn't float like the other lifeboats. The Leica was introduced in the 1920's (they weren't actually rangefinders until the 30's) when the idea was revolutionary and their success was enough to propel Ernst Leitz's company to a whole new level. By the time the Contax G1 was introduced 70-some years later the 35mm rangefinder was a niche market dominated by established (indeed, in the case of Leica, iconic) names. The company responsible for its introduction had a lot of other pokers in other fires. Though the DSLR era hadn't quite dawned the writing was clearly on the wall (perhaps not for Kyocera, but most of the rest of the world.) There was little threat of these new cameras turning the company (or at least the Contax name) around or even keeping it viable on its own. The best Kyocera could realistically hope was that the G-line would make positive contribution to Contax's bottom line, and for all we know it did. Had Contax gotten some other things right through the digital trasition years we might be talking about the features of the new G5 right now.

" "the 17-35/2.8, 28-70/2.8, ...will all lose value" - quite contrary.

 

These lenses were waiting for full size 35mm frame digital camera to arrive."

 

I believe the idea behind the release of the new lenses is that their optical designs are optimised for the demands of digital sensors. Thus if you kept the 17-35/2.8 or 28-70/2.8 in your bag waiting for 35mm size digital sensors now (or at least soon) the time has indeed come. But I suspect the original poster was right- their value as top performing exotic glass won't transfer to the digital realm. I can't see those who have forked out top dollar for the D3 stirring up much demand for lenses that put in a second class performance next to the new 14-24 and 24-70 (assuming these live up to expectations).

To ask only how philosphy informs photography misses at least half the point.