This could be an interesting conversation. It is a bit like being caught between the devil and the deep-blue sea. On the one hand we have lenses (like the Otus and the Coastal Optics) that are highly corrected, although the way Bjørn speaks of the Otus series, I used to speak of the Coastal Optics 60mm APO, so I can understand. I always felt that the CO 60mm was just what it was designed to be, a forensic lens.
Highly corrected lenses do go to great efforts to remove anything that would add this or that distortion, by definition. My question is: by correcting a lens, are we removing character? If we define lenses with character as those that have “interesting” distortion (whatever you want to call what we correct lenses for), then there can be no argument.
I have gone to great length to find lenses with “character,” as I define the term. Glass like the Noct Nikkor, the El Nikkor 105mm APO, the CRT-Nikkor, the CV-125mm and many others have loads of character and I love them for it. At the same time, I have sold off many lenses that also have uncorrected “character,” but just not the character that distinguishes a lens in my eyes.
There is no doubt that the “eyes” have it, and the last I looked, we each see differently. That being said, personally, I tend to view a highly corrected lens such as the Otus series as offering me a clean canvas for painting on rather than some kind of dull vanilla pudding.
In my work, which is all I have, I go back and forth between “character” lenses like the various exotics and the corrected lens series like the Otus, which are my canvas or work lenses. I use both types all the time. My old work lenses used to be the Nikon trifecta, the 14-24mm, the 24-70mm, and the 70-200mm, but their “character” and degree of correction gave way to the Otus series in my work.
However, I don’t find the Otus lenses dull or unexciting, but just the opposite. Maybe I need new glasses.
