Are primes brighter and sharper than wide open zooms

Floyd Davidson wrote:

It does not necessarily have to be that one grew out of the
other. However, I *don't* see them as totally unrelated.
Rather, it is a logical progression.

When you have two terms that mean different things, and you change one of
them to mean the same thing as the other, that's not progression, it's
regression. It's entropy. It's loss of meaning and precision for absolutely
no good reason -- there was no need to change the meaning of the term, since
another perfectly good one already existed.

And now you have what used to be a perfectly good term, "prime lens", that,
having become ambiguous, is now *useless* for *either* of the meanings we
are talking about here. It is a dead term. It can't be used to mean
"fixed focal length" because that's stupid and it doesn't mean that; and
it can't be used with its original meaning because everyone thinks it
means something else.

Not every change in language is "evolution", or anything approaching a good
thing. The changes made by marketing people, for example, are always bad.
Marketing is responsible for more abuses of our language than anything else.
Evolution adds something; all this does is remove.

--
Jeremy |

Jeremy Nixon wrote:
Floyd Davidson wrote:

It does not necessarily have to be that one grew out of the
other. However, I *don't* see them as totally unrelated.
Rather, it is a logical progression.

When you have two terms that mean different things, and you change one of
them to mean the same thing as the other, that's not progression, it's
regression. It's entropy. It's loss of meaning and precision for absolutely
no good reason -- there was no need to change the meaning of the term, since
another perfectly good one already existed.

Right, but since that is *not* what happened, what's the point?

And now you have what used to be a perfectly good term, "prime lens", that,
having become ambiguous, is now *useless* for *either* of the meanings we
are talking about here. It is a dead term. It can't be used to mean

Why would you say that? Prime had several meanings long before
this happened, and yet you say it was not ambiguous then but is
now???? That's not logical.

"fixed focal length" because that's stupid and it doesn't mean that; and

Clearly it *does* mean that and *is* being commonly used with
that meaning more often than not.

it can't be used with its original meaning because everyone thinks it
means something else.

And just as clearly it *is* still sometimes being used with the
previous meaning (which is *not* "its original meaning"). As
with the other various meanings, context is everything...

Not every change in language is "evolution", or anything approaching a good
thing.

You need to look up the word "evolution" and find out what it
means. And as to whether change is "a good thing", that is
subjective and your opinion that it is not really isn't worth a
plugged nickel. (Neither is mine, so don't be upset that the
world continues to turn even if we don't like it.)

The changes made by marketing people, for example, are always bad.

As a guy who worked my whole life in Operations (and never
stopped making fun of Marketing), even I have to tell you that
you've over stated the case there.

Marketing is responsible for more abuses of our language than anything else.

We can probably agree on that one! But that doesn't mean I'm
not going to accept that those changes are *fact*.

Evolution adds something; all this does is remove.

You can try to justify your bias with false statements like that
one all you like, but the world still turns, and language
evolution continues...

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Nostrobino" wrote:
In this case "prime" is clearly used to ditinguish the main lens
from the supplementary lens.


Thanks to both of you. These tend to support my recollection that this
misuse of "prime" first appeared c. 1990, and also that the term was still
in correct use at the same time. I would be very interested to see if
anyone
can produce a substantially earlier example of "prime" being used to mean
fixed focal length.

What difference does that make? As long as you want to claim it
means "the term was still in correct use", you are simply wrong
no matter what.

The "correct" use has evolved.

No, it has not. As shown repeatedly, it is still in current use and means
the same thing it always meant.

Nor is there any obvious way that "fixed focal length" could evolve into
"prime." You might as well expect a horse to evolve into a cabbage.



On the other hand, it you rid yourself of this insistance that
whatever the use was at some specific point in time is "correct"
as opposed to all evolution that happened at a later date being
"incorrect", then yes it is interesting to catalog the
evolutionary process to see when it changed and to compare that
to the external factors that guided that evolutionary process

Go ahead, outline "that evolutionary process" for me. I'd sure like to see
how you get "fixed focal length" to evolve into "prime." What might the
intermediate steps look like, I wonder?

N.

"Nostrobino" wrote:
I acknowledge the correction, but adaptation does imply improvement at least
with respect to the situation being adapted to. (Why else adapt?) I don't
see that using a term incorrectly, out of ignorance of that term's actual
meaning, can reasonably be described as "adaptation."

Your definition of "improvement" is highly suspect then.
Likewise, your use of "adaption" is not correct either, because
evolution is a *change*, and that is not necessarily either an
adaption or an improvement. It is just different, and that's
all.

Here's a quote for you:

"From Moby Thesaurus II by Grady Ward, 1.0[moby-thes]:

41 Moby Thesaurus words for "evolution":
addition, advance, approximation, beautification, change,
developing, development, differentiation, division,
elaboration, embellishment, equation, evolvement, evolving,
extrapolation, flowering, formation, growing, growth,
integration, interpolation, inversion, involution,
maturation, multiplication, notation, perfection,
phylogeny, practice, production, progress, progression,
proportion, reduction, refinement, ripening, seasoning,
subtraction, transformation, unfolding, upgrowth

Do you see any indication that either "adaption" or "improvement"
could be correctly inferred from "evolution"?

Shortening a term because it no longer needs to be full length to be
understood is a natural form of such adaptation. For example, submarine

Fine. What has this or the rest of your discussion got to do with
the entirely different case of the use of "prime" to mean a fixed
focal length lens vs a zoom lens?

boats quickly became "submarines," and automatic pistols became
"automatics." In both cases the adjective became the (and replaced) the
noun. That's evolution.

Yes, that is evolution, but that is *not* the only type of
evolution possible. Just because that paradigm is evolution
does not exclude something different from also being evolution.
That's not valid logic.

To take "prime lens," a term that already had a
specific technical meaning, and give it an entirely different and unrelated
meaning, is not evolution in any way that I can see.

Well, lets apply logic to your statement then, and see what we
get: you can't see.

There is no other logically valid conclusion which your
statement can lead to.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Nostrobino" wrote:
"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Nostrobino" wrote:
In this case "prime" is clearly used to ditinguish the main lens
from the supplementary lens.


Thanks to both of you. These tend to support my recollection that this
misuse of "prime" first appeared c. 1990, and also that the term was still
in correct use at the same time. I would be very interested to see if
anyone
can produce a substantially earlier example of "prime" being used to mean
fixed focal length.

What difference does that make? As long as you want to claim it
means "the term was still in correct use", you are simply wrong
no matter what.

The "correct" use has evolved.

No, it has not. As shown repeatedly, it is still in current use and means
the same thing it always meant.

You continue to make logically invalid statements that are
patently absurd.

There is no *one single meaning* for the word "prime". The fact
that there are half a dozen or more previously used and still
commonly used meanings does not even begin to negate the simple
*fact* that you continue to try denying: it has evolved a *new*
meaning, which is now in relatively common use.

Common use makes it "correct", and indicates the language has
evolved. The opposite of that is *your* use of unique definitions
for "adaption" and "evolution", which are incorrect simply because
nobody other than you understands them to have the meanings you
have indicated (in a previous article to which I have just posted
a response).

Nor is there any obvious way that "fixed focal length" could evolve into
"prime." You might as well expect a horse to evolve into a cabbage.

Look, it *exists*, so you can't say that it is impossible. It's
there, and being used. Take you ear plugs out, throw away the
blinders, and get your hands away from your eyes. You are *not*
changing reality by refused to admit it exists.

On the other hand, it you rid yourself of this insistance that
whatever the use was at some specific point in time is "correct"
as opposed to all evolution that happened at a later date being
"incorrect", then yes it is interesting to catalog the
evolutionary process to see when it changed and to compare that
to the external factors that guided that evolutionary process

Go ahead, outline "that evolutionary process" for me. I'd sure like to see
how you get "fixed focal length" to evolve into "prime." What might the
intermediate steps look like, I wonder?

I could care less whether you wonder about it or not. And I'm not
going to catalog it for you. The *fact* that it exists is undeniable,
and therefore it *did* evolve.

Even if you *are* blind.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Peter" wrote:
Floyd Davidson wrote:

The "correct" use has evolved. Get used to it because it
won't regress.

The word "evolved" suggests that one use of the term grew out of
the other. This does not appear to be the case. Both uses of
"prime lens" appear to be current and I believe that they are
almost totally unrelated to each other.

It does not necessarily have to be that one grew out of the
other.

It sure does, if it evolved.


However, I *don't* see them as totally unrelated.
Rather, it is a logical progression.

That's what I want to see: that logical progression from "fixed focal
length" to "prime."



And the newer meaning
does not necessarily negate correctness of the older meaning
any more than and older meaning makes a new one incorrect.

For instance in:

http://www.zeiss.de/de/photo/home_e.nsf/1e142195de4e09fac12566fe003b2618/49143eeb494bfa7bc12569770054c1a7/$FILE/ATTBESGB/CLN8.pdf

I read:

"With the Zeiss Mutagon 0.6x there is now a wide-angle converter
available which matches the optical performance level of the Zeiss
Vario-Sonnar 1,7-2,2/3,3-33 lenses used in high quality digital
camcorders from Sony. . . . The Mutagon is threaded to the front
of the prime lens, as distinguished from the well-known Zeiss Mutar
which is inserted between the lens and the camera."

This clearly shows that the term "prime lens" has been in recent
use to describe a zoom lens when used with a supplementary lens.

So? I could probably come up with a single paragraph that used
at least 4 or 5 different meanings for the word "prime". Does
that make the more recently evolved meanings incorrect just
because there is also an older meaning?

Like most words in the English language, "prime" has many different
meanings. But not an *infinite* number of meanings; you cannot legitimately
just add new meanings willy-nilly because you happen to like them, or
because you support someone else's usage based on his misunderstanding of
the term in the first place.

Some people misuse words because they misunderstand them, and apparently
think such misuse is perfectly legitimate and the actual meaning is
unimportant. This is a somewhat annoying thing, and many years ago I coined
the term "Humpty-Dumptyism" to describe it. (I must admit I'm somewhat
disappointed that Humpty-Dumptyism has not, after all this time, really
caught on as an expression. :-) )

For those not very familiar with Lewis Carroll, I should explain (much
abridged):
Humpty Dumpty, sitting on his wall, had a conversation with Alice in which
he used a certain word in an incomprehensible way. Alice told him she didn't
understand his use of that word. Humpty then gave her a quite lengthy, and
thoroughly wrong, definition for the word. "But the word doesn't mean that
at all," Alice protested. "The word means," Humpty replied, "what I choose
it to mean."

N.

"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Nostrobino" wrote:
"Floyd Davidson" wrote in message
...
"Nostrobino" wrote:
In this case "prime" is clearly used to ditinguish the main lens
from the supplementary lens.


Thanks to both of you. These tend to support my recollection that this
misuse of "prime" first appeared c. 1990, and also that the term was
still
in correct use at the same time. I would be very interested to see if
anyone
can produce a substantially earlier example of "prime" being used to
mean
fixed focal length.

What difference does that make? As long as you want to claim it
means "the term was still in correct use", you are simply wrong
no matter what.

The "correct" use has evolved.

No, it has not. As shown repeatedly, it is still in current use and means
the same thing it always meant.

You continue to make logically invalid statements that are
patently absurd.

There is no *one single meaning* for the word "prime". The fact
that there are half a dozen or more previously used and still
commonly used meanings does not even begin to negate the simple
*fact* that you continue to try denying: it has evolved a *new*
meaning, which is now in relatively common use.

That's not evolution. That's a misunderstanding which through repetition
(mostly thanks to Usenet) has unfortunately become fairly common.

There have been many other terms which through misunderstanding and
repetition became frequently misused. In fact, several *lists* of misused
words have been compiled over the years.



Common use makes it "correct", and indicates the language has
evolved.

No. The popularity of some misusage does not automatically make it correct,
as you seem to believe. Look in any authoritative dictionary that has usage
notes, and you will find misusages that have enjoyed great popularity for
many, many years and are just still as wrong as they ever were.

N.

Floyd Davidson wrote:

It does not necessarily have to be that one grew out of the
other. However, I *don't* see them as totally unrelated.

Ok, I'll bite. What relationship do you see between the term
"prime lens" used to mean the main lens as opposed to a supplementary
lens or attachment, and the term "prime lens" used to mean a
fixed focal length lens?

Rather, it is a logical progression.

Again, what is the logical connection between the two?


And the newer meaning
does not necessarily negate correctness of the older meaning
any more than and older meaning makes a new one incorrect.

Of course. Though having a word with multiple meanings or
an unclear meaning within a technical lexicon could create
problems. That's part of why I think "prime lens" in the
sense of "fixed focal length" while a useful bit of slang until
someone comes up with something better, shouldn't be regarded
as a part of the proper technical vocabulary of photography.

So? I could probably come up with a single paragraph that used
at least 4 or 5 different meanings for the word "prime".

It would be interesting to see such a paragraph in which
at least four out of the five uses had no obvious connection
to the concept of "first" indicated by the word "prime."
I would like to see you try.

Does
that make the more recently evolved meanings incorrect just
because there is also an older meaning?

No, but creating additional meanings for an existing technical
term could be a problem. It makes a lot of sense to deprecate
the use of a new meaning for a technical term if it is seen as
beginning to erode the usefulness of the established
technical use of the term.

Language just doesn't work that way. As the late Steve Allen
used to say on TV about timing being everything in comedy,
context is everything in word usage.

Right, if context is not actually everything, it is a lot of it.
I've got no strong objection to "prime lens" as a handy bit
of slang to refer to fixed focal length lenses, but if it starts
to look as if some people are treating it as if it were a proper
part of the technical lexicon then it may be time to object.

Peter.
--

"Nostrobino" wrote:
"Floyd Davidson" wrote:
The "correct" use has evolved.

No, it has not. As shown repeatedly, it is still in current use and means
the same thing it always meant.

You continue to make logically invalid statements that are
patently absurd.

There is no *one single meaning* for the word "prime". The fact
that there are half a dozen or more previously used and still
commonly used meanings does not even begin to negate the simple
*fact* that you continue to try denying: it has evolved a *new*
meaning, which is now in relatively common use.

That's not evolution. That's a misunderstanding which through repetition
(mostly thanks to Usenet) has unfortunately become fairly common.

Well, you can say it isn't evolution from now until the sun
freezes over, but just as you have misused other words, you are
misusing that one too.

*It is evolution.*

There have been many other terms which through misunderstanding and
repetition became frequently misused. In fact, several *lists* of misused
words have been compiled over the years.

When the new usage becomes common enough that virtually everyone
understands what the meaning is, and people use it because it is
understood... that *is* evolution whether you like it or not.

Common use makes it "correct", and indicates the language has
evolved.

No. The popularity of some misusage does not automatically make it correct,
as you seem to believe. Look in any authoritative dictionary that has usage
notes, and you will find misusages that have enjoyed great popularity for
many, many years and are just still as wrong as they ever were.

So just show us examples... ;-)

In fact the dictionary is chock full of examples of words that
now have different meanings than they originally did. Dang near
every word in an English dictionary fits that description! Some
have even come to mean exactly the opposite of what they once
did.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)

"Nostrobino" wrote:
"Floyd Davidson" wrote:
So? I could probably come up with a single paragraph that used
at least 4 or 5 different meanings for the word "prime". Does
that make the more recently evolved meanings incorrect just
because there is also an older meaning?

Like most words in the English language, "prime" has many different
meanings. But not an *infinite* number of meanings; you cannot legitimately
just add new meanings willy-nilly because you happen to like them, or
because you support someone else's usage based on his misunderstanding of
the term in the first place.

You are again abusing facts. *I* have not somehow willy-nilly added a
new meaning. You are just willy-nilly claiming that common usage doesn't
equate to correctness, and that is an absurd statement on its face when
applied to language.

Some people misuse words because they misunderstand them, and apparently
think such misuse is perfectly legitimate and the actual meaning is
unimportant.

Yes. You have misused "adaption", "improvement", and "evolution" in
previous articles. That certainly doesn't make your usage correct, nor
will it make your logic valid.

But in the case of "prime", it is being *widely* used with the meaning
you claim is incorrect.

Hence we just add it to the list of words *you* cannot define correctly.

This is a somewhat annoying thing, and many years ago I coined
the term "Humpty-Dumptyism" to describe it. (I must admit I'm somewhat
disappointed that Humpty-Dumptyism has not, after all this time, really
caught on as an expression. :-) )

So we'll add another...

For those not very familiar with Lewis Carroll, I should explain (much
abridged):
Humpty Dumpty, sitting on his wall, had a conversation with Alice in which
he used a certain word in an incomprehensible way. Alice told him she didn't
understand his use of that word. Humpty then gave her a quite lengthy, and
thoroughly wrong, definition for the word. "But the word doesn't mean that
at all," Alice protested. "The word means," Humpty replied, "what I choose
it to mean."

And there we see exactly what is wrong with your approach to
language.

When the premises for your "logic" are based on words that mean
exactly what you want them to mean, but have a different meaning
to everyone else, your "logic" is invalid.

And I think we've seen enough of this thread to have drawn some
very well defined lines. Hence I see no point in further
discussion at this time. If you do come up with somethingr
rational, I'll respond though.

--
FloydL. Davidson http://www.apaflo.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)