Dear Village Idiot, You can enlarge whatever image you want to as great a degree as you can, and you will not see any degradation of the image. Your lack of confidence is misplaced.
People have been photographing through lenses with dust and flecks between the elements since .... well, since there have been lenses. The chances are that what you see is greatly magnified, and that the speck is substantially smaller than what you perceive it to be. Over the years I have purchased a few lenses with small specks in them. They were rare or expensive lenses, including some hard-to-find super wide angle lenses. I picked 'em up for a song, used them for many years and made some great photos with them, some enlarged to fit on 20x24 paper, and in no instance was there any noticeable degradation because of the speck inside. A couple of the lenses were later sold for substantially more than was paid for them. Learn to relax and concentrate on making good, strong, compelling images. When you get to the point that your photographs are strong enough that the effects of a minute dust speck or fleck of paint becomes a detriment to the quality of your prints, then it's time to be concerned. I look forward to seeing your OOF light table pics. This may not be a good exercise for you, however, as it's entirely possible you may observe some light fall off at various apertures, which will give you even more to be concerned about. That you've never had anything in any of your lenses before suggests that they've not been used much or that you've not looked hard enough. PS: Do Village Idiots have names these days, or are they just referred to as the Village Idiot? I am curious why you choose to call yourself that. Shel > [Original Message] > From: (Village Idiot) > I have not seen any degradation in my results using this lens, but then I have not enlarged any photos from this lens either. > > I guess my real issue is I now have a lack of confidence in the lens. I was actually thinking of using the lens to photograph an out of focus light table and see if I can get the defect to show up. > > My very first lens, a Pentax 50mm F2 that came with my new ME Super some 23 > > years ago, has a black spec inside that is just big enough to see that it is > > triangularly shaped. I have never had anything in any of my lenses before
