Do You Really Need To Spend Top Dollar To Buy The Best Lenses?

I made this image of this lighthouse in 2013 using a Lumix GX1 equipped with Lumix 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. Looking at it at 100% on my 27" monitor, it is not the sharpestphoto that could be. But downsampled to Instagram, Facebook, blog post size or just sharingthrough email, it is certainly more than sharp and detailed enough. No additional sharpening, noisereducing plug-ins were used, just normal editing in Lightroom Classic. (click to enlarge)The answer, of course, it depends…Depending upon what you do with your images, you may very well be able to save a lot of money by buying ‘good’ lenses versus the top-of-the-line lenses. My hypothesis is that if you almost always share your images on Instagram, Facebook, a blog or through email, I think absolutely you can get away with less expensive lenses and no one will be able to tell the difference…and you could save a lot of money. Consider this—the price tags on those "pro" lenses are absolutely out of sight for many of us. Why?…