My simple closing thought, but it relates to what I said in the beginning of this thread - landscapes:
Here is a "Disney" fantasy that in my mind supports the logic of evaluating a lens or a camera at 100% zoom - the raw pixels:
Given: You have been honing your skills for years, you have your own web site and marketing engine, and one day you are out shooting and get the image the corporate world wants to hang on their boardroom wall! It must be clear, well balance and sharp as a tack as it has tree leaves, etc, in details in the distance they must have.
They say print me as large of an image as possible but they insist that it will be a sharp, crisp, balanced and detailed print rather than one that is just large, soft, mushy, etc..
Thus, both a lens evaluation and a camera evaluation at 100% does have a value as far as I'm concerned.
I'm less concerned with all of the rhetoric and more concerned on the actual quality of the pixels I have to start with to generate a print.
As I said a few pages back, probably my favorite image that I have ever shot is called "Glenn at High Shoals" taken in the northern part of GA.
At the time, my camera and lens were the best I was aware of at 100% pixel viewing, in my opinion (LOL): Hassie 500cm, 100mm T* lens and Leaf P45+.
My logic then, as it still is, was/is to take a short tele lens and a camera that both produce extremely sharp pixels and shoot multi rows of a scene, in this case two rows of 5 shots (3 deep each of the 10 frames, 0, 1+, 1-) to produce a file of huge size when balance and stitched.
I've printed this no where near as large as it can go as every inch of the digital file is tack sharp, but I have a big one over my fireplace and I enjoy it every day. I can get lost in it!!
As far as I'm concerned, enough said, and I'm sticking to my way of evaluating what I will accept from my gear.
Now, to finally get out to find and shoot that image "Disney" wants and quit wasting time!
Good shooting to ALL!