My order of requirements for a lens goes something like: focal length, size/weight, aperture, price, sharpness. Focal length is the priority because that defines how the pictures frame and look. I'd rather have a small, light lens that isn't quite as fast as a big heavy lens. never having used a lens that hasn't been sharp enough I put cost above that in terms of importance. Everyone else's seems to go for: sharpness, aperture (as fast as possible), focal length, size/weight, price.
Someone was wondering which lens they ought to get as a 'walkabout'. The big heavy pro spec 24-70 or something smaller/lighter or maybe with a bigger zoom range. I proffered my suggestion of the 28-300 and got shot down by someone who said it was far inferior in sharpness to the 24-70. Not that he had both to make the comparison because he was self-confessedly very picky about image quality and wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. There's a word for people like him. I've used both lenses and can't see a hole lot of difference between them. Where the 'crap' lens really wins is at anything over 70mm! For a walkabout lens a wide zoom range is more useful to my way of thinking. But then there are a lot of digital age photographers who are happy to 'crop to 'zoom'. Needless to say the guy who had asked for advice had really made his mind up in advance because he went for the big heavy lens saying that image quaity really mattered to him. I feel like an outsider at times!
What prompted this mini-rant (which I think I've had before...) was a lens that is very popular among Nikon users. The 85mm f1.8. It's popular because it's compact, sharp, has good 'bokeh' and is very reasonably priced. I bought mine as I thought it would go perfectly with my 28mm and 50mm lenses to complete my 'dream team'. The trouble is that, for me, it's neither fish nor fowl. Sure it's everything it's praised for being. Trouble is that it doesn't focus very close and I find it is either too short or too long. Usually too short. Maybe if I took a lot of portraits of people it would be useful, but I don't. So it isn't.I went out this afternoon to try and get into using it. But I had a new toy in my pocket and ended up taking the majority of photographs with that. You see the compact in my pocket has the equivalent of a 28mm lens. Now some people say that is too wide for a general purpose lens. I don't find it so. During my two delves into the murky world of mirrorless cameras I almost always had a lens with that angle of view attached and didn't find it too wide at all. I like the perspective that 28mm gives. You can get in close to things and get stuff in the background out of focus enough to be undistracting yet readable . Or you can take in a wider scene with more in relatively sharp focus.
Looking at some Tony Ray-Jones pictures when I got home I realised that he must have had some influence on me as he made pictures in which there was a lot going on. And all of it in reasonable focus. In fact when I look at quite a lot of older pictures in the street and documentary modes I see that this is a common trait. yet today, even in journalistic pictures, subject isolation through depth of field has become a common feature. This device, like all devices, has its place, but it cuts out information. And I think photographs are all about supplying visual information.
New toys have to be played with. At the end of the pier I had a play with motion blur when I spotted the roulette wheel in the 'penny arcade'. While I was messing about a young lad popped into the frame and peered at the wheel. A little bit of luck turned a technical exercise into a picture.
Why the new toy? I'd used my fishing compact round town a few weeks back and found it more useful and more fun than using a DSLR.The only down side being the 'compact camera look' the files have. Just too much depth of field and an artificial sharpness that I don't mind in my fishing photos, but don't care for in the pictures I take as pictures. It also has that annoying 4:3 aspect ratio which is fine in a vertical orientation, but drives me nuts in horizontal.
I did quite like the Fuji X-E2 with the 18mm lens attached. It had the 28mm angle of view and the 3:2 aspect ratio, but the colours and look of the pics didn't please me so I got rid. I like the colours from my fishing camera which is a Nikon, like my DSLRs. Ever since it came out I'd fancied the Coolpix A, but at damn near a grand on launch it was too rich for me as a 'pocket' camera. Not proving to have been a marketing success, and the silver body less popular than the black, it seemed too good to miss now Amazon are selling them off for less than I paid for my fishing compact. Down in price to less than a third of the launch price!
After just two days with the camera it's too early to say if I'll take to it. There are the usual compact camera handling foibles - like no viewfinder and slowish focusing - but the files can't be faulted. 3:2 ratio, APS size too, ISO 3200 perfectly acceptable for my needs, colours that match those from my DSLRs, a lens that's easily sharp enough. It will enable me to integrate photographs from both compact and DSLR in the same sets without jarring (to my eyes) like the Fuji did. Did I mention that the 28mm field of view suits me?
More from 'playtime' here.
No comments:
Post a Comment