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Prime Time


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I guess the proof of what you like is in what you buy. So far with my Sony A7RIII I have a Zeiss Batis 25mm f/2.0, a tiny Samyang 35mm f/2.8, and the Sony 85mm f/1.8. However my next lens will be the Sony 100-400mm.

 

I just couldn't see buying one of those large wide to tele zooms. The zoom are generally very sharp in the center but soft in the corner. I was able to get three lenses which are very sharp edge to edge wide open. In manual mode adjusting the focus ring causes the EVF to magnify. With manual focus lenses I can program one of the back buttons to magnify the EVF.

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why the issue of prime vs zoom seems to be treated as an either-or proposition when it comes to creativity?

 

Which is a completely right question indeed. It need not be either/or, nor do zooms affect creativity in any negative way by themselves.

 

Yet....speaking only for myself obviously, I tend to prefer primes, and manual focus primes more so than AF primes. It's partially because the ones I have tend to be chosen for character more than anything else, so they tend to push me to particular types of images where those lenses can leave their own distinct fingerprint in (hopefully) a good way. Whereas the zooms I have are chosen for versatile, ease of use and being allround reliable companions that will get me consistent results. And when I use the zooms, I sort of miss the previsualisation that I do have with primes - that is my flaw, not a lens fault, but it happens to work that way. Likewise, when I use AF lenses somehow I feel like I forgot to do something. Again, my quirk.

 

So, yes, somehow the primes I use seem to work better for me, just because things have worked out that way. I can completely imagine for others, their zoomlens of choice can have the exact same effect. It's not an either/or, but rather chosing gear carefully to match your own prefered way of working and the results you have in mind.

 

(No turntable, no fountain pen, no oldtimer car etc., so you can do all this, and still just generally feel fine with contemporary items)

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I have come to appreciate manual focusing of the old-fashioned mechanical variety. I was frustrated with AF, taking photos of flowers for example. They weren't sharp. I thought it was due to camera shake or wind, but that conclusion seems to be wrong. Prominent petals would be in focus, not the center. If you try to bracket a landscape with a tree branch, that branch often proves too attractive to the AF system. You think you have it, but you don't.

 

You can focus most AF lenses manually, but there are road blocks to success. Nikon AF lenses are mechanically coupled to the focusing ring, but the action is too fast for precise work. AF-S lenses have a good feel, but AF-D lenses are too loose, and often need a mode change on the lens or camera. Focus-by-wire works pretty well, but is confusing. The control is velocity-controlled. The faster you turn, the greater the effect. That doesn't jive with the way your hand-eye coordination prefers to work. Furthermore, there is often a dead band, so if the motion is too slow, nothing happens at all.

 

The camera plays a role too. The ground glass of a modern AF camera is not ground all that much, to enhance brightness at the expense of accuracy. You can do it, but you must carefully focus your eye on the imaging surface, preferably grid lines or other markings. Split prisms require an edge with high contrast, which is subject to the same problem AF encounters. They don't work well for fine details. Rangefinders are more accurate for short lenses, but only if your eyes are in good shape. RF's may not have enough accuracy for longer lenses, or lenses with a shallow DOF. With astigmatism, I see double images, so the double image in a Leica, for example, never merges.

 

Mirrorless cameras are much more effective, either through peaking (edge enhancement) or digital magnification. I use the latter exclusively, but programmed to a button rather than motion of the lens barrel (a Sony option). That way I can compose the shot better, and even focus pretty well in the un-magnified screen, before fine tuning with magnification. If you jump right into magnification, it's hard to tell if it's the right spot in the overall composition.

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Moving on, why not use a fixed lens camera instead of prime lenses? The feet get a lot more exercise?

My feet have been well exercised for six decades and I have and continue to use both types of cameras.

 

As for walking and autofocus, I prefer to do both for myself.

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Getting back to the subject, there's nothing outdated about prime lenses. If we adhere to the fiction that mirrorless is all about being small and light, they seem to be appropriate. Best of all, two generations (or more) of legacy lenses can still be used on a modern camera.

Well, generally, they are smaller and lighter...

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Prime lenses are not necessarily small and light. Some can be quite large in order to achieve faster speed, quicker focusing, and often a higher level of correction. Super telephotos are inherently large, but we see this trend in lenses in the normal range, say under 105 mm. Zeiss Otus lenses for DSLR's would fall in this category, along with Sigma "ART" lenses for both DSLR's and MILC's. Apart from super tele's, Nikon and Canon have shown little interest in what one might call "super normal" lenses. Perhaps there was little need in a world of 12 to 20 MP cameras. Sony, in particular, is paying attention, with over a dozen native and third party lenses in the "super normal" category. Nikon, Canon and Sony all have high resolution sensors, approaching 50 MP and stepping in the medium format sandbox, and new challenges for lenses.
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Ed said: Prime lenses are not necessarily small and light

My Helios 40 (85/1.5) is pretty big; it always makes me grin, exchanging it for the Industar-50 (tiny 50/3.5).

 

You don't often get something for nothing. A lens that only does one focal length is probably pretty well designed at that length; is you ask it to do more than that, the designer has probably had to compromise somewhere (or charge you more). A zoom is probably really good somewhere in its range, and maybe good most of the way along; but a zoom that I can afford is quite probably lousy somewhere in the range, too.

Most of the cameras I have are too old to have zooms anyhow. When I take out one of the ones which do, I sometimes forget that zooming is possible, and startle myself with it.

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@ed

True, not necessarily small and light. The Fuji 23 1.4 while not heavy, is fairly good size. DSLR tele's generally are big and some of them huge. But as I said "generally" Mirrorless cameras and their lenses are smaller and lighter. You can get a 600 mm lens from Nikon that you might want a pick-up truck to carry and you can find all sorts of exceptions. All the lenses you site, but those lenses were mostly created for DSLRS, the Sigmas and the huge Nikon's and Canons. An example the other way is Panasonic GX7 or 8 with 12-35 (equivalent to the popular pro 24-70 of Nikon). Compare that set-up with a Nikon 810 and a 24-70. Its obvious.

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Zeiss Otus lenses are examples of no-compromise design - high resolution, low distortion and low CA. Milvus lenses are similar, but compromise on distortion, which can be corrected in the camera or post production. Consequently they are smaller, lighter and less expensive. Like all DSLR lenses, they must accommodate a large, swinging mirror by providing a long back-focus distance. This requires extra elements to accomplish, and even more elements to compensate for the problems the basic requirement entails.

 

Mirrorless can be smaller, but tend to bottom between 35 and 50 mm. Shorter and longer lenses are usually larger. The Zeiss 35/1.4 is another example of a no-compromise lens, only for mirrorless cameras. The Leica (ZM) version is 3.5" long, and the Sony version is 4.5" long and thicker, partly to provide AF. Loxia lenses are actually close to the size of smaller Nikon primes, ignoring the backspace requirements, possibly to improve handling. Their main compromise is in the maximum aperture, which reduces the size and weight compared to "super normal" lenses. Anyone who has handled a Leica M will recall just how small those lenses are. They're designed for film, which has a "cover" thickness measured in microns rather than millimeters. Their compromise seems to be maintenance of the smallest practical footprint, an a focal length range traditionally limited between 35 and 135 mm. That said, the 90 mm f/2 Summicron is definitely large and heavy by mirrorless standards.

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