Sunday musings: The silly super-fast lens craze

[Karim Ghantous]

<p>This obsession of super-wide apertures is shared by both motion and still photographers. Fast lenses are not a bad thing per se. Mind you, neither are slow lenses. What counts is that the lens is a good one. And then there's the most ridiculous situation where, for some reason, knife-edge DOF is somehow the main ingredient in the 'cinematic look', whatever that is supposed to be. I guess all those movies shot with modest lenses on smaller gauges just aren't 'cinematic'.</p>

<p>The analogy can be made with camera bodies: if you want to upgrade from 12Mpx to 21Mpx, that's a good thing if you can afford it<strong>*</strong>. But are your lenses limiting sharpness? If so, upgrading the camera while using ordinary lenses will be a waste of your money. Yes, it's your money and photography is expensive - but you'll be happier if you spent wisely. And so will your spouse if you have one.</p>

<p>I used to really, really want super fast lenses when I was younger. Yes, they look cool. Yes, they can produce nice images. But y'all can keep your 200/2.0s and your 85/1.4s and your 50/0.95s. I like those lenses - even if just to use their maximum apertures to make the viewfinder brighter on SLRs. But the extra weight and cost are not justified.</p>

<p>Depth-of-field is not something to be minimized or avoided or stripped away. It's your friend, just like salt in your food. Save your cash for a photography trip. Or just save your cash, full stop.</p>

<p>Now, if I found a 50/1.0 or a 300/2.0 at a garage sale for $50, that would be a different story...</p>

<p><strong>*</strong><small>Some might argue that two 12Mpx bodies are worth more than one 21Mpx body if you're taking photos for someone else.</small></p>

[MichaelChang]

<p>One of our neighbours recently bought a brand new Mercedes. My next door neighbour, <a href="http://www.google.ca/search?gcx=c&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=Mrs.+Kravitz">Mrs. Kravitz</a>, remarked: "Gee, you could buy 3 of my cars for that kind of money!".</p>

<p>Phooey! I said. Sour grapes! :-)</p>

[leslie_cheung]

<p>I prefer the size, weight and cost of f1.7-2.5 lenses. Everything is a compromise...I hate the super fast 1.2 and faster (heavier, bulkier, $$$) lenses myself. F1.8-2 is my sweet spot especially with the great high iso these days.</p>

[noreen]

As someone who sometimes shoots in dark conditions when flash is not an option for one reason or

another, I fail to understand what is inherently "silly" about wanting a fast lens. Under many conditions

(wanting to photograph birds in an understory, for example), cost and weight can, indeed, be justified.

[leslie_cheung]

<blockquote>

<p>when flash is not an option for one reason or another, I fail to understand what is inherently "silly" about wanting a fast lens.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well...to me, there is a difference between "wanting" and needing. If you need it, you need it period. But if you just want it because it's cool or think the razor thin dof will automatically make your shot(s) high art or "pro" then, it is rather silly.</p>

[photo5]

<p>The only lens faster than f1.8 that I liked a lot, was the Nikon 85mm f1.4 AIS, which I owned for a short time, twice actually (two different ones). Very sharp lens. Easy to focus too. Never cared much for the 50mm f1.4 (I've owned numerous examples, Non-AI to AF-S, though yet to try the newest AF-S version), never owned the 35mm 1.4 (too expensive), and the 50mm f1.2 AIS was neat but apart from taking wide open shots, I couldn't think of a reason to keep it over my normal 50mm as it wasn't any sharper at normal shooting apertures. For me f2.8 is fast enough with digital as I can shoot up to ISO 6400. That being said I would love a 300mm f2.8 telephoto lens, but for now will have to be satisfied with my 180mm f2.8 ED AIS Nikon, which is superb. My 105mm f2.5 is also superb wide open and at all other apertures, though I've never shot with it at f32 yet.</p>

[john_h.1]

<blockquote>

<p>This obsession of super-wide apertures</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Some people obsess about wide angle lenses. Others obsess over what lenses other people choose.</p>

[colin carron]

<p>For a silly craze fast lenses have been around quite a while now.</p>

<p>http://camerapedia.wikia.com/wiki/Ermanox</p>

<p>and produced some ground-breaking work :</p>

<p>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erich_Salomon</p>

[pcnilssen]

<p>Everything goes in waves. When I was young and shooting with my fathers Kodak Retina, I wanted a SLR<br>

When I got his Edixa Reflex SLR - I wanted a Canon or Nikon SLR - then I could shoot better pictures<br>

When I got the Canon FTb, I wanted the Nikon Pro range - then I could shoot better pictures<br>

When the digital race started - I shot with a Kodak DCS P&S.... you know what I am to write now, don't you....?<br>

Now I have the Nikon D300 with a lot of Pro glass, and am satisfied - but my shoulders now want me to bring a long a Leica or the new rumoured Fuji X1 Pro... <sigh>...</p>

[pcnilssen]

<blockquote>

<p>Karim: two 12Mpx bodies are worth more than one 21Mpx</p>

</blockquote>

<p>That is correct. 2x 12Mpx = 24 Mpx, which is more than 21.<br>

Just kidding. :) </p>

[hjoseph7]

<p>I was going through some of the Top Photographer Portfolios on this site and I noticed that some of those great pictures were created with very modest equipment. So it's not all about the equipment. Comming from film days, I regard fast lenses very highly. When using film you are basically stuck at a certain ISO. Fast films would give you sharper and more saturated images than slower films, that's a given so I tended to use fast films.</p>

<p>Unfortunately with fast films, once the sun starts going down you are in trouble if you don't have a fast lens. That's why allot of photographers including myself prefer them. These days with digital, you can always boost the ISO so fast lenses are not so much of an issue anymore. However, in low light situations it's always better to have a fast lens than not, since boosting the ISO can lead to unsatisfactory noise and degradation of the image. </p>

[johne37179]

I can remember back 40 years ago buying a 55:1.2. I can't remember a single image I took with it,or any time I actually shot it wide open.

I'll bet 80% of the images I've shot over the years have been at F8 to F11.

[georg_s1]

<p>A different take on this subject: I like to use superfast-lenses like the 50/1.2 for it's „pictorial value” wide-open.<br>

I don't care about corner-sharpness or maximum resolution when I use this lens, it's all about a certain look.<br>

I shoot a lot for small papers and using a really shallow DoF is like careful composing,<br>

the use of off-camera flashe(s) or extreme focal-lengths just one way to set my pictures apart from competing offers.</p>

 

[Hector Javkin]

<p>First, the craze that you complain about doesn't exist. The trend is towards slower lenses. Ever since zooms became widely used, f/2.8 became acceptable as very fast. And variable aperture zooms convinced many photographers that f/5.6 was all right at the long end. Nikon doesn't even make f/1.2 AF lenses, and they make one manual focus f/1.2 whose design hasn't been updated in ages. And the most recent top-of-the-line body from Nikon will autofocus with a maximum aperture of f/8. Canon has several f/1.2, or at least a 50mm and an 85mm, but the photographers I know buy them for their quality more than for their top speed. The last motion picture I know about which has a scene shot with an f/0.7 lens was <em>Barry Lyndon</em>. No one needs to do that anymore, even shooting by candlelight. I don't see a lot of the recent Cosina or Leica superfast lenses. There is no craze.</p>

<p>Second, even if there were such a craze, what's it to you? Why do you care what somebody else gets?</p>

[Hector Javkin]

<blockquote>

<p>It's your friend, just like salt in your food.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Salt in your food is your friend? Ask any cardiologist. Most of the time it isn't.</p>

[aplumpton]

<p>It probably depends more on the type of camera you use. If I had the luxury of performance of, say, a Nikon D3x I guess a fast lens wouldn't by very important for me. Its higher ISO performance is apparently very fine, such that upping the ISO a notch or two would , apart from DOF considerations, resolve the issue without the added expense. As it is, with my 10 MP Leica M8 and an ISO performance that is fine at lower values but which degrades rapidly above 640, a fast lens is important for low light level photography. The same is true for my film camera and for the resolution response of many films. On the other hand, fast Leica lenses, like the 21mm f1.4, 75mm f1.4 or 50mm f0.95, are out of my divorce inhibiting spending range. However, given all these considerations, I am happy to sit in the middle with an f2 lens (or even much slower lens for most work), which is compact, less expensive and not far off the light gathering ability of the very fast and heavy optics. It appears that many don't really care about very fast optics and the craze doesn't really exist to any degree.</p>

[hjoseph7]

<p><em>"Fast films would give you sharper and more saturated images than slower films</em>,"</p>

<p>Oops I wrote this backwards what I really meant was "<strong>Slow</strong> films(less sensitive to light) would give you sharper and more saturated images than fast films"</p>

[hjoseph7]

<p>"The trend is towards slower lenses. Ever since zooms became widely used, f/2.8 became acceptable as very fast. And variable aperture zooms convinced many photographers that f/5.6 was all right at the long end."</p>

<p>Not only that, they tend to charge you just as much as a fast lens which is scary...</p>

[mukul_dube]

<p>Noreen, some people do need fast lenses. Some don't but still want them. Look and you'll see "craze" as well as "silly".</p>

[mark_pierlot]

<blockquote>

<p>Canon has several f/1.2, or at least a 50mm and an 85mm, but the photographers I know buy them for their quality more than for their top speed.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The "problem" is that many of Canon's fastest primes also happen to have the highest resolution at their respective focal lengths. Take, for example, the EF 35/1.4 L. While I seldom shoot it wide open, I do use it alot between f/2 and f/5.6, where it is optically without peer. This also applies to my 85/1.2 L.</p>

<p>And if I do want to shoot wide open, my faster primes perform outstandingly well, at least in the center.</p>

[sarah_fox]

<p>Sometimes the craze belongs to the clients, not the photographers. A lot of clients want fuzzy-background photos, so you get the fast lens to meet their needs.</p>

[ilkka_nissila]

<p><em> a Nikon D3x I guess a fast lens wouldn't by very important for me. Its higher ISO performance is apparently very fine, such that upping the ISO a notch or two would , apart from DOF considerations, resolve the issue without the added expense</em></p>

<p>Well, the D3X image quality certainly degrades at every stop of increased ISO. It excels at ISO 100 but other cameras are better above 400. Perhaps you're talking about the D3s.</p>

<p>In any case these new cameras have opened up completely new possibilities for the use of low light as an ingredient to high-quality images. I've used large LCD monitors as a kind of softbox for portraiture and the results can be very good. Slide show audiences are now lit by the light bouncing off the screen to a point where you can make reasonable images with just that. But this is only possible by using a combination of the latest fast lenses (i.e. 24/1.4) and the latest FX cameras. It's as if the past limitations of photography had been lifted and now you can photograph hand-held in any light where you can see the subject - and even in a bit dimmer light than that, and obtain perfectly useable prints. But if you restrict yourself to slow f/2.8 lenses then you're back at using flash a lot,even when existing light would create a more interesting image.</p>

<p>Also, wide apertures are very effective in visually highlighting the main subject when there are several people in the frame, and cleaning up cluttered backgrounds when you do not have control over what people do in the background or what kind of mess there otherwise is.</p>

<p><em>It's your friend, just like salt in your food.</em></p>

<p>I don't want to die out of cardiovascular disease thank you very much. Does it help my prospects for a long healthy life if I make a bid for a 300/2 on the auction site? I guess it's better just to make my own bread rather than use that excessively salty bread that they sell in grocery stores - yuk.</p>

<p> </p>

[wogears]

<blockquote>

<p>Salt in your food is your friend? Ask any cardiologist. Most of the time it isn't.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>The double-board-certified cardiologist who saved my life said, "Don't go overboard on salt, but don't worry about it."</p>

[JDMvW]

<p>See "Conspicuous consumption"</p>

[russ_britt3]

<p>If you want something, and can afford it, its not silly.......If you are happy with it.<br />Cars to cameras....its up to you.</p>