laur1

<p>Jeff, it doesn't matter whether I ever shot a low light concert (even though I did). If I would try it for the first time, I'd still use the technique I worked with all my life and that I am comfortable with - manual focusing. I wouldn't just switch to autofocus in a situation where autofocus is not reliable and try to work it out on the spot. That would just be stupid.</p> <p>Now I wouldn't have commented anything at all, but you couldn't work out how to see the EXIF data for Bagley's shot and I provided you with that info. And then I just expressed my preference FWIW - what is there to discuss about that? Do you think you'll change my preference by talking about your experience? Jeez!</p> <p> </p>

<blockquote> <p>At first I didn't notice the advice to use Manual Focusing.</p> </blockquote> <p>It was not an advice, it was simply a statement of what I would have done in that situation (note that it started with "<em>Personally, ...</em>" and not with "<em>You should...</em>"). I prefer to fiddle with the focus directly than to fiddle with the AF points, so I can't offer much advice on autofocus.<br> </p> <blockquote> <p>How often do you shoot concerts in low light? </p> </blockquote> <p>I photograph my daughter in all kinds of available light. Believe me, I'd take entertainers on the stage over that challenge any day.</p> <blockquote> <p>Your portfolio doesn't show any concert shots, maybe you can post a few examples of moving performers in very low light that you've done with manual focusing.</p> </blockquote> <p>I have a link to my flickr account in my profile. If you would follow that link, you would find various examples of manual focusing in low light. I have some concert shots <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/sets/72157628011369452/">here</a>, but they were taken in different conditions - outdoors at dusk, no special lights, and also using a camera that was mediocre for low light work.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Are third party lenses...</p> </blockquote> <p>I'll assume you know the difference between third party lenses (system lenses made by a third party) and legacy lenses (adapted lenses that were designed for a different system).</p> <blockquote> <p>What really have they got to offer these old, back in time, lenses. Just for the oldie folk.....lost in a dream/fantasy of yesteryear and some special magic that these lenses can do<br> ...<br> Let us look at some photos from third party and Fuji lenses.</p> </blockquote> <p>You seem to be mainly thinking from a Fuji system perspective. The Fuji system is mainly supported by Fuji. All third party attempts are usually a carryover from Sony NEX models, not by any lenses particularly designed for Fuji. The Zeiss Touit line, for example, was designed for Sony and made available for Fuji because it didn't cost Zeiss much to do so.<br> <br> But if you get out of the Fuji system, you can find that third party contributions to a system can be very important. What attracted me to MFT was Cosina's commitment to produce Voigtlander lenses (<a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2011/11/voigtlander-nokton-25095.html">25</a>, <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2012/05/voigtlander-nokton-175095.html">17.5</a>, <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2013/09/voigtlander-nokton-425095.html">42.5</a>). I don't care much about auto focus capabilities and the Voigtlander lenses provide me with features (build quality, IQ, fast apertures, close focusing distances) that are hard to match with first or third party lenses on any platform today. Samyang produces some great lenses too - their <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2012/10/samyang-7535-fisheye-mft.html">mirrorless fisheye lenses</a> are putting the competition (first party or third party) to shame. Tokina made <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2012/10/tokina-30063-reflex-macro_23.html">the most compact mirror lens for any system so far</a> - the Tokina 300/6.3 lens, a very nice lens. Not as good optically as the <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2013/05/olympus-zuiko-75-30048-67-ii.html">Olympus 75-300</a> lens, but more compact and less expensive (especially now that its price dropped), and with closer focusing capability too.<br> <br> So, I welcome and applaud the contributions of third party companies like Cosina, Samyang, Kenko-Tokina, Zeiss, Sigma, Tamron. I would not want to depend only on first party products. The competition that these companies provide gives me choice and an opportunity to spend less to get what I want.<br> <br> YMMV, of course, as I am sure it will.<br> </p>

<p>William, you are right. I trusted the wikipedia scale. This is indeed closer to 1.4 than 1.2. So much for that argument.</p>

<blockquote> <p>A crop at 100% would provide a better sample to investigate better.</p> </blockquote> <p>Click on the link, then click on the arrows in the upper right corner, then click on "..." and "Download All Sizes", then select "View all sizes", then select "Original size".</p> <blockquote> <p>You don't say what camera you are using. </p> </blockquote> <p>This info is also in the photo metadata. Camera is 5dMkII with 70-200/2.8 lens @155mm, f/3.2, 1/200.</p> <p>Personally, I would have used a lower ISO, faster aperture, and manual focusing. I might even have gone with a faster prime lens than the zoom, but there are few faster options in this focal range (135/2 comes to mind). With the image noise and low light I cannot tell how much you missed focus - looks fairly close though. Not a bad result. Feels like a crop though, based on noise, or maybe the 5DMkII is noisier than I expect.</p>

<blockquote> <p>The arithmetic was in my head, but I am reasonably certain that:<br />F/0.85 to F/1.2 is one stop, but<br />F/0.85 to F/1.4 is one and one third stops</p> </blockquote> <p>According to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-number">f-stop list at wikipedia</a>, 0.85 and 0.95 are falling between the marks of a 1/3 stop scale. The scale is:<br> <strong>0.7</strong> 0.8 0.9 <strong>1</strong> 1.1 1.2 <strong>1.4</strong><br> <strong><br /></strong>So 0.85+1 1/3 Ev doesn't quite get you to 1.4. It may not be f/1.2 either, but it's closer to 1.2 than to 1.4.</p> <p>It's hard to make these computations on APS-C. Most people don't even realize that the difference from FF is larger than 1Ev.</p> <p>Anyway, I'm fine if you disagree with that being a good point (even if it was true) :) I was playing devil's advocate for this lens.</p> <blockquote> <p>In the real world the Leica Noctilux F0.95 is pretty hard to beat (as it is sharp wide open) but of course will set you back $10,000 it is not that cheap!</p> </blockquote> <p>The <a href="http://www.photozone.de/leicam/861-slrmagic50t095">SLR Magic 50/0.95</a> seems to be pretty good too and costs much less - in fact it costs about as much as this lens if you don't want the version with rangefinder coupling (and if you want it, money is probably not an issue anyway).</p>

<blockquote> <p>So, I think that this type of super fast lens, <strong>when the lens is made made specifically for a mirror-less camera,</strong> the <strong>primary purpose and the major appeal of the lens is for very low light shooting</strong></p> </blockquote> <p>Well, if we consider equivalence again, you can just shoot in lower light with a full frame camera and an f/1.4 lens <strong>at higher ISO</strong>. The 5D was limited to ISO 3200 because it is an old model, but recent FF sensors all provide much higher ISOs than that. </p> <p>Perhaps a better point is that this lens on APS-C would be closer to the equivalent of an f/1.2 than f/1.4 and f/1.2 lenses are rarer and costlier on FF.</p> <p>But, in the end, <a href="http://petapixel.com/2013/08/05/zeiss-f0-7-you-can-now-rent-two-of-the-largest-aperture-lenses-ever-made/">does anyone need f/0.7 lenses to shoot candlelight scenes these days</a>? The A7s should be able to do that at high ISO, or at least that's the impression that <a href="http://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/this-video-will-make-you-go-crazy-for-the-sony-a7s">Sony's marketing</a> gave me.</p>

<p>I don't understand the price. I thought it might be a FF lens, but it is designed for APS-C.</p> <p>A strange focal length for APS-C. Long minimum focusing distance too: 75 cm! Won't be very useful for close ups. And it is very long for that focal length. <a href="http://www.mirrorlessrumors.com/handevision-40mm-f-0-85-in-stock-in-germany-will-ship-worldwide-soon">Check the size on a NEX without a hood</a>! It does seem to have an integrated lens hood, which is a nice touch.</p> <p>On MFT, it will compete with the 42.5/0.95 which is less expensive, lighter, shorter, and focuses closer.</p> <p>It may be made in China but it sounds like the design is German. <a href="http://www.handevision.de/en/impressions/">Examples look interesting</a>, but they're not large enough.</p>

<blockquote> <p>Of course, it's still "just" f/2.8 and since the OP mentioned "fast", I ruled it out.</p> </blockquote> <p>Yes, f/2.8 is not that fast for capturing moving subjects, but with churches and museums it can still be fine.</p>

<p>My bad, I normally link my images to the source page where larger versions can be seen, but I forgot to do that here and I can no longer edit my post.<br> <br /> FWIW, here are the links:<br /> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/5807225013">First photo</a>.<br /> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/11230502145">Second photo</a>.<br /> <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/laurentiucristofor/11230610913">And a wider crop of the second photo</a>.</p>

<blockquote> <p>One of the things that you'll also here in these discussions is the 'micro-contrast'; the ability of a lens to subtly render the (high-resolution) contrast differences in the small details.</p> </blockquote> <p>That is the contrast that Stephen mentioned. Sometimes people talk about color contrast and then micro-contrast makes it clearer that you're referring to the component of sharpness.</p> <blockquote> <p>And I'ld have to agree that resolution only matters if there's enough pixels to render tonal differences at the pixel level in order to create local contrast too fool the eye into seeing apparent detail, not sharpness necessarily unless you have your nose up to the screen or print.</p> </blockquote> <p>It helps with cropping too.<br> <br> As an example, my Pentax kit lenses (18-55 and 50-200) produced very nice colors, more vivid than the ones I would get from older K/M lenses. But they were suffering from spherical aberration, so microcontrast and thus resolution was not that good. This aspect was a problem when I was taking close up shots of insects - I wasn't getting enough magnification with the 50-200 and when I was cropping, the lack of resolution would be obvious. Here is an example:<br> <br> <img src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5104/5807225013_9d03a3ab8b.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="333" /></p> <p>OTOH, a sharp lens will allow me to crop severely and still maintain pretty good detail. This is a much tighter crop than in the previous example:<br> <img src="https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7342/11230502145_55ace3d965.jpg" alt="" width="500" height="376" /></p>

<p>Why not get the <a href="http://laurphoto.blogspot.com/2014/02/olympus-zuiko-12-4028-pro.html">12-40/2.8</a>? Yes, it's not a prime, but it has excellent image quality across the focal range, right from wide open aperture, and it can replace a bag of primes. According to dxomark, at 12mm it is even better than the 12/2 prime lens. I've shot with it in available light conditions and I am very happy with the results - the post I linked to contains a link at the end for all my images shot with this lens.</p> <p>If you really want a prime lens, I found normal lenses to give me the best tradeoff. The new 25mm f/1.8 appears to be pretty good.</p> <p>A note on the above mentioned 14/2.5 - I have that lens and while I use it and will continue to do so, it is mainly because of its compact size (I bundled it with the E-PL2 and made that my B&W combo). Optically, I don't see a big improvement over the kit lens, so I'd recommend investing elsewhere and maybe bringing the kit zoom along as well.</p>

<p>I guess the firmware is now corrupted. You'll probably have to send the lens in so they can flash the memory and install a clean copy of the firmware. Please let us know how they respond - I always wondered about how easy it is to resolve this situation.</p>

<p>The Olympus E-PM2 can still be found with kit lens for $299 or in a 2 lens kit for $399. Hard to beat for size, price, performance and you're still left with some money from the $500 budget.</p>

<blockquote> <p>I need a good camera that will take sharp pictures and sometimes in low light conditions...</p> </blockquote> <p>All interchangeable lens cameras today are capable of what you need as long as you get a capable lens to accompany them. And you don't really need a DSLR - there are many options just as capable today.</p> <p>How bad is your vision? Do you need to rely on autofocus? Can you use a viewfinder with diopter adjustment? What is your budget?</p> <p>One option that can work well and is inexpensive is the Olympus E-PM2 package with the kit lens that is going for $299 - you can find it at all major sellers. The E-PM2 is a very capable camera and I found the kit lens to be better than the Pentax one. You can also adapt easily Pentax lenses to this camera if you really need to - you just need an adapter that can be found for under $10-20 on ebay. If you have a larger budget, you can look at other camera/lens combinations, but this one would be very hard to beat.</p>