50mm prime lens

I am thinking along the same lines Simon, but for use with a Canon EOS10D. I really would like to own at least one pukka lens! As well as prime ive also looked at the Image stabilisation type as these too a supposed to be good in low light. Before the experts wade in do you mind if i ask the view on these too?
are they just a poor value for money gimmick or worth the investment for a rank amateur like me..?

cheers

Hawk

I've got quite a number of Pentax prime lenses but the ones which get the most use are a 24mm F2 and an 85mm F1.4.

Other lenses I use a lot are an 18-35mm zoom and a 80-200mm F2.8 zoom. Most of the other lenses (and I've quite a collection) don't get used much at all.

Steve

Are you aware that Pentax makes a D70-killer at the centre of the New Digitial Revolution and indeed are the new Lecia?

Old K Mount and some SMCs rock apparently. Especially the 43mm Limited.

Matthew

PS To answer the original question a 35/f2 and the 50/1.8 Nikkors will give you a standard 50mm and a medium telephoto and seems the obvious place to start. The AF-D girlieman versions are about £200 and £100 respectively, the older manual lenses are cheap as chips.

If you are happy with manual focus, then the 35mm f2 and 50 f1.8 can be had secondhand at reasonable prices. The 24mm f2.8 may also be worth a look. All are quite compact and pocketable, unlike the heavier 35mm f1.4. However, you need to check the metering constraints with your camera body, not all metering modes are likely to be available.

Nick

quote:

I quite like the idea of getting a small lightweight less cumbersome prime lens for my D70, as I am concious that zooms can act as a hinderance to improving ones composoition skills, with a prime there is one less control with which I can ruin the photo.

Simon,
It's the complete opposite. Zooms tend to help your composition if anything.

quote:

I also like the idea of having a faster lens because of the addtional shooting opportunities that it gives you in lower light.

This is only an issue if you buy a slow lens in the first place.

The ideal lens for general digital (1.5x factor) holiday snaps is the 17-55 range zoom.

Hawk,

"Image stabilised" lenses only come into use to get you out of trouble as a last resort and don't produce an image which would be as sharp as if you had taken it properly in the first place.

Matthew,

What has happened to you recently? You used to post witty comments and the odd useful link. Now it's a useless link and you're using phrases such as "girlieman".

I'm not insulting you, but it does seem a waste of talent... but what's it got to do with me?

Regarding the link, I wondered where everyone had gone! After reading it, what the guys on Photonet and PFM seem to be oblivious to is the simple fact that if you are striving to get the best quality from digital, you should never, never, never use any lens which wasn't designed specifically for digital use. It's a hard fact to grasp, but one which was explained to me six years ago when I was questioning why I couldn't use my range of 5x4 lens on a leaf back. This statement is based on the digital sensor cropping the image circle more than film format, the lens was designed for.

Also, the guys talk about wanting increased contrast from a lens. No you don't, you want the least contrast and then go into Photoshop to increase saturation and increase black in the blacks.

Count,

I am much the same I think/hope. "Girliemen" is just a jocular reference to Lord Vuksanovic and the reason for my post was just to steer Steve, a longtime Pentax used and previous photo chatter, to an obviously relevent discussion of Pentax *Ist and K mounts.

Regarding the designed for digital thing I bow to your professional knowledge as I don't really know much about it -- although I would note that a) if someone told you something about digitial photography 6 years ago they almost certainly revised their opinion about 3 times since and b) whatever you say about sensors and traditional lenses I have seen some excellent results from that route.

Matthew

quote:

if you are striving to get the best quality from digital, you should never, never, never use any lens which wasn't designed specifically for digital use.

There was a fair bit about this issue in the forum on the Leica website when many folk were asking if they could have a digital M body. Leica's response was that current sensor technology produces an inferior result with lenses that send rays at a severe angle to the film plane (e.g., very compact wide-angle lenses). This is much less of an issue with typical retrofocus designs used for SLR lenses that have to allow space for the mirror. The digital M body, if and when it finally comes out, will use a new type of sensor that minimises this problem.

Nick

quote:

Originally posted by matthewr:
Count,

I am much the same I think/hope. "Girliemen" is just a jocular reference to Lord Vuksanovic and the reason for my post was just to steer Steve, a longtime Pentax used and previous photo chatter, to an obviously relevent discussion of Pentax *Ist and K mounts.

I've a couple of the Pentax FA* lenses (the 24mm F2 and 85mm F1.4) and both are excellent, plus I've about 20 of the old manual focus K and KA mounts although I sold my two standout lenses - a 35mm F2 and a 40mm F2.8 pancake - as they weren't getting used enough

I read Vuk's photo.net article (I used to be the editor for the Pentax equipment section of the site) and it looked like, well - what I'd come to expect from Vuk... Some of the questions attributed to him seem odd however as they appear to be the sort of things one would expect from a person who knows nothing about photography or cameras.

On the digital front I'm keeping an eye on what Pentax are producing and I'm getting closer to the day when I'll sell my medium format kit and get a digital body for my Pentax system instead.

Testing the Count

quote:

Originally posted by count.d:
simple fact that if you are striving to get the best quality from digital, you should never, never, never use any lens which wasn't designed specifically for digital use.

Just found this link on a photo web site. Click here and decide which photo was through a lens made for a film camera and which was was from glass specifically desgined for digital. Both are from the same digital camera, of course.

Wolfe

Sorry Vuk, you'll have to be sharper than the crap lenses that you use for your tests.

Nice use of capitals.

.... and that's not to say that it is the same image Photoshop'd.......

Well to my eyes photo A is clearly better. More contrast, more vibrant, more believable.

So I'll take a stab that A was designed for digital.

The EXIF data for A does not show an aperture setting whereas image B has an aperture setting of F8, manual lenses would not communicate the aperture settting back to the camera while a fully auto lens would - so unless Vuk has fiddled with the EXIF data image A was shot with the older lens

The recorded focal lengths used were 43 and 45mm. With the typical crop factor of about 1.4 ish this is the equivalent of about 65mm focal length

Tyically it is with the ultra wide angle lenses where light strikes the sensor at an acute angle and vignetting will occur as the sensors receive less light at the extremes of the image - so not seeing any/much difference between the shots in this case is not a surprise.


To see more of Vuk's pictures one can look at

http://www3.sympatico.ca/qstatistic/new/

however some of them are not work friendly

quote:

Originally posted by Steve B:
Well to my eyes photo A is clearly better. More contrast, more vibrant, more believable.
So I'll take a stab that A was designed for digital.

Steve.

You have a better eye than the count: although you've spotted the better lens, it's not the one designed for digital. BTW--what really kills me is how lens A is 10 times sharper than lens B.

Wolfe

quote:

You have a better eye than the count: although you've spotted the better lens, it's not the one designed for digital. BTW--what really kills me is how lens A is 10 times sharper than lens B.

Vuk,

These are all very easy questions for any photographer who shoots digitally. I look forward to your answers and then we'll progess to the second stage.

1) Sharpness? Can you explain what sharpness is?

2) What approx unsharp mask settings you would use for a) face (for flattering) b) architectural with fine detail?

3) Can you explain the single main difference between the image produced by a Hasselblad and Mamiya lens or Leica and Nikon lens?

4) If at the initial stage of image capture, image A appears "sharper", why could that mean bad news?

5) What are the two golden rules about Threshold and Radius in unsharp mask? (The two obvious golden rules which all photographers should know)

6) Can you give me the sequence for finding the proper amount of usm for an image?

The two 70kb images you posted were cringingly insufficient to evaluate a lens design and only demonstrated your lack of knowledge.


P.S. Everyone else, please excuse this post as I don't wish to add to the ego list.

Count,

I know lots of things about USM settings but frankly my pictures pretty much suck. And although I know that you are not suggesting that good knowledge of PS = good pictures, I think Vuk takes some excellent pictures and has come an awfully long way very quickly as a photographer so even if were unable to pass your quiz I think it rather misses the point. Indeed the thing that sets Vuk and other photographers I admire apart is that he has a a very definite visual sense and an artistic "voice" (if you forgive the pretentiousness for one moment) -- this is the bit that is really hard, relatively uncommon and can rarely be learnt. It doesn't matter if one likes his taste (FWIW I tend to like his abstracts and hate his pictures of women) it's the fact that he has some that is worthy of note. For sure there are technical issue that one must master and there
's a lot to know on that front but it's really a low level skill and the challenging bit is actually finding the time to grind through the neccessary legwork more than anyhting else.

As far as Wolfe's is concerned, I like his flower picture and thought the first obviously better. My view of lens differences is that if it's not obvious in a 70k JPEG then I wouldn't really care enough which one I used.

Matthew

Count D

Please send me your USM guidelines or publish them here if Vuk does not answer the questions
my email address in my profile

Thanks

Matthew,

quote:

so even if were unable to pass your quiz I think it rather misses the point

My original post was to point out that to achieve the ultimate quality in digital photography, one should not use lenses designed for film. That is a fact and one which hasn't changed since I learnt about it six years ago. No one's asked why, but they're happy to state their opinion, which is the forum norm I suppose.

Along comes a mysterious character and tries to make a poor attempt at showing me up by displaying two low res images and testing to see which lens took what. It's such a nonsense and irrelevant test, I wouldn't know where to begin criticising it. All it does is show how naive Vuk is.

All six questions are relevant to his "test" and show up the flaws in the question.

I never mentioned any other aspect of Vuk's ability and so I think my quiz doesn't miss the point.

If Vuk wants to post antagonistic posts, I'll do my best to reply, but most times I just don't have the spare time for this comedy show.

"No one's asked why, but they're happy to state their opinion, which is the forum norm I suppose"

I think becuase we've all been down this route before several times and most people's eyes glaze over when one gets into angles of incidence on sensors and all that stuff. I think it unlikely that you have been made privy to some vital piece of information that isn't already in the (very large) public domain that has been disucssing these issues at great length for several years but if you have, then by all means please share it.

Overall though Wolfe does have a point that if you need these digital lenses it should be very easy to show why with some pictures. And if it somehow isn't possible with normal sized images then IMHO the difference just isn't terribly significant.

Matthew

PS Derek try this for starters.

Thank you for all of your views on the Nikon AF50mm f1.8D. Based on all the insight from this thread, I feel well placed to make an informed decision on chosing prime lenses for the digital format.

Nick S and Steve G - Thank you for your usefull comments, it seems to have been hijaked by a number of people who are clearly very grown up.

Hawk - I think that these image stabaliser lenses look quite large and akward as well as exspensive. Do you have a good quality tripod? If not get one, they are indespencible.

Simon

As I said the 50/1.8 will give you a very good medium telephot0 for not much money. The 35/2 will give you a standard lens equivalent for a little more.

What else would you like to know?

Matthew

Who cut your hair ?

Simon,

I've given you advice already.

Fritz,

Have you seen Matthew's hair?

quote:

Overall though Wolfe does have a point that if you need these digital lenses it should be very easy to show why with some pictures

Matthew,

Vuk (wolfe) has not made any point whatsoever. All he has done is post a unwarranted test for me.

I now find that I'm in a petty argument with you. Why? Perhaps something to do with your hospitality to Vuk in the past? Who knows and who cares. For someone who prides himself on being diplomatic and pc, I think you have a lot to learn.

Just to clarify the issue here, all I stated was for the ultimate digital quality, shoot with a specifically designed lens. You have brought all sorts of connotations into the discussion for the sake of bickery (or Vuk).

Derek,

I'll send some info to you shortly.

Count -- Sorry I wasn't aware we were having an argument and thought we were just talking about lenses for film and digital.

I can call you some names if it would help?

Matthew