Hey everyone, I’m new to photography and wondering how much people spend on lenses compared to the camera body they’re mounted on? Does it make sense to buy a higher end lens for a mid range camera, or would you be better off getting a slightly cheaper lens and spending some of the money on a nicer camera? Mainly wondering about used gear…
Currently shooting with my SO’s D3500 when she isn’t using it, and thinking of buying my own. Considering a used Pentax since weather resistant lenses seem easier to find for them than other brands…
Edit: how practical is it to use a Pentax lens on a Nikon with an adapter, and vice versa? I assume the electronics like AF and VR won’t work?
Spend as much as you can on the lens. The camera is negligable. Listen to someone who made the horrible mistake of inverting that philosophy once.
Adapting with lens/camera communication usually does not work. There are some bayonets which can do it, but they are very, very limited.
Forget adapting anything to a DSLR. In all honesty, you really should buy mirrorless cameras. Reason being mirrorless cameras have adapters to basically every bayonet ever created. DSLRs do not. With DSLRs you are locked into the manufacturer of your DSLR for your lens choice, which may be very limiting.
Also, try to adapt manual focus lenses to your camera. Many of mankind’s greatest glass is manual focus only. Bonus is you can get a manual focus lens for dirt cheap, one that has quality that will blow your socks off. People think that old optics are inherently worse, which is false. Optics haven’t had any development since a hundred years, with a few minor exceptions.
This is patently false. Here are some modern advancements in lenses in the past few decades.
The result is much sharper photos with less abberation and distortion. Especially with zoom lenses. That’s one of the real advantages. Carrying around an entire bag of prime lenses sucks. Having a compact zoom lens with excellent optics is such a blessing. Having to change lenses to get good framing results in missed shots.
For me, personally, I think autofocus is the best thing since sliced bread. Today’s AF is lightning fast and silent due to ultrasonic motors. Nearly every camera body has an array of amazing phase detection AF points, and throwing them away to use some heavy, antique MF lens will result in missed photos. Some cameras won’t even meter properly through an MF lens!
Take off the nostalgia glasses and give some honest advice. The only reason to buy old MF lenses is because they’re cheap.
If you can get a cheap, wide aperture, MF prime lens, do it. But only because it’s cheap. Not because it’s “mankind’s greatest glass”. That’s utter nonsense. Good modern lenses blow away old ones. This is without even considering that some glass ages and yellows with time.
This is a great write up! I would add that also the more affordable lenses nowadays are really sharp and much better optically than anything previous. More money gets mostly just more light gathering capability and water and dust proofing.
While I agree with you that my claim was exaggerated, my claim remains true. While the differences you have outlined are correct, the differences for the photographer are basically negligible because it means essentially three things:
Well, before computers, all lenses were calculated using geometric optics, and these lessons are still true. The computer just makes it faster.
And on the topic of coatings, yes, we have gained fluoride element lenses, but what about thorium oxide doted lenses? Yes, you can’t use them on digital cameras because the radiation dosage will kill the sensor eventually, but if you have ever seen the image output of a thorium oxide lens, you know what I’m talking about.
Also additionally on the topic of them being bad, alright I’m getting the rare stuff out.
And there are many more where that came from. Old stuff is useful. I’d genuinely like to see a modern post-2000 lens that has optical performance anywhere close to the outlined 3 lenses. Resolution isn’t everything, there are more qualities to a photographic lens. We are artists, not computers, needing the highest resolution lens for machine vision tasks. And I do enjoy more organic lenses, like three-element lenses. Yes, the resolution is rubbish, but everything else is great. The colour reproduction is insanely good, as is the micro-contrast, together with its brilliant, out-of-focus rendering. These are just qualities that you cannot get with an 11 element prime lens where every small bit of spherical aberration or transverse chromatic aberration has been tuned out because in the end you add more elements and kill some of the signal. That’s the natural trade-off and computers cannot fix the fundamental issue of absorption. You cannot buy physics, more elements mean more absorption. This will always remain the same, no matter if it’s 100 years ago, or in 1000 years, the laws of physics stay the same.
Tldr: If you only take away one thing, then just give old lenses a try. There’s no harm in trying the cheaper ones.
Edit: And also, yes, lightweight plastics means the lens will be lighter, but you pay the price in durability. And I will always prefer durability. Also, apochromatic lenses aren’t only possible because of computers. There are apochromatic lenses long before computers were a thing. Mostly today’s preferences have changed. Today means resolution at the cost of everything because that’s what sells products. But lenses are more than just resolution. They have many more qualities that are important as well for aesthetic photography. Again, we’re taking images for aesthetic effect, not for computers that need something for machine vision tasks.
Thanks for the response. I was leaning towards a DSLR because it seems like the used market is a lot stronger than mirrorless, which I assume means cheaper gear. Does that make sense, or would you still recommend a mirrorless? I already mentioned this in another post, but most of my shooting has been nature/wildlife, so better low light performance might be nice. And autofocus seems almost required for shooting wildlife, but I’ll keep my eyes open for a nice (and cheap) MF prime for landscape shots.
Well, I wouldn’t say that one market is inherently stronger than the other. You can also buy a mirrorless camera for the price of one Pentax K70. Again, it just depends what’s better for your use case. If you only do wildlife photography and nothing else, a DSLR is the better choice because you get better autofocus for cheaper. But instead of a Pentax K70, I’d actually recommend the Nikon D7100. It was basically Nikon’s semi-professional offering, and the camera is great to this day. Also, Nikon’s product line for wildlife photography is just way better. An additional plus being that the Nikon Bayonet is the most supported bayonet for adapting. Since even with lenses that do not have an aperture ring, you can control the aperture on the adapter if you wish to adapt it to a mirrorless camera, for example. The D7100 also supports Nikon’s slightly older AF-D lenses. This just means the autofocus motor is inside the camera. That just means you sacrifice focus speed for cheaper wildlife lenses. Beyond the lookout for some AF-D Nikon glass. If you’re deterred because it’s older, look at few comments down. I had a conversation with a guy that basically recapitulates both perspectives.
Some level of weatherproofing in the camera and lens is a hard requirement for me, and I’m seeing a lot more options for Pentax lenses. But there’s a good chance I’m just not looking for the right thing… Is there a weatherproof super telephoto DX mount lens for under $600? I’m finding Pentax lenses for around $200. Mainly looking at used gear, BTW.
Edit: also, by “stronger market” I meant more supply, which would push prices down. In hindsight that wasn’t very clear…
Firstly, the Nikon cameras just use one mount, the so-called Nikon F mount. You can mount any sort of lens to a DX camera. I usually buy lenses from eBay, so that’s where I checked. I cannot talk about weather-proofing because I have no experience with it. I keep my stuff out of the rain. Maybe think about Buying a cloak in olive green or something that blends in with the natural environment to throw over yourself because it will cloak you and protect the camera and the lens from rain.
I think one of those three should meet your criteria.
What’s a good manual focus lens?
My, my, you are asking a big question herehere are some to start out.
All of these lenses should be readily available on eBay. I excluded the rare stuff.
Edit: And there’s much more. I still have a very limited experience with that. I have some more than I outlined. But believe me, there’s some great stuff out there waiting to be discovered. I also fixed a spelling mistake
The Helios 44 58/f2 should be on here as well, but that’s one of the more obvious options.
I actually just bought a speed booster to get rid of the crop factor on my aps-c Sony a6000, really excited to try it out and get more of that swirly bokeh.
I like the crop factor because it essentially makes your optics better for free. Since it will only use the center of the lens, which is its best part. From your experience, does a speed booster actually have a large impact on optical quality, since you are adding an additional glass element?