from Orio, lens difference is really small, vs kit zoom

[easygoing]

Originally from Orio at:



"I start with saying that most of the differences we talk about here between a lens and another, are really small differences. Most likely, 8 amateur photographers out of 10, and nearly 10 non-photographers out of 10, would not be able to tell the most part of the differences we often speak about. "

Since I also like wine tasting, I found this Orio's comment is true to the point:

"... it only means that only trained photographers are able to tell them. If you want, it's the same as with wine: most people is not able to tell one red wine from another; some people are able to tell one red wine from another, but not really able to tell which one has to be considered the best wine, and why; and only a few connoisseurs can tell everything about a wine. "

That is exactly the same with my experience.
First with wine. I like French wine, simply because I am not used to the bold-tasting wine yet. It just happens that most California wine I had is too heavy with oak, and almost every French wine I have tasted much more smooth. I can taste the difference, and I have developed my preference, but I cannot understand the thousands of arguments why some wine justifies high prices.
Now with lenses. I have Canon XTi camera, Canon 18-55 II, Canon 100mm 2.8 macro, and Tamron 70-300 Di Macro. The Tamron lens is really affordable, and has low image quality under many situations. However, the best picture taken by me so far was taken by this versatile Tamron lens, even after discounting the less-than-perfect image quality. Canon 100mm is really an exemplary lens, its IQ is so good that I can tell its picture by a glance.
I recently bought a Pentax S-M-C Takumar 28mm 3.5, reviewed very favorably on prime35.com. After two day's trial, I cannot say that it is better than my lowly Canon 18-55, even though there is slight difference is rendering. I have another Yashica ML 50mm 1:2 on the way. I will definitely experiment much more with these two old lenses.

All in all, in terms of image quality, can a $100 - $200 old manual lens offer any advantage over the kit zoom lens? For most SLR camera users, is there any reason to bother, other than novelty and nostalgia? Does the kit zoom already fully satisfy APS-C frame DSLR? Will old manual lens perform better than Canon 28-135 IS, the "kit zoom" on full-frame Canon DSLR?

[BRunner]

Depends on focal length. Most old wide angle primes <35mm are worse than modern kit lens.
The sweet spot for old MFL lies between 35mm and 135mm. Outside this range you need to pay for quality and many modern zooms with ED glasses and aspherical surfaces shows better performance than old wide-angle or long telephoto primes.
It's simple, the progress hadn't stopped 40 years ago. Never lenses aren't necessarily sharper, but they mostly render better colors, more contrasty images and are more resistant to flare (effect of progress in development of special high refraction glass and coatings methods).
There are great lenses from '70s and '80s, which easily surpass any modern zooms and even modern primes (Contax Distagons, or Leicas APO telelenses), but their prices reflects this.

[Attila]

Welcome! Nice to see you here!

Lenses like cars , there is many and difference is not much all able to transport you to A->B.

Why legacy lenses ?
In my opinion

1) Keep in use them help to save them and next generation will able to enjoy them.

2) I like their image output better usually even with all faultiest, most kit lens what I did try (wasn't too many) made neutral , flat , plastic images to my eyes. In wide range they distortion was high, Flektogon 20 f4 has zero distortion for example.
All well known brand Leica, Olympus, Konica, Carl Zeiss prime , etc produce better images than any kit lens I am pretty sure.Many of them produce better images than $$$ AF lenses at least for my eyes.

One story friend of mine bought Carl Zeiss Jena lenses from 20 up to 200mm. He heard Canon 135mm L lens lot more better he sold all to buy one 135mm L lens. After one month play he sold L lens and start to buy again Jena lenses. He said L lens was only a bit better than Jena and it was 10x more expensive.

3) Legacy lenses are compatible with any camera systems with a single metal adapter , modern lenses are not.
To have a lens park from wide angle to long tele quiet costly. Not doesn't matter how much you pay for them and how long term you able to use it.
Look what did happen in past with Canon ... they did change mount to kick out legacy lenses to earn more profit and Canon FD lenses price felt down to ground.

4) Price perspective luckily we have many excellent quality, inexpensive Russian lenses which are far better purchase than buy one or two AF lenses from same budget.

5) In photography my order is :

1 - good subject
2 - good light
3 - technical skill
4 - gear (camera, lens etc)

so matter of taste what we use as tool. personally I like rare items (unique car... ) not same one what you can see everywhere.

[eddieitman]

OK here is an example i give Take a look at the two photos in this album
https://picasaweb.google.com/113960996498411577021/TamronDistortion?authkey=Gv1sRgCK-5ucjeyZSjEg#5602888933783119250

They are the same photo. One has been corrected for distortion and colour corrected.
This was taken with the Tamron 17-50 a well respected lens and not particularly cheap.
Personally it pisses me off having to correct so much distortion.
my prime lenses dont suffer like this

[newton]

I have used kit lenses. Nobody can usually tell. I will never recover the price I pay for my equipment and decided it is not worth it. Most people cannot tell the difference or really care. Further for print purposes, when one is actually printing, from what I read and was told, you will not see the difference between L series and non-L unless you are a professional printer using the best professional printers for color matching, very expensive. I am impressed at how so many newbies go out and splurge thousands and thousands on L lenses, while 1) not nowing the art, 2) having that equipment sit on a shelf (I sleep with mine, that is, cheaper gear) and which I use constantly, 3) think they can shoot because the have AF, 4) are suckers for the leading camera chains with their slick devious salesmen. People still say some of my photos are better than some people's who use L series lenses. I just feel happy with my kit lenses, legacy gear and my skills. I am impressed at how some people with L-series lenses are not true photographers; they are super rich and some of them suckers. No offense to anyone, just some of my experiences. Obviously, there is more to simply taking good photos than expensive equipment, and some kit lenses in their sweet spots are not bad. To be fair, if I had L series glass, I would use it all the time.

[Nesster]

Interesting questions easygoing, these, and ones I think of in at least a couple of ways. Welcome aboard, by the way.

One, as you mention, the artistic, communicative power of a photograph does not necessarily correlate to lens quality. However, the best photographers in any era have tended to use the best lenses available at the time... unless consciously choosing not to.

Two, I'll go to audiophile speak for a bit: it isn't that differences aren't perceptible, or even non-essential, to anyone but the 'pro'. Quite the opposite, many aberrations (whether audio or optical) are quite easy to note once one has been educated to note them. And, in my audiophile days, many of the aberrations were painfully clear to me even over low-fi gear - something the audio gurus (who sell the grail of costly gear) say isn't possible. Ditto with photography - many, but not all, aberrations can be visible even on less than state of the art display media.

With the cost - and marketing pressure - of current lenses we don't always get a chance to become educated in what's truly important in image quality, and what isn't (either 'objectively' or as this applies 'subjectively'). We don't often get to note the Emperor has no clothes.

But with vintage lenses, even disappointing ones, we build up the knowledge and the eye to be able to tell an image from a better lens.

Just as, looking at a variety of pictures can give us an education on e.g. composition that works better in a given situation.

But there's more to this education - we can learn how to best use a given bit of gear, where does it shine and where are its limitations. (We can then use the limitations to advantage as well.)

Thus someone using a kit zoom can consistently produce better photographs than someone clueless using a L lens.

(A general principle of cameras, at least until the SLR era: you pay in part for image quality, but in part for wide applicability. Specialized gear tended to cost more; specialized lenses (extra fast, extra wide, extra long) as well. But the more expensive gear did not necessarily do better in ordinary situations - a P&S or a folding camera often could do just as well. But their range of application is smaller. Modern marketing uses this to convince us to pay up for features and system capabilities we may never need, but we are conditioned to want.)

Three, there's no getting around the physical joy inherent in a well assembled and engineered mechanical thing. Vintage lenses have more of this than modern plastic moldings.

But all of the above gets plugged into everyone's values: what do we value and what do we go 'eh?' about, even if we see a difference?

There's also the connoisseur disease: you know the one where an enthusiast's tastes evolve and specialize to the point that they lose touch with 'consensual reality' - increasingly arcane points become important, to the point where the non-initiate has to wonder about humanity in general

[symphonic]

[Attila]

[iangreenhalgh1]

I think the canon efs 18-55 kit lens is a piece of plastic junk to be honest, so cheap and poorly made, they tend to break within a few onths of normal use, hence ebay is full of them with faults, I have had two, both went wrong, just junk Canon should be ashamed of making.

On the other hand, I have several lenses tha are nearly 50 years old, made all of metal and glass and sill work perfectly, I hope to hand them on to my children and for them to be using them in another 50 years...

If I buy a plastic modern lens it will break before my children grow to be old enough to hold a camera...

Also, I don't like zoom lenses but that's almost all you can buy these days...

[nixland]

Just small example, from price and artistic purposes, the kit lens can not do what a MF f/1.2 lens can do at f/1.2, while the price is about the same ($200 or less), ... and kit lens can not draw swirly bokeh that less than $100 Helios 44 can do

[visualopsins]

The kit Canon 18-55 IS version has a reputation for having good IQ, better than older non-IS version, as good as some primes.

[hemisferico]

Using DSLRs for video brings a lot of new demands on lenses. Its very difficult to make a good zoom for video, the prices for broadcast quality HD zoom lenses is astronomical (and Cine quality zooms that will cover APSC or FF are even higher). A lot of this can be solved by using MF primes although there is a penalty in the time it takes to set up shots. Some of the performance shortcomings of older lens designs are hidden a little in video (depending on what the final presentation form is) so I think still photographers are in a position to be more critical about the lenses. It does seem to me that really good performance wide angle and telephotos weren't weren't generally available until 70s and those designs (along with zooms) have benefited the most from computer aided design.

I like lenses made from metal and glass with aperture rings.

[newton]

I too like metal lenses with aperture rings. I know two local female photographers that used cheap Nikon bodies and kit lenses and their photography I felt was outstanding, to the point, I really did not care that it came from a kit lens and was shot almost always in auto mode. I dated one of the females and her work was displayed in art galleries, one of which won an award. The other female just produced fantastic compositions, which were upped with her art institute photoshopping talents in art. These are examples where the gear did not matter so much and speak volumes about subject and composition. To be fair, even with my Zeiss lenses, perfection is still hard to attain, once you know what you are looking for, even after shooting or in pp. I don't think even pouring $10 grand on a new prime lens will ever satisfy my need for perfection, so at some point, you have to decide what limitations you are willing to live with. Chasing the parrot by the tail may get you bitten with a super sharp costly cut, eventually.

[LucisPictor]

I had the 18-55 for my old 350D as well and I really like the IQ - apart from the distortion.
But the reason that I did not use it often was its crappy built.

[ylyad]

[pat donnelly]

Such a great thread, does it not deserve to be made a sticky?

I always try to impress the photographers I encounter with manual lenses, particularly the primes, as they enforce such discipline in finding light of themselves, that they teach photography without wasting time and money on classes and degree courses. These courses have their uses, but like many things these days, they make profit for those who give them, rather than turning out great photographers. Better photographers perhaps, but not great ones. An expensive investment that may be wasted for many.

The advantages of manual lenses have all been eloquently set out earlier in the thread.

Modern AF lenses are expensive, have compromises, and are that "easy" that they will prevent poor photographers from improving. How often have we seen family pictures with massive amounts of wasted space in the frame? A manual lens can encourage exploration of what is possible with light and subject and with greater clarity, as it uses fewer glasses to project an image.

Soon, the price differentials will narrow as the mf lenses are bought up by collectors like me and many others as an investment, or for use.

[Phenix jc]

Everything has already been said ; I just want to point out one of the answers : MFlenses helps you making - not taking images

[Pancolart]

[ChromaticAberration]

I have read many opinions focusing on primes but there are also good vinage/retro zooms I am sure, probably more retro than vintage, maybe from the 80's.

Anyway, my reason to having sticket with MF lenses is very straightforward. Cost. Yeah! I can't spend hundreds of dollars on glass but I still wanna have fun and I dont think I should be prevented from that just because I can't afford modern lenses.

Today we had a Paintball match and I took my DSLR with my 28 ML just to see what it was capable of whil recording something for posteriry. Most of the photos I took were in focus, most of the photos other people took while borrowing my camera where out of focus. I can see why MF lenses improve you as photographer, it really does make you think and loose some time before pressing the shutter button.

[Yebisu]

I'm new to manual focus lenses so don't take what I say too seriously.

For me, it's very simple why I use manual focus lenses. It's got nothing to do with character or heritage; it's all about value for money . I can buy very fast manual focus lenses for a fraction of the cost of modern auto focus equivalents. My ai 50/1.4 cost me about 30 dollars! The current auto focus equivalent (afs 50/1.4G) costs about 40,000 yen (400 dollars) here in Japan. The kit lens that came with my D3000 opens at f5.6 at 50mm so it's useless for low light shooting. Using an MF lens allows me to shoot in low light situations for about 30 dollars.

It's the same for macro photography. The modern Nikkor macro lenses are wonderful but not in my (rather meager) budget. So I bought the old 55/3.5 for about 20 dollars. Now I can try out macro photography for only 20 dollars.

I'm not a collector and I'm not a romantic although I can understand why people are passionate about these beautifully crafted lenses. Basically using cheaper manual focus lenses has allowed me to extend the range of my photography (low light, macro etc.) on a tight budget.

[Laurence]

[RioRico]

The thrill of cheap MFL's!! The extra rush of FINE cheap MFL's!! For under US$20, under $10, under $5 even!! (Yes, I have snatched some good deals.) And of course some are not nearly so cheap. And some are noticeably better. So we get to decide: When do we jump from a fine $10 lens to a damn good $100 lens to a superb $1000 lens? Ah, the painful interaction of desire and budget...

But set a firm limit on cost per lens, and it is easy to build a thick collection. I bid low on many lenses and lose 99% of them and win enough to keep me happy and out of debt. Don't agonize over an auction. There is always another lens, and the next auction is only 10 minutes away.