Forum: Photography


Subject: Prime Lenses vs Zoom Lenses and other stuff debate.

Fred255 opened this issue on Aug 04, 2009 · 32 posts


TomDart posted Thu, 06 August 2009 at 6:16 PM

I am not stacked up with lenses but have a few which serve my purposes just fine for now.  The favorite is shown in the photo...and this is not my most used lens!  It  #4 in this list , with the most used lens at #1 and working down the list.
  1. Most used: Nikon 18 - 200 VR  lens.  Most all my recent uploads except macros were taken with this lens.  The lens is quick and agile for me. The downside is that at 200mm we go down to F/5.6.   That is the penalty of a variable aperture zoom.

  2. This is a Sigma macro, f/2.8 prime, 50mm.   Love it!

  3. Now we get to my tele zoom, Sigma 100 -300 ( full frame model since that was available at the time but offers no advantage  unless I go to a full frame camera), F /4.0 all the way, giving decent speed at any zoom level.  No vibration reduction on this one.

  4. My favorite lens is the pictured Sigma 30mm F/1.4 prime.  This lens does an outstanding job. I like it because of how it looks, too.  The 30mm gives me a viewfinder frame view of approximately what a 45mm would do on a full frame. So, this is the closest to a 50mm frame view I am going to get with my stuff.  Silly reasons perhaps...it is still a 30mm, not a 50. The image is that of a 30mm cropped down to the size of a full frame 45mm...close enough to 50mm for me, considering my 50mm macro gives a crop of a 75mm on the 1.5 ratio Nikon sensor.

So, this chunky 30mm is my favorite.  The speed is used once in a while even though F/ 1.4 is not needed often.  This does me well on face shots as does the 50mm Sigma in the #2 slot. Both the 30mm and the 50mm have done credible jobs at a couple of weddings where I did some backup and specialty shots.  I don't do weddings and will only help a bit when forced in some way of flattered enough.

It looks like I am a two zoom and two prime sort of photographer.