50mm? Better on a 16-50mm lens or a 50-135mm lens? What end if a lens is better?

Jarek Zabczynski

Jarek Zabczynski

Veteran
Here's an honest question.

At what end of a lens is a lens "better"?

If you have for example a lens that is 16-50mm and one that is 50-135mm, and you want a 50mm focal length, which one do you use and why? And for the sake of this argument let's assume both lenses are identical in quality, everything is the same but range. What end is a lens better? At the wide or at the tele end?

One would assume the wider part of a lens would resolve better no?
 
That's interesting and I've never thought about that. I wonder if on the wider end of a zoom the focal lengths are more susceptible to barrel distortion. That's the only thing I could think of.
 
Benjamin Eckstein said:
That's interesting and I've never thought about that. I wonder if on the wider end of a zoom the focal lengths are more susceptible to barrel distortion. That's the only thing I could think of.
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Yeah, I would assume there are pros and cons of each, just curious what everyone thinks about this. Sharpness, distortion, vignetting? Then again with crop factor would it matter?
 
I'd be very surprised to find two lenses that different of the same quality. Find two actual lenses you want to compare and we could give you a better idea. There are very cheap garbage zooms- and amazing ones. Depends on what one's you're looking at. That said a decent prime lens at 50mm will beat all but the most ridiculously expensive zoom at 50mm.

Noah
 
NoahK said:
I'd be very surprised to find two lenses that different of the same quality. Find two actual lenses you want to compare and we could give you a better idea. There are very cheap garbage zooms- and amazing ones. Depends on what one's you're looking at. That said a decent prime lens at 50mm will beat all but the most ridiculously expensive zoom at 50mm.

Noah
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Well I'm just curious what the differences would be if both lenses actually were the same quality, for argument's sake, technically.

But to answer your question, I have the Nikon 17-55mm 2.8 and a Tokina 50-135mm 2.8. I'd put my money on the Nikon as that is my main workhorse lense for now. Also have the Tokina 11-16mm which is most excellent.
 
Noah, I think he was just bringing up an interesting point. If you have 2 zooms, one which ends at 50 and one which starts at 50 and you need a shot with a 50, is one lens better than the other?
 
Assume for the sake of argument, that you can find no difference in visual quality, which you would use would depend on what else you are shooting. If you are going wide and the 50 is a good close, why would you change lenses? If it is a close and closer scene then use the longer lens, Why change lenses if you don't have to? Wide zoom for interiors, Long Zoom for exteriors.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Well I'm just curious what the differences would be if both lenses actually were the same quality, for argument's sake, technically.

But to answer your question, I have the Nikon 17-55mm 2.8 and a Tokina 50-135mm 2.8. I'd put my money on the Nikon as that is my main workhorse lense for now. Also have the Tokina 11-16mm which is most excellent.
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You have got the lenses...so why dont you do a test ?

( I dont get why you are posting the question when you can answer it to your own satisfaction)

You could be informing us with the result.
 
Testing is an obvious way of getting results. I was wondering if there was already an answer. I haven't seen it asked before so why not? The more people chime in and run their own tests the better.

I thought perhaps there was a technical reasoning why A might be better than B or vice versa.
 
Zoom lenses tend to suffer at both ends and I don't think you will really find a rule of thumb which will dictate whether the long or wide end of a lens would suffer less (at least I can't think of any reason from an optics standpoint.)

One caveat though is that most zooms do not have a constant maximum f stop along the zoom range so the 16-50 might be at f 5.6 wide open whereas the 50-135mm wide open might be f 2.8 In this case you could stop down to 5.6 on the telephoto zoom to correct for some of the distortions, etc.

Like I said though, the only rule of thumb I think you are going to come across is all but the most expensive lenses have compromises that are most apparent at their extremes.
 
Jarek Zabczynski said:
Testing is an obvious way of getting results. I was wondering if there was already an answer. I haven't seen it asked before so why not? The more people chime in and run their own tests the better.

I thought perhaps there was a technical reasoning why A might be better than B or vice versa.
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Its a complicated test that wont necessarily supply you with an answer unless everyone that ran a test had the same lens set as you have.

If the question is purely academic....its probably a reasonable question then.

My answer is ..use the end of the lens / any lens ... that gets the result that you are looking for. ( its an "eye" thing)
 
If they were optically identical, then I would probably choose the smaller and lighter lens. Or the one that had the most desirable mechanical features like accurate focus markings, less breathing, no extension or rotation while zooming or focusing, smoother aperture control, etc. It might come down to fitting the diameter of a particular filter I wanted to use. Finally, the cheaper lens could also win.

The likelihood of this scenario occuring in real life is small, though.

- GDS
 
Yeah like I said- there's theoretical lenses and actual ones you can buy. What's the point of the debate if no lens actually exists that fits the parameters? Personally I'd want to cover both of those focal ranges. Though with the AF100's crop much above 100mm is kinda pointless unless you want to shoot lots of far away subjects like wildlife. Stick with some very wide and medium primes and you'll get the best possible results. Zoom kind of negates the purpose of the AF100 in the first place- i.e. lower quality optics. For the price of one zoom that was of equivalent optical quality you could get a number of faster primes.

Noah
 
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