Bad Glass on Good Camera

NorBro

NorBro

Major Contributor
You put good glass on a good camera, you get a good image.

How about if you put bad, cheap glass on a GREAT camera..will the image be affected a lot?

What determines a bad lens...sharpness? build? CA? aperture?

I guess I'm wondering if someone has a camera for $20-$50k, should they also be using $5k lenses (per lens) with it?
 
People use ~$5k lenses (RED Pro Primes, Leica Summilux, Zeiss CP.2's, and even Canon L lenses) on $40-50k RED epics all the time with amazing results. In my opinion, a 'bad' lens is generally one that has a lot of distortion, CA and flimsy build quality, but this can vary from person to person, different shoots, or even different shots.
 
Cheap glass =/= bad glass.

Think samyangs and old nikkors. Both only cost several hundreds and people still use them on fs100/5d3/7d/epic. (yes, I've seen epic users use samyangs too.) There's a lot more to lenses than the price.
 
^ That

My vintage leitz lenses ($300 to $600 each) are nearly as good as many of those $5K lenses. You can see them (well, some similar to them) here, compared with cooke panchros and red pro primes, and coming out very much alive:
http://gettingelemental.blogspot.com.es/2011/12/portland-lens-test-2011.html
(you may have to stop the browser before it completely loads the page and redirects you to the blog's home page, don't know why that is happening now on this link)

Now, does that mean there are no bad cheap lenses? of course not, actually most of them are crap... depending on what you want.

For example: the Helios 44-2 (58mm f/2) (a $50 soviet lens) is extremely soft on the edges unless closed down to f/5.6-f/9: http://www.similaar.com/foto/lenstests/lenstestsa.html
It's not the kind of lens I'd like to use.
But here you'll find Timur Civan (a much more knowledgeable guy than I am, and much better DP than I'll probably ever become) praising it and calling it "My shining little star": http://timurcivan.blogspot.com.es/2012/07/the-big-changes.html (it's nearly at the bottom, below the picture of the bunch of old lenses)
So it's an imperfect lens, not a bad lens. For most shots, you'd rather use a different 50mm lens. But it has a lot of personality, and when you want the look it gives, well, that's what you have to go for.

And of course there are lenses that are just so bad you just don't want to touch them with a long stick.
 
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