ONE lens to buy

I considered the tokina to be my first lens as well.... i just want to buy a lens that i could one day eventually use on a full frame + the tokina is a bit too wide for what i'm planning to do (interview situations, follow people around / outdoor)
it's true35mm is a bit expansive but i consider a lifetime buy... i still haven't found a good one though, it seems like the sigma 30mm 1.4 is not a very good lens from what i read in reviews!

my other buy will be the helios 44 m42! btw, this is the yahinon i have: http://www.retrocamera.net/review-of-auto-yashinon-dx-50mm17-m42-lens.html
 
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Terry Lee said:
My personal choice after reading Philip's blog was the Tokina 11-16mm 2.8
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The Tokina, while being an excellent lens, is not a walk around lens. It is an ultrawide.
I would suggest a zoom lens (not necessarily the fastest one) to have some range and a fast prime 30 or 50mm to start with. Then you upgrade from there. Get your kit lens and see the field of view at different focal lengths to understand better what prime you would need.
Regarding old lenses, this glass is never praised enough!
 
kostas: very good suggestion! I shot some stuff with the 50 mm and felt it was too much tele on an aps-c camera! so i'll go with 30 or 35 mm!
After thinking this through, I'll start looking at pawn shops for old russian lenses. does anyone have a comparison chart of the best vintage lenses?
 
i went with a canon 50mm 1.4 for my first lens, and i hardly use it now that ive bought several older vintage lenses. 50mm is to tele for normal situations, the lens i use the most is a SMC Takumar 28mm 3.5. i do plan on buying a tamron 28-75mm 2.8 soon though so i have a lens i can use conveniently in 95% of the situations i face. using manual focus primes is definitely time consuming.
 
mrchirster said:
kostas: very good suggestion! I shot some stuff with the 50 mm and felt it was too much tele on an aps-c camera! so i'll go with 30 or 35 mm!
After thinking this through, I'll start looking at pawn shops for old russian lenses. does anyone have a comparison chart of the best vintage lenses?
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I know it can be a bit time consuming to read all this...but this is the official Vintage thread...where we are all suffering, recovering, or relapsing from LBA (lens buying addiction). Blasted Vintage lenses. :kali: :furious3:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=201760

I'll start off though by recommending Supertakumar glass :)
 
The Kit lens is surprisingly good when it comes to video. The IS is the cat's meow. Glad I kept mine. For the price, it can't be beat. That's for daylight shoots only though.

If you like lowlight shoots, then the mentioned Tamron 17-50 2.8 VC or the Canon 17-50 2.8 IS is a must.

If I had the dough, the Canon is my pick for "the only lens".
 
At last somebody sticking up for the poor old kit lens its the most bullied object on the planet and for video outdoors fine IMO,i also have a Tamron 28-300 and like that but i admit i have never used a real costly lens,wide angle when the funds alow the Tamron 10-24mm ? :undecided
 
Why are people buying these cameras and then looking for "the lens." There is no ONE lens. There's a reason why these things have interchangeable lenses. If you want one lens go buy a real video camera.
 
Ben_B said:
Why are people buying these cameras and then looking for "the lens." There is no ONE lens. There's a reason why these things have interchangeable lenses. If you want one lens go buy a real video camera.
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Because people don't know much about lenses (look at this forum) and most are totally confused about the subject. So buying a single lens that does everything for $400 seems a temptation to great to pass up.

Never mind that for the same money, they could have 4-5 lenses in the most common sizes that were fast and beautiful.

So we get productions that are under-lit, the iris can't be opened as much as required to deal with it, and we get a bunch of posts here about how to remove noise from the video. And then complaints about how much the cameras suck.

Vicious cycle.


They come from a video camera with a F1.9 or F1.6 lens, then buy a DSLR and hobble it with F4 - F5.6 glass and wonder why people brag they're good in low light.
 
Sigh.

Yeah, pretty much.

I think people don't get that since the sensor is so large there aren't any lenses that do everything like there are on smaller chip cameras. You will not find, for any price, a lens that zooms from ultrawide to ultra-telephoto, less than f/2.8, same max aperture throughout the zoom, parfocal, and does things like macro focus, OIS, auto-focus, smooth and large manual focus, and excellent build quality. Those are like 8 things. If you're shopping for a lens under $1,000 you can choose like 3, but not any 3...some 3 contradict each other directly with glass design on sensors this big.
 
The newest Tamron SP 17-50mm with VC is great. Fast 2.8 zoom and the VC works well in video mode for smoothing the jello. The 17mm is a decent wide but with a little more distortion than I'd like and the 50m becomes a medium tele on the crop sensor. Best all around lens for the aps-c hands down.
 
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