Which prime lenses cover the bases?

F

forum177

Member
I want to purchase the GH2 body only and then add lenses. I'm open to old and new glass. Good bokeh is important. Which prime lenses (under aprox. 500$) cover the bases? Which one should I start with? Also what would be some good choices for one overall zoom in case the primes won't be suitable for a specific situation?
 
18mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm is all I need. It's a personal thing, though. Start with a good zoom lens and start noticing which focal lengths you tend to gravitate towards. Everyone is a little bit different, and try as they might, no one can give you a universal answer they'll know works for you. If you start buying primes right away, expect to sell some of them back. I did when I first started. I ended up wasting a good couple of hundred dollars.
 
+1 on the 18mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm. I'm just going simple though with the panny 20mm instead of an 18 and 24mm.
 
vcassel said:
18mm, 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm is all I need. It's a personal thing, though. Start with a good zoom lens and start noticing which focal lengths you tend to gravitate towards. Everyone is a little bit different, and try as they might, no one can give you a universal answer they'll know works for you. If you start buying primes right away, expect to sell some of them back. I did when I first started. I ended up wasting a good couple of hundred dollars.
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Great idea, I think I'll go with that. You guys know if there's any difference between the kit 14-140mm and 14-42mm apart from the focal length?
 
Here is a chant you will hear again and again from me and others: Pancake, pancake, pancake! The 20mm is fast, sharp, and has really snappy autofocus.
 
forum177 said:
Great idea, I think I'll go with that. You guys know if there's any difference between the kit 14-140mm and 14-42mm apart from the focal length?
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Yeah, the 14-140 is video ready, constant, fast autofocus, HD lens. Very good quality. If it wasn't slow (f4-5.6) it would be a perfect zoom. Recommended.
 
Fairly standard full frame sets are
3 lens set: 28, 50, 135 or
4 lens set: 28, 50, 90, 135

16mm fish-eyes, 21mm ultra-wides and 200mm (and above) Tele-photos I'm regarding as special use for film, not standard kit.

For a single, walkaround prime, a 35mm is often considered a nice alternative to the standard 50mm.

So for m4/3 we have:

Wide 14mm (28 equiv.)

Normal 25 (50 equiv.)

Portrait 45 (90 equiv.)

Short-Tele 67 (equiv. 135)

So ideally 14, 25, 45, 67, but that's never going to happen so:

14mm Lumix (28), 20mm Lumix (40), 24mm/28mm old prime (48/56) 35mm/45mm old prime (70/90), 50mm/58mm old prime (100/116).

I don't need longer than that, and anyway I have the 14-140 zoom if I need to. I am re-buying and re-configuring as I've just moved from Canon 5D and need wider lenses.

For the ultra-wide, I will sit on my hands.
For the wide 14mm I will continue to use the zoom I think.
It seems fast wide lenses are very thin on the ground, and the pancake is a shoe-in and also makes an ideal walkaround lens, being tiny, fast and autofocus. Shame it's focus by wire for cinema work, but hey, it's good and worth it. If I had money, obviously the Nokton 25mm would be in there to replace the 24/28 combination, making an ideal 4 lens cinema set with a 20mm walkaround.
 
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