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Old lenses are generally fine when stopped down to sensible apertures in my experience. What’s new is the expectation that lenses should be ultra sharp wide ope
by foldr 6y ago
Old lenses are generally fine when stopped down to sensible apertures in my experience. What’s new is the expectation that lenses should be ultra sharp wide open. Expensive lenses are a very niche enthusiast market now, so the design criteria aren’t especially rational.
An exception would be old kit zooms from the film era, which really are awful, since they were designed for people who rarely even went up to 8x10 prints. Modern kit zooms are usually very sharp lenses, though.
- lmilcin 6y agoHalf of reason I even bother with full frame is wide open. Any smartphone these days can give perfectly good sharp photos. I lug the beast around to get shots you can't get with a smartphone.
- foldr 6y agoShooting wide open is fashionable because it’s a sign of expensive gear. Once artificial bokeh is perfected I expect people will stop obsessing over blurry backgrounds.
- velosol 6y agoI can't speak for lmilcin, but wide open is also critical in low light to minimize ISO noise or to even have a stop or 2 down from the widest to have a little width in the focal plane while still capturing action. Agreed on the shots where you're at 1.4 and pushing the limits of your shutter speed.
- jeromenerf 6y agoI hope not. My Nikkor 135mm dc is quadrupled in value since I bought it :) DC stands for “defocus control", as distorting the bokeh forward of backward.
- skhr0680 6y agoI picked up an old stock 105mm last year, case included. I love how it makes people look, it's a great bridge between vintage and modern lenses. How do you feel abbout the DC function? I've found R settings don't really focus correctly with AF, so it's best to focus manually. Is that the case with the 135mm version too?
- rodgerd 6y agoIt's the new high dynamic range - splattered everywhere in a gatekeepery effort to substitute "I have spent a lot on camera equipment" for "I know how to compose photographs in an interesting way".
- adrr 6y agoMaybe for outdoor daylight situations. Any indoor or night time shot, fast lens wide open means getting shots that aren’t possible on a phone. Night mode on my phone is fine for still subjects but humans like to move. I guess if they keep adding more cameras to phones, they’ll get enough light to construct a usable image without having a 1 second exposure.