If you could get any 3 lens, what would they be and why?

[SoulfulRecover]

178mm Kodak Aero Ektar f/2.5
Nikon 200mm F/2
Nikon 35mm f/1.4

The Aero Ektar for portraits with the 4x5, the 200mm for general portraits on the DSLR and the 35mm for boudoir with the DSLR.

 

[Designer]

Most people who responded to this thread assumed the OP meant you could have ONLY THREE lenses, so would the "trinity" be adequate?

Since I was wrong about how to read the title of this thread, I should re-write my answer to whittle my lens collection down to only three total.

1. The AF-S Nikkor 20mm f/1.8G ED
2. The Voightlander Nokton 58mm f/1.4 SLIS Ai-S (in Nikon F mount)
3. The Nikon Nikkor 180mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF

All three for IQ, however there are others that have at least as good IQ.

I suppose I could exist with just these three, although I would weep at the loss of some of my other lenses.

 

[JBPhotog1]

It's pretty tough to beat the Holy Trinity for quality and focal length range,
- 14~24mm F2.8
- 24~70mm F2.8
- 70~200mm F2.8

There are a host of other options depending on your needs but for commercial work the HT fills the bill.

 

[ph0toe]

I'm curious why people don't add prime lenses here. Only because with prime lenses, it let you be more creative with the photos as well as having sharper images at low aperture. thoughts?

 

[JBPhotog1]

Zoom lenses also have fixed focal lengths so if one wants the perspective of a 35mm on a 24-70 they simply dial it in. Primes are no more “creative inducing” than zooms and often they are not any better if one shops in the high end of the price range with zooms. One advantage of primes are typically the maximum f-stop such as 1.2 and 1.4 but often the subject may preclude from using them wide open.

One downside of zooms typically points to the shooter, they simply plant their feet and use the zoom range to get the framing. This is poor technique but one can’t really blame the lens.

 

[ph0toe]

thanks for enlightening me.

So buying a zoom is always better than a prime? prime is useless if one buys all high end zoom lens?


"One downside of zooms typically points to the shooter, they simply plant their feet and use the zoom range to get the framing. This is poor technique but one can’t really blame the lens."

how should one do it instead?

 

[Derrel]

If you go online and look at top-flight photos from good photographers you will often find it is quite impossible to tell whether a photo was shot with a single focal length lens or a zoom lens, and that practical test shows the idea that prime lenses lead to better photographs to be a falsehood. Perhaps 40 years ago it was easier to make that generalization, that prime lenses outperform zoom lenses, but I should point out that when it was introduced the Nikon 14 to 24 millimeter F / 2.8 was found to outperform many single focal length wide angle lenses from multiple manufacturers including Canon,Nikon, and Zeiss. As the years have gone by zoom lenses have become bigger and better and now in many cases the performance of top quality zoom lenses is basically virtually indistinguishable from current prime lenses, except in certain extreme situations. But the idea that you will get "better photos" is, I think, overblown and in many cases not true.

 

[480sparky38 37]

thanks for enlightening me.

So buying a zoom is always better than a prime? prime is useless if one buys all high end zoom lens?
.........?

Absolutely and unequivocally not. Primes are, in general, sharper, faster and have less optical flaws (distortion, astigmatism, coma.....)

 

[Derrel]

True perspective, AKA _perspective_, is determined by camera to subject distance, not by focal length. How far away the camera is from a subject determines the perspective. Changing the camera-to-subject distance is a critical part of composing a photograph. Perspective is difficult to explain,but suffice to say it is a fundamental issue that has been ignored or which has remained undiscovered by most self-taught people today. Where you stand, or where you put the camera on the tripod, makes a big difference in the final look of the photo. If you just stand in one place and zoom in or zoom out your photos do not look the same as if you were to move the camera closer or farther from the subject, even with or without lens changes.

In today's world of self-taught Photography enthusiasts, certain aspects of The Craft which were once readily understood are not even heard of. Perspective is perhaps one of the most overlooked and misunderstood or misconstrued words in the jargon of photography. You will often hear the mistaken use of the word perspective in the phrases " wide-angle perspective" or telephoto perspective, but both of those phrases are incorrect and a Corruption of the meaning of the word perspective.

 

[JBPhotog1]

What are you measuring? There is no point in using a micrometer if you are building a house.

With extremely few exceptions, the final image quality in the medium of choice will show no distinguishable difference between a prime and zoom. However, there are characteristics unique to each lens that may be preferable to the photographer. As mentioned previously, we are not talking about a consumer grade zoom versus a prime and frankly this is not the OP’s original query.

The question was which three lenses. I own primes as well as pro quality zooms and my clients are none the wiser.

 

[Derrel]

Back when I still had a full Canon DSLR outfit I owned several prime lenses as well as two Canon brand zooms, the 24 to 105 F4 L USM, and the 70 to 200 F / 2.8 L IS USM. My Canon prime lenses were the 50 mm F / 1.8 the 50mm F/1.4, the 85 m m f 1.8, the 100 mm f/2.8 EF macro oh, the second version, with internal focusing, and both the 135mm f/2.8 variable soft-focus lens, which is actually extremely Sharp which shot at the neutral setting with no soft focus effect dial dialed in oh, and also cannons somewhat legendary 135 mm f/2 L. Even though the 135 millimeter F2 is a quote legendary prime lens telephoto I usually found that the zoom tele performed so well that there was absolutely no need to use the prime lens.

On the other hand Nikon's very large and heavy 200 mm f / 2 VR lens, which I bought in 2006 or 7 and which weighed about 7 lb. Was a somewhat better performer than either my Canon or my Nikon 70 to 200 mm zoom lenses... however we are talking about a lens that is priced at somewhere around 4 to $5,000 depending on age of lens and version.

Comparing the Nikon 70 to 300 mm f/4.5~5.6 VR, which was priced at around $589 when brand new against the 300 F 2.8AFS Mark II when the zoom lens was shot at 300 mm it was obvious that the 7 pound $4,900 lens was the better performer However that did not stop me from making literally thousands of perfectly good photos with the lighter and smaller and much less costly lens.

 

[Derrel]

I typically think of prime lenses as being best at a specific type of task. One Prime lens that I think is extremely good is a 300 mm F / 2.8. This type of lens puts a visual impression on its images.

For most uses however, it is much easier to carry a lighter and smaller lens, even if it does not open as wide. For example a 300 F / 4 is much smaller, lighter, and easy to carry than its big brother the f/ 2.8 which usually weighs about 5 lb more, and which is extremely noticeable in any type of public shooting environment, such as at a festival, School event, etc..

 

[Derrel]

[QUOTE="480sparky, post: 3984119, member:

Absolutely and unequivocally not. Primes are, in general, sharper, faster and have less optical flaws (distortion, astigmatism, coma.....)

And yet Millions upon millions of fantastic photos are made every year with zoom lenses. It is now possible and quite easy in fact to apply sharpening to photos in post,and it is easily possible to eliminate much distortion,up to the point where Distortion is basically invisible. Astigmatism? I'm not sure I have ever had a photo impacted by that. While Primes maybe a few line pairs per millimeter sharper in some cases it is entirely possible that a modern Zoom lens might be extraordinarily good, as in the case of the above-mentioned Nikon 14 to 24 mm F / 2.8 which is easily better than the previous three or four generations of Nikon wide-angle prime lenses. Also, one zoom lens might easily weigh 1/2 to 1/4 as much as 3 to 5 single focal length lenses of comparable speed

 

[Designer]

I'm curious why people don't add prime lenses here.

I did.

 

[Designer]

thanks for enlightening me.

So buying a zoom is always better than a prime? prime is useless if one buys all high end zoom lens?


"One downside of zooms typically points to the shooter, they simply plant their feet and use the zoom range to get the framing. This is poor technique but one can’t really blame the lens."

how should one do it instead?

walk