I have been a photographer for nearly 5 years and I have been freelance for about 6 months and so, budgeting is more important then ever. However, I have never been very good at it! Cameras and lenses are expensive. If you want one of Canon’s semi pro SLR’s like the 5D Mk2, it’ll set you back about £1800-£2000. That is the cheapest up-to-date ‘full frame’ camera available (excluding the 5D Mk1 – its predecessor).
Full Frame
Until relatively recently, ‘affordable cameras’ all had a smaller frame, including most digital SLR’s. Nikon have only recently made their flagship camera a full frame. It basically means the digital sensor matches the size of a 35mm camera. This means you maintain full range from the lenses you use. The problem with full frame is that you really do need excellent lenses as the sensors are so much bigger and show any optical defects that may be present.
With this in mind, I have always bee a big believer in buying the absolute best I can afford and usually the ‘best’ means ‘most expensive’. Most lenses are judged on their glass quality and their speed. This is determined by the maximum aperture they will allow and a common wide aperture is F2.8 (small numbers meaning a large aperture). Having a zoom can prevent such large apertures and cheaper lenses don’t often go that low. Leica for example have produced the “LEICA NOCTILUX-M 50 mm f / 0.95 ASPH is £6290 (inc VAT) SRP” (from DPReview). See what I mean! This places exquisite lenses out of the ordinary person’s reach.
I have just paid £250 for 2 lenses and I am staggered by the image quality – not only for the price but against some of my most expensive lenses. Whats more, they are OLD! In fact, they were manufactured shortly after WW2 ended!
You can see a few of the images here (below) gut you can find the rest of the images in my flickr set at:
NON OF THESE IMAGES HAVE BEEN ALTERED I HAVE MERELY COPIED THEM TO THE COMPUTER AND REDUCED THEIR SIZE FOR ONLINE VIEWING.
Dew on leaves shot at 35mm
These lenses are manufactured by Carl Zeiss (the communist sector) and are fully manual. There is no option for an automatic setting. I have had to buy a small adaptor ring for £5 so they fit my camera but that doesn’t seem to have affected their performance. I was simply astonished that such an old lens would maintain it’s quality, even on a full frame camera.
A rose at 135mm
The practical uses for these lenses are limited by their manual construction. They’d be pretty useless for sport for example and they also lack some luxuries like weather sealing – that comes on all the Canon professional ‘L series’ lenses. However, because they were made by hand, by a person, they can be dismantled and serviced in the same way and there are sites providing step by step guides to doing so.
An insect at 135mm
They are hard to use. I was shooting on motor drive (4 frames a second) to ensure a sharp shot as I was moving while breathing and the wind was moving the various subjects. This is NOT good practice but I wanted to get these produced and up here as soon as possible. These lenses would be most use in a landscape environment or a studio. In fact, anywhere where there are no moving objects, and preferably using a tripod. Manual focussing won’t take long to get used to again!
My favourite thing about these lenses are their operation. They have manual aperture controls – something that has been missing from lenses for years, I was 12 the last time I remember using a lens with such controls! They also make you think far more about your composition and subject. They are primes (no zoom) so if you are too close, you just move backwards, and if you are too far away, move closer! If you are setting up a shot with a tripod, lighting etc and it’ll take 15 minutes to prepare to release the shutter, it had better be right! With a zoom, it is all too easy to simply zoom ‘in a bit’ or ‘out a bit’ once you are in place. With these, you need to get it spot on!
They are testing and make you think more, trying angles and view-points before settling on the one that works best.
I’ll post more as I use them over the coming days/weeks.
I hope you found this interesting.
Rupert
