If you had to choose one lens only to work with...

Rayn

Rayn

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In an imaginary situation, let's say you'd get one lens, free of choise, to work with for a year. That lens would have to cover all your wants and needs, and you could never go back on your choise for that year, no matter what.
Now I know there'll be a lot of diffrent suggestions to this question, as there are loads of diffrent togs among us, some do portraits, others do landscape, wildlife or sports etc.

I'm just curious to find out if there is such a thing as "the ultimate lens", a lens that the majority of togs go for, no matter what they do.

Personally, as I'm a freshman and only have an entry lvl camera on 1.6x crop, and I still haven't figured what direction I want to be going yet, but with an interest in a mix of landscape, wildlife and street life, I think I'd go for the Canon 135mm L (not the soft focus one).
 
Not for my work...couldn't do it...

But for general stuff?
Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8
It is simply the best lens I've ever used.
 
I've personally been using a mix of three on my 40D and they usually spend the same amount of time on the body, however if it was just one it would be, my tokina 11-16 F2.8 Ive only had it a couple of months but love the creative way you can use it, followed secondly by my tamron 17-50 F2.8 and then the Falcon 8mm fish-eye.

Im into street photography along with a bit of landscape but if it looks good to me I honestly dont mind what anyone else thinks as it makes me happy.
 
hmmm....... given the sigy 17-70 lives on the camera most of the time, would probably go for that as can do lansdcape to close up portrait with it, but would be pants for an airshow or wildlife........... I don't think there is one ultimate lens unless theres a 17-500 f2.8 out there????????
 
Nikkor 70-200 F2.8.
 
Rayn said:
I'm just curious to find out if there is such a thing as "the ultimate lens".
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I doubt it really as different photographers shoot different subjects, ie a person who shoots portraits may swear by an 85mm 1.4, whereas someone shooting wildlife may go for a 300mm 2,8 or 600mm f4, and so on and so forth.
 
If I could only use one lens for a year then it would be the bigma 50-500, not that it's my favourite (although I do like it very much) but because of the range. Now if you are meaning what my favourite lens is that would be much much harder to answer but would probably be the canon ef-s 10-22 :love:
 
Just a 50mm would do. If it was good enough for Capa and Cartier-Bresson it's good enough for me :p
 
Honestly? With my 7D I'd go for the EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM. Basically an L lens without the branding due to it being crop body only, fantastic IQ from what I've seen and pretty quick for the focal range.

Or possibly a 70-200 f2.8 L IS, the new one, mark 2. Oh man.

Or the 100-400 L just a really versatile great lens.

Or maybe the 1200mm f5.6 L just for the hell of it!
 
Well it's always going to be different strokes for different folks. I'd say the 500mm f4 if I had to choose one, but sometimes it's just too long, so there's really no lens that covers it all for me.
 
If we're talking lenses that we already own, I'd say my 70-300mm VR. It's great wildlife and not too shabby when it comes to portraits either.
 
My main lenses are 24 70 2.8 and 70 200 2.8 on a FF camera. Would find it difficullt to choose just one. I suppose the 24 70 gets more use, but I love the 70 200 more! :shrug:
 
Laudrup said:
Just a 50mm would do. If it was good enough for Capa and Cartier-Bresson it's good enough for me :p
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:lol:
Only 'cause that's all they had. Or do you seriously imagine they'd limit themselves in such a fashion today?

Capa was a terrible cheapskate when it came to kit, famous for spending more on champagne than his cameras, which was probably the real reason he swapped his Leica III for a Contax rangefinder sometime just prior to WW2...
His Spanish soldier shot was taken on a 28mm 35mm or 50mm lens - no-one really knows which, but he owned all three at various times...

Capa had cameras with 35mm and 50mm lenses mounted the day he died.
One was a Contax rangefinder and the other was a Nikon S rangefinder (with colour film loaded).
 
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Interesting question. I think I'd pick my 400mm f/4DO. Nearly as long as my 500 but lighter and more managable for in flight stuff.
 
Arkady said:
:lol:
Only 'cause that's all they had. Or do you seriously imagine they'd limit themselves in such a fashion today?

Capa was a terrible cheapskate when it came to kit, famous for spending more on champagne than his cameras, which was probably the real reason he swapped his Leica III for a Contax rangefinder sometime just prior to WW2...
His Spanish soldier shot was taken on a 28mm 35mm or 50mm lens - no-one really knows which, but he owned all three at various times...

Capa had cameras with 35mm and 50mm lenses mounted the day he died.
One was a Contax rangefinder and the other was a Nikon S rangefinder (with colour film loaded).
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Didn't Capa fake a lot of his Spanish civil war photos, and I'm sure I read somewhere that the falling soldier was pretty suspect too?
 
Skyline On Fire said:
Didn't Capa fake a lot of his Spanish civil war photos, and I'm sure I read somewhere that the falling soldier was pretty suspect too?
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Better minds than I have debated that point for decades, so I'm not going to argue the point here.

Best scenario (so far) for the 'falling soldier' was that he was taking some staged photos on a quiet part of the front when one was shot by enemy soldiers who'd gone previously unnoticed.

Looking at the frames from that day there are several shots very similar to the famous one...
But the guy was killed. He was recently identified.

A lot of what I do - the PR stuff - even on Operations is technically 'staged'...at other times we call them 'exercises'.
If they're not properly captioned, it's concievable that many years from now they could be mistaken for the real thing...
 
Arkady said:
Better minds than I have debated that point for decades, so I'm not going to argue the point here.

Best scenario (so far) for the 'falling soldier' was that he was taking some staged photos on a quiet part of the front when one was shot by enemy soldiers who'd gone previously unnoticed.

Looking at the frames from that day there are several shots very similar to the famous one...
But the guy was killed. He was recently identified.

A lot of what I do - the PR stuff - even on Operations is technically 'staged'...at other times we call them 'exercises'.
If they're not properly captioned, it's concievable that many years from now they could be mistaken for the real thing...
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Good point in regards to the PR stuff. I guess they had their equivalent even back then.
 
Arkady said:
:lol:
Only 'cause that's all they had. Or do you seriously imagine they'd limit themselves in such a fashion today?
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For many years, all I owned was a 50mm on a Praktica and then an AV-1. My Yashica TLR has a 80mm standard lens on 6x6 and my recently acquired Mamiya M645J has only an 80mm.

A Canon 50mm f/1.4 is the default lens on my 5D - that's what lives on the body when it's in its bag and most of the time if I'm only going out with one lens. It would still be a fairly good candidate in my book.

70-200 f/2.8L IS comes a close second out of the lenses I own. Otherwise I'd probably go for a 24-70mm f/2.8L.
 
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although the 120-300 is practically glued to the camera at the moment and i love it to bits.. i think probably the sig 70-200 because its more of an all rounder if you dont want closeups of peoples zits. plus its a featherweight in comparison..
 
Mmm its a bit of a difficult one, either 24-70 2.8 (own one) Nikkor or 85 1.4 Nikkor (want one)
 
Arkady said:
:lol:
Only 'cause that's all they had. Or do you seriously imagine they'd limit themselves in such a fashion today?

Capa was a terrible cheapskate when it came to kit, famous for spending more on champagne than his cameras, which was probably the real reason he swapped his Leica III for a Contax rangefinder sometime just prior to WW2...
His Spanish soldier shot was taken on a 28mm 35mm or 50mm lens - no-one really knows which, but he owned all three at various times...

Capa had cameras with 35mm and 50mm lenses mounted the day he died.
One was a Contax rangefinder and the other was a Nikon S rangefinder (with colour film loaded).
Click to expand...

I can't see Cartier-Bresson sauntering around Paris with a blacked out Nikon D3 and a 24-70mm, can you? Maybe a blacked out M9 if he was alive today. As for Capa didn't he use a Contax II which was at the time superior to the Leica III? I guess he might use a 24-70mm or a 70-200mm, but we'll never know.
 
Can't comment on individual lenses but as far as focal length goes, if it was a fixed lens then the 35mm equivalent of a 28mm.
 
Laudrup said:
Just a 50mm would do. If it was good enough for Capa and Cartier-Bresson it's good enough for me :p
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I'd go with that as well (but not for those reasons!).

If Rayn wants a single lens to cover landscape, wildlife and street life then they could do worse than fix a 35mm lens (@50mm equivalent on a 550D) and learn how to take pictures with it.
 
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If I had to chooese one probably Nikon 24-70 2.8 but my heart tells me 50 1.4
 
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For work...Nikkor 70-200
For me....Nikkor 28-70 The Beast..it's love you see!
 
My 35-350mm F3.5-5.6 L USM

Still pretty wide @ 35mm on FF, and still pretty long @ 350mm on a FF.
Not that 'fast', but both my bodies can handle high ISO pretty well and give me a decent shutter speed.
 
Laudrup said:
I can't see Cartier-Bresson sauntering around Paris with a blacked out Nikon D3 and a 24-70mm, can you? Maybe a blacked out M9 if he was alive today. As for Capa didn't he use a Contax II which was at the time superior to the Leica III? I guess he might use a 24-70mm or a 70-200mm, but we'll never know.
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HCB gave it up and turned to painting...he produced next to nothing of note for the last 30 years of his life.
His early work was seminal and deserves the credit for that.
I see him with Lumix to be honest, maybe a GF-1.

Capa used Contax because they were marginally cheaper (I think $137 as opposed to $190-ish for the Leica III in New York in the late-1930's - best I can work out given the gold prices against the Reichmark back then, that equates to about $2,000 against $3,000-ish in today's money, so a pretty significant saving if you're buying three).
The Contax was widely regarded as the superior camera, but was technically more complicated and for that reason, journalists tended to opt for the Leica as it was less likely to malfunction in adverse conditions.
Leica also had a bigger range of lenses, but again the Zeiss lenses used on the Contax were considered to be better.

Just like today, many factors no doubt governed camera purchases for Pros: cost and reliability amongst them.
Given film quality of the day, I would imagine that reliability would be a higher priority, since self-help would have been the order of the day in the event of a malfunction.

Capa also carried a Rollie TLR with an 80mm lens for his portraits in the field...

Given his trends back then, and although it pains me to say this, I'd put money on him using a Canon DSLR system today.
 
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