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Prime lens recommendations?

Started Jun 9, 2015 | Discussions thread
jeffharris
jeffharris Forum Pro • Posts: 11,409
Re: the devil's advocate

Bill Wallace wrote:

Great advice from Steve..... I always fancied myself a prime shooter, sharper, better rendering, etc. but I am a zooms shooter at heart, sigh. The best advice above was to get a kit zoom or two, long and short and shoot them to figure out your focal lengths, or as Steve says perhaps to figure out if you are a prime or zoom shooter. Many of us have plenty of both but I'd bet we all fall predominantly into one category or the other.

Words from a closet prime shooter……

I'm definitely a prime shooter, but bought a 12-40mm recently for a trip to Morocco to cut down on lens swapping. (It was very dry and dusty in places, so I'm glad I did.) It covers near enough to my two favorite lenses (17.5mm and 42.5mm) and has excellent close focus so I could skip carrying a macro lens. So, my walkabout kit was a mix and match of zooms + prime: 7-14mm, 12-40mm and 17.5mm (for night shooting and VERY glad I brought it!). My girlfriend was using our 14-140mm II + GX1, so that was available for the rare times I wanted to go long.

So, yeah, one of the f2.8 zooms would be an interesting option, but still, with f2.8 max aperture, they're not that great in more challenging lighting situations, or for shallower depth of field.

 jeffharris's gear list:jeffharris's gear list
Panasonic Lumix G Vario 7-14mm F4 ASPH Voigtlander Nokton 25mm F0.95 Voigtlander Nokton 42.5mm F0.95 Voigtlander Nokton 17.5mm F0.95 Aspherical Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX8 +26 more
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