How many lenses cover 95% or more of your photography?

Of the lenses that you currently own, how many of them cover 95% of the photos that you take since you have had all of the lenses you currently own? This includes lenses for multiple systems.

For example, let's say you currently own mFT and FF. You have six mFT lenses and four FF lenses for a total of ten lenses, the last of which was purchased a year ago. In the last year, then, how many of those lenses were used for 95% or more of your photography? That is, less than 1 in 20 of your photos, on average, for both systems together were taken with one of your other lenses.

I own 6 lens 4 for mft and 2 for FF, 2 of the mft lens are backup lens.

em12 i use 12 60 studio lens 14 150 walk around + macro (canon filters)

a7r2 45 1.8 walk around/studio ( 25 1.8 mft back up) and 85 1.8 portraits.( 45 1.8 mft backup)

Don

Great Bustard said:

Of the lenses that you currently own, how many of them cover 95% of the photos that you take since you have had all of the lenses you currently own? This includes lenses for multiple systems.

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M4/3 only for ILC plus some compacts for convenience.

Own quite a few M4/3 lenses but in real life it gets down to only two lenses doing maybe 98% of the work, 12-40/2.8 plus 8-18/2.8-4

Great Bustard said:

Of the lenses that you currently own, how many of them cover 95% of the photos that you take since you have had all of the lenses you currently own? This includes lenses for multiple systems.

For example, let's say you currently own mFT and FF. You have six mFT lenses and four FF lenses for a total of ten lenses, the last of which was purchased a year ago. In the last year, then, how many of those lenses were used for 95% or more of your photography? That is, less than 1 in 20 of your photos, on average, for both systems together were taken with one of your other lenses.

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I own 10 lenses. One is for my tiny Pentax Q and I hardly ever use that these days. The others are Pentax K-mount; three of them are nominally APS-C but I can use one fully on FF and the others with minor cropping.

However, although you ask about 95% (for which I use seven of my lenses) there are two that account for something like 75%. In other words, apart from those two none of my lenses accounts for more than 4-5% and some less.

Seriously, for me it has been only one lens the last few years...

Easily covering 95% of events, weddings and press photography.

No, I never needed or wanted to go FF as the 7D MKII has top notch

IQ...IMO, the Canon 18-200mm IS 3.5-5.6 is a superb allrounder.

The Canon 10-18mm IS, and the Canon 50mm 1.8 supplement

my gear set up for photography assignments...sadly very few for

this year of 2020...

Greetings...

https://www.dpreview.com/products/canon/lenses/canon_18-200_3p5-5p6_is

I have 16 lenses and two systems (Nikon F and mFT), but for more than 90% of my shooting I only use one lens per system - and only one system (FF) for more than 85%.

Nikon FF with 150-600 and mFT with 12-60.

I have a Viltrox adapter that let me use my F lenses on mFT, with working AF. The Nikkor 70-200/4 works well on mFT, but doesn´t amount to many % of my shooting. That is a reasonably good lens that don´t find much use on it´s intended body either...

Maybe I should have had a plan before buying all these lenses

I use a 50/1.4 and a 24/2 for about 95% of my shots.

I have 20 lenses for my current mount, which means I have 18 lenses that I use for 5% of my shots. In non-COVID years I average about 20,000 total shots (keepers), so my "least used" still are desired for ~1000 shots.

Two (out of 16). FF Laowa 100mm 2X macro. MFT Olympus 60mm macro.

One FF body, 3 lens of which the 58 f1.4 is used for the majority of my imaging.

Great Bustard said:

Of the lenses that you currently own, how many of them cover 95% of the photos that you take since you have had all of the lenses you currently own? This includes lenses for multiple systems.

Click to expand...

If a lens covers 95% of all your photography, then it would be impossible for another to do more than 5%, less if you have several lenses.

Great Bustard said:

For example, let's say you currently own mFT and FF. You have six mFT lenses and four FF lenses for a total of ten lenses, the last of which was purchased a year ago. In the last year, then, how many of those lenses were used for 95% or more of your photography? That is, less than 1 in 20 of your photos, on average, for both systems together were taken with one of your other lenses.

Click to expand...

It varies from year to year.

5 for me.

35, 85 and 135 for portraiture, 24-70 and 70-200 for everything else.

3 other lenses cover the last 5% more or less - 60mm macro, 200-500 and 14-24.

mFT 12-40/2.8 and 7-14/4.

... I try other lenses, but the Zenitar 85/1.4 is magnificent. Beautiful rendering with the Helios magic.

--
... “I wander, and I follow my eyes, and the light tells me where to go.”
.......... Douglas A. Yates.

I shoot across three systems. In each system, a mild to mid tele macro lens and a normal prime cover 95% of my shooting. So I chose 2 overall.

To be fair, in Fuji it is 2+1, since I also have a 40mm field of view prime on its own camera that I use for walkaround.

I shoot mainly wildlife and nature. The 2 that cover the majority of my photography are the Nikon 200-500 and the Nikon 105mm Micro.

I checked my usage in Lighroom. I have 10 lenses in two systems and I use all of them, except the 105 micro, more than 5%. That goes for both work and personal use.

This is the ranking for pro work, mostly weddings and portraits since 2016:

Seven Nikon lenses:

1. 85/1.4
2. 50/1.8
3. 24-70/2.8
4. 70-200/2.8
5. 35/1.4
6. 20/1.8
7. 105/2.8 micro

The Fuji kit is for personal use and got the 23/2.0 and 35/1.4 this summer and have not used the zoom since. So, my zoom is still the most used, cause I use that the first half of the year

Fuji (this year)

1. 18-55/2.8-4.0
2. 35/1.4
3. 23/2.0

For personal use, I als tend to bring just one lens and just shoot with that, I love that.

5 for me, out of 9. Of course, this was a very unusual year. Last year, 6 lenses. Must unused - the 100L macro. Next most unused - the 15mm fisheye but this is expected, still more used than the 100L.

One lens in my kit gets far & away the most use throughout the year. It's the Nikkor 200-500mm f/5.6E, which is used for wildlife & bird photography with a Nikon D500 (since 2018) and a D610 before that.

My most recent lens acquisition was in 2017 when I added a Fuji APS-C mirrorless body and Fuji lens to my kit. I use these primarily for travel photography (not much of that in the last 10 months) and occasional video. I also have four lenses that were acquired years ago when I was shooting mostly landscapes, and occasional portraiture, sports, and travel with the Nikon D610.

While I still do occasional landscape, portraiture, travel, and sports, the bird & wildlife photography is a weekly activity and easily accounts for 95% or more of all shutter actuations I make in a year... especially this year.

I'm off from work this week. Today to pass the time, I fired up Lightroom and Excel to make an accurate accounting for this survey question. The result was surprising. It required that I change my response and replace the previous last paragraph. Here goes:

Since acquiring the Fuji 18-55mm f/2.8-4.0 OIS lens in early 2017, four lenses account for 97.8% of all photography I've done with ILCs. The lenses are the Nikkor 200-500, Tamron 70-200, Fuji 18-55, and Nikkor 16-35. Three lenses (200-500, 70-200, and 18-55) account for 94.5% of the photography I've done during this period. That's close to the 95% threshold but not quite there.

The 200-500 has accounted for an increasing percentage of all exposures made, year-on-year since 2017: 64.7% (2017), 68.0% (2018), 90.6% (2019), and 89.2% (2020), respectively.

The two-lens combo of the 200-500 and 70-200 accounted for 98% of all ILC shooting I did in 2020. The two-lens combo of the 200-500 and 18-55 accounted for 98% of all ILC shooting I did in 2019. The Fuji gear is my primary travel kit. The significant drop in 18-55 usage this year is explained by the pandemic.

Otherwise, in 2017, 2018, and over the nearly four-years since acquiring the 18-55, four lenses account for at least 95% of the ILC work done.

Since I bought my last lens a month ago, if I only count the last month I don't get a very representative answer. I've only used 4 lenses since then, and hardly used the micro-4/3rds system at all.

If I take it since I bought the medium format system, 10 lenses cover 95%.

If I take it since I bought my last well used micro-4/3rds lens, it's also 10 lenses, but a different 10.

So I'd say 10.