DPReview.com is closing April 10th - Find out more

The Sweet Spot

Started Jan 19, 2020 | User reviews thread
Alastair Norcross
Alastair Norcross Veteran Member • Posts: 9,874
Re: Trading blows (on paper)

R2D2 wrote:

dan the man p wrote:

As others have expressed, if you're going to go lightweight with the M, primes are the way to go. I recently got the Sigma 30 mm f/1.4 and found it perfect for 90% of what I do, which is taking pictures of family, friends, pets, etc. It's a natural focal length that is perfect for pictures of people, unlike the 22 mm, which is too wide for portraits. It's still small enough that I can take it pretty much everywhere, either around my neck or clipped to my belt. It now stays on my camera almost all the time. And at f/1.4, the low light capability and shallow DOF are far beyond anything you'll find in a compact camera. For me, this is well worth the lack of zoom. Of course, I'll still switch lenses when the situation calls for it, like if I need wide angle or telephoto.

It's amazing how versatile that focal length (range) is. Sometimes I think that I could survive with the (Canon 32) alone!

For many of us learning photography back in the SLR days (manual focus in my case), the camera came with a 50-55 fast prime as standard, and that's what we shot with most of the time. Zooms were pretty exotic back in the 70's, and most weren't very good. I shot with an SLR and standard prime (first an F2 58mm on a Zenith, then an F1.8 50mm on a Mamiya) for a couple of years, before supplementing it with a telephoto (200) and wide angle (28). It wasn't until the early 80's that I got my first zoom (a Tamron 28-50 for Canon FD mount).

Happy shooting!

R2

-- hide signature --

As the length of a thread approaches 150, the probability that someone will make the obvious "it's not the camera, it's the photographer" remark approaches 1.
Alastair
http://anorcross.smugmug.com
Equipment in profile

 Alastair Norcross's gear list:Alastair Norcross's gear list
Canon G7 X II Canon EOS M6 II Canon EOS R7 Canon EOS R6 Mark II Canon RF 35mm F1.8 IS STM Macro +24 more
Post (hide subjects) Posted by
MAC
(unknown member)
(unknown member)
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
MAC
Keyboard shortcuts:
FForum PPrevious NNext WNext unread UUpvote SSubscribe RReply QQuote BBookmark MMy threads
Color scheme? Blue / Yellow