Do you need the "best" lens

rsn wrote:

I am writing this short bit to help out the "advanced newbie" who is experienced, has some of the concepts of photography and lens lingo. The language I will be talking in is Fuji dialect primarily, talking about Fuji lenses only.

If you have been a dpreviewer here for a while, or one of those lurkers you know "what lens should I get" appears constantly and will appear constantly forever, however short or long that may be.

Lenses have a job and lens manufacturers like to respond to the "jobs" (areas of photographic activity) photographers are active in, so weddings are often held in low light situations, sports entails high speed action, portrait requires knowledge of how to handle backgrounds, and etc. So when manufactures produce a lens, it usually has a specific purpose even though the lens can still be used in general photography. For example in full frame talk, the 85mm f1.4 or f1.8 was designed for portrait work, the 50 and 35 lenses in f1.4 were made for street work and interior photography in low light.

So a newbie comes in and asks, I'm thinking of getting the 14mm lens, or the 35mm lens or the 50mm lens, I already know what many are going to tell him or her. They are going to say - get the f1.4 its sharper and faster. Is the f1.4 faster than the f2.8 or the f2, absolutely, no debating there. But are they sharper, maybe but if they are usually only very very slightly better, all the lenses I listed above are very sharp lenses.

In fact if you enquire about the 14 f2.8 lens, the most common recommendation, in fact the great majority will recommend the 16 f1.4 over it. Is this the best advise? Maybe, maybe not. What I have done to not turn this into a too prolonged post is to provide a link to Dan Bailey, a professional photographer living in Alaska.

This first link is to provide an introduction to Dan and his work and how he evolved as a photographer. The article is from Landscape Photography Magazine, Dan is the real deal.

https://landscapephotographymagazine.com/01/06/2021/interview-with-dan-bailey/

The second link to Dan's work is a video of him reviewing five Fuji lenses, the three that stick out to me are the 14 f2.8, the 35 f2, and the 50 f2. I happen to own all three of these lens and I bought them because they were cheap (all bought used), they were excellent and they did the job concerning rural photography I was interested in. If you read the article about Dan I think it is safe to say he is thrifty. All of the lenses are cheaper compared to the faster lenses. But they are also lighter with a smaller footprint, and they are excellent for his task at hand, landscape photography.

So did Dan need the "best" lens -no. But he still was able to use the "slower" 14, 35 and 50 professionally and produce an income using them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjOGTgJ0PZg

So do you need the best lens? Maybe, maybe not!

And PS: I am not related to or have any financial interest in Dan's work, he has no clue who I am.

The Fujinon 14/2.8, 35/2 and 50/2 are three excellent lenses with great image quality so why wouldn't you be able to get "professional" results with them? And what does it matter if they're "slower"? Just because a lens doesn't have a very large maximum aperture doesn't mean it has lower image quality. In fact, it's often the other way around, lenses with very large maximum apertures tend to perform worse wide open.

The most important thing of all is knowing how to use your gear to get the most out of it.