Decisions, decisions... default walkabout FX lenses from the film era

[Dak on cam]

I fail to understand why you would spend all money on a high end body

Not really high end. That would be D6. Then we have the enthusiast range where a D850 is not really in the budget. I've been somewhat open towards a D810 but nothing affordable either. Then we have the basic FX range where the top model is the D780, again out of my budget. The D750 I managed to get.

and fit it with cheaper lenses. Of all the 35-70 is clearly best (I have one)

It appears to come out my main lens on most recent trips. Really great, but once in a while you get the mother of all veiling flares. With raw processing, you can crank up the contrast like anything and the black level, and things start looking comparatively normal.

Most of the shots are perfectly contrasty and very sharp. I've had the central lens group cleaned, but even in pristine state the lens is reported to be susceptible to veiling flare. I think there is just some light path around the central group at certain focal lengths.

and you might be able to add a cheap 20-35 2.8 (got one too, paid $80). In all honesty I'd trade the 750 for a 610 or so and spend the money on a good 24-120 or something similar. But that's just me.

I've had a D610 and paid quite a similar price to the D750 (and was able to sell it without a real loss). Its autofocus goes dead quite sooner than the sensor in low light situations.

And I use that body with all my lenses, so for me it does not make sense to downgrade here. Particularly since there is not much money to be gained here. A D780 would be a different matter.

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

 

[Parry Johnson]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

 

[GeoffRG]

I fail to understand why you would spend all money on a high end body

Not really high end. That would be D6. Then we have the enthusiast range where a D850 is not really in the budget. I've been somewhat open towards a D810 but nothing affordable either. Then we have the basic FX range where the top model is the D780, again out of my budget. The D750 I managed to get.

and fit it with cheaper lenses. Of all the 35-70 is clearly best (I have one)

It appears to come out my main lens on most recent trips. Really great, but once in a while you get the mother of all veiling flares. With raw processing, you can crank up the contrast like anything and the black level, and things start looking comparatively normal.

Most of the shots are perfectly contrasty and very sharp. I've had the central lens group cleaned, but even in pristine state the lens is reported to be susceptible to veiling flare. I think there is just some light path around the central group at certain focal lengths.

and you might be able to add a cheap 20-35 2.8 (got one too, paid $80). In all honesty I'd trade the 750 for a 610 or so and spend the money on a good 24-120 or something similar. But that's just me.

I've had a D610 and paid quite a similar price to the D750 (and was able to sell it without a real loss). Its autofocus goes dead quite sooner than the sensor in low light situations.

And I use that body with all my lenses, so for me it does not make sense to downgrade here. Particularly since there is not much money to be gained here. A D780 would be a different matter.

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

I paid £299 for my 24-120 f/4 back in May, the full price for a new example is £1249, I consider it a bargain.

 

[Dak on cam]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

I paid £299 for my 24-120 f/4 back in May, the full price for a new example is £1249, I consider it a bargain.

Well, I paid €60 for the Tamron SP 24-135mm 1:3.5-5.6. My complaints with it are that it is bulky and does not have good bokeh due to Tamron going overboard with aspherical elements. The long end is moderate and mainly useful outside, so the lack of image stabilisation has not really affected a lot of photographs. The 24-120mm 1:4 would be bulkier by quite a bit. That would only make sense if, as opposed to the Tamron, it were to push the 35-70mm 1:2.8 out of the standard bag. I am afraid my love affair with the latter is not over yet.

Now admittedly the 2-lens bicycle front case is a bit of a conundrum currently mostly filled with the 35-70mm and a 70-300mm, leaving wide angles underrepresented. The rationale is that outside I can usually step back, and if not, the use case for wide angle typically will not run away, so I can still get the 12-24mm from one of the side bags.

Do I need 1:2.8 when outside? I should probably make a few trips with the Tamron as test case. If that works out reasonably, it makes sense to consider a step up in image quality with a similar setup. But if I find myself not going wider than 35mm most of the time…

In other words: it will likely take the summer for me to thin out the current set of lenses without too much regret (though I did find myself occasionally musing about lenses I previously sold after convincing myself I'd not be needing them) before I get to consider stocking up again.

 

[GeoffRG]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

I paid £299 for my 24-120 f/4 back in May, the full price for a new example is £1249, I consider it a bargain.

Well, I paid €60 for the Tamron SP 24-135mm 1:3.5-5.6. My complaints with it are that it is bulky and does not have good bokeh due to Tamron going overboard with aspherical elements. The long end is moderate and mainly useful outside, so the lack of image stabilisation has not really affected a lot of photographs. The 24-120mm 1:4 would be bulkier by quite a bit. That would only make sense if, as opposed to the Tamron, it were to push the 35-70mm 1:2.8 out of the standard bag. I am afraid my love affair with the latter is not over yet.

Now admittedly the 2-lens bicycle front case is a bit of a conundrum currently mostly filled with the 35-70mm and a 70-300mm, leaving wide angles under represented. The rationale is that outside I can usually step back, and if not, the use case for wide angle typically will not run away, so I can still get the 12-24mm from one of the side bags.

Do I need 1:2.8 when outside? I should probably make a few trips with the Tamron as test case. If that works out reasonably, it makes sense to consider a step up in image quality with a similar setup. But if I find myself not going wider than 35mm most of the time…

In other words: it will likely take the summer for me to thin out the current set of lenses without too much regret (though I did find myself occasionally musing about lenses I previously sold after convincing myself I'd not be needing them) before I get to consider stocking up again.

It is extremely difficult to judge what someone else considers bulky, heavy, large etc. I find the D5 the ideal size and the 24-120 f/4 VR of an appropriate size to go with it, though for various reasons prefer to use the 24-70 f/2.8 VR, like faster focusing. That lens too is about the right size for me.

Clearly your parameters are different from mine. The 35-70 is a film era lens and In think you will find a more recent lens to be an improvement, unless you're into aperture rings and slow noisy AF. If the 24-120 really is too bulky you might consider a 24-85 VR which is smaller. There's also the 24-70 f/2.8 G which is smaller than the VR version.

You'll soon find yourself using the wide end of any of these lenses.

I know there are a good number of proponents of mechanically coupled AF and AF-D lenses with aperture rings. I'm not one of them, I'll take AF-S G or E lenses in preference to those. I wasn't using my older lenses and AF-S is so much faster and quieter.

 

[Dak on cam]

It is extremely difficult to judge what someone else considers bulky, heavy, large etc. I find the D5 the ideal size and the 24-120 f/4 VR of an appropriate size to go with it, though for various reasons prefer to use the 24-70 f/2.8 VR, like faster focusing. That lens too is about the right size for me.

Well, it needs to fit the respective bags…



Huh. I think I need a better plan for a gearshot camera.

Clearly your parameters are different from mine. The 35-70 is a film era lens and In think you will find a more recent lens to be an improvement, unless you're into aperture rings and slow noisy AF.

"Film era" is less of a warning sign than "5MP digital sensor era": a low-ASA film could have quite higher resolution than early digital cameras.

The aperture ring is locked on my CPU lenses (using the camera's aperture mechanism instead gives me all of A, P, M, S and ⅓ stops); the D750 needs a CPU to recognize AI-S though. Autofocus on the 35-70mm is actually pretty fast; the torque is more of a distraction than the noise. And since the front lens rotates when focusing, polarizers are awkward to use.

The lens has limited range, and it occasionally gets crazy veiling flare in backlight (quite unpredictable). But it is super sharp, to a degree where you don't want to engage distortion correction because it introduces larger (and staircased) unsharpness than what the lens has on its own. And you are lucky because distortion is so low that you indeed very rarely need distortion correction.

And being able to forego sharpening completely because the lens is sharp wide open and does fine without either distortion correction or even slight sharpening means that your noise reduction does not need to deal with sharpening artifacts. That really helps with low-light processing.

And it fits the bike handlebar box with the hood on ready-to-use. I've brought a full backpack of lenses to my father's birthday party and ended up shooting every single shot with that lens. It has a non-frightening size with a mere ⌀62mm filter thread diameter.

If the 24-120 really is too bulky you might consider a 24-85 VR which is smaller. There's also the 24-70 f/2.8 G which is smaller than the VR version.

You'll soon find yourself using the wide end of any of these lenses.

I have a 12-24mm zoom lens where I rarely use anything but 12mm. But that is not really for people photography.

I know there are a good number of proponents of mechanically coupled AF and AF-D lenses with aperture rings. I'm not one of them, I'll take AF-S G or E lenses in preference to those. I wasn't using my older lenses and AF-S is so much faster and quieter.

I am not married to the aperture ring. Considering the number of lenses one sees being sold with non-working autofocus, at least early iterations of AF-S seem like a mixed blessing, and foregoing autofocus motors and VR helps in getting more compact size. For a 70-300mm zoom, you definitely want to invest in VR. But on the lower focal lengths (and FX also helps), 1:2.8 is a reasonable deal about balancing the effects of camera shake and subject movement.

I am aware that Nikon does not do screwdrive on FTZ or its teleconverters. So at some point of time, you don't get more functionality with screwdrive AF than with broken AF motors. But I am not there yet.

And I do use a 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6 VR rather than a 70-210mm 1:4-5.6 AF and will probably at some point of time sell the latter, having hardly used it. But on its long end it is nicer when held steady than the 70-300mm on its long end. Which does not help in practice but makes the lens more likeable.

--
Dak

 

[Tord S Eriksson]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

I paid £299 for my 24-120 f/4 back in May, the full price for a new example is £1249, I consider it a bargain.

Well, I paid €60 for the Tamron SP 24-135mm 1:3.5-5.6. My complaints with it are that it is bulky and does not have good bokeh due to Tamron going overboard with aspherical elements. The long end is moderate and mainly useful outside, so the lack of image stabilisation has not really affected a lot of photographs. The 24-120mm 1:4 would be bulkier by quite a bit. That would only make sense if, as opposed to the Tamron, it were to push the 35-70mm 1:2.8 out of the standard bag. I am afraid my love affair with the latter is not over yet.

Now admittedly the 2-lens bicycle front case is a bit of a conundrum currently mostly filled with the 35-70mm and a 70-300mm, leaving wide angles underrepresented. The rationale is that outside I can usually step back, and if not, the use case for wide angle typically will not run away, so I can still get the 12-24mm from one of the side bags.

Do I need 1:2.8 when outside? I should probably make a few trips with the Tamron as test case. If that works out reasonably, it makes sense to consider a step up in image quality with a similar setup. But if I find myself not going wider than 35mm most of the time…

In other words: it will likely take the summer for me to thin out the current set of lenses without too much regret (though I did find myself occasionally musing about lenses I previously sold after convincing myself I'd not be needing them) before I get to consider stocking up again.

To get nice Bokeh and to help the camera's AF, a fast lens is a bonus, but otherwise, no.

That's my 2 cents.

 

[Tord S Eriksson]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

I paid £299 for my 24-120 f/4 back in May, the full price for a new example is £1249, I consider it a bargain.

Well, I paid €60 for the Tamron SP 24-135mm 1:3.5-5.6. My complaints with it are that it is bulky and does not have good bokeh due to Tamron going overboard with aspherical elements. The long end is moderate and mainly useful outside, so the lack of image stabilisation has not really affected a lot of photographs. The 24-120mm 1:4 would be bulkier by quite a bit. That would only make sense if, as opposed to the Tamron, it were to push the 35-70mm 1:2.8 out of the standard bag. I am afraid my love affair with the latter is not over yet.

Now admittedly the 2-lens bicycle front case is a bit of a conundrum currently mostly filled with the 35-70mm and a 70-300mm, leaving wide angles under represented. The rationale is that outside I can usually step back, and if not, the use case for wide angle typically will not run away, so I can still get the 12-24mm from one of the side bags.

Do I need 1:2.8 when outside? I should probably make a few trips with the Tamron as test case. If that works out reasonably, it makes sense to consider a step up in image quality with a similar setup. But if I find myself not going wider than 35mm most of the time…

In other words: it will likely take the summer for me to thin out the current set of lenses without too much regret (though I did find myself occasionally musing about lenses I previously sold after convincing myself I'd not be needing them) before I get to consider stocking up again.

It is extremely difficult to judge what someone else considers bulky, heavy, large etc. I find the D5 the ideal size and the 24-120 f/4 VR of an appropriate size to go with it, though for various reasons prefer to use the 24-70 f/2.8 VR, like faster focusing. That lens too is about the right size for me.

Clearly your parameters are different from mine. The 35-70 is a film era lens and In think you will find a more recent lens to be an improvement, unless you're into aperture rings and slow noisy AF. If the 24-120 really is too bulky you might consider a 24-85 VR which is smaller. There's also the 24-70 f/2.8 G which is smaller than the VR version.

You'll soon find yourself using the wide end of any of these lenses.

I know there are a good number of proponents of mechanically coupled AF and AF-D lenses with aperture rings. I'm not one of them, I'll take AF-S G or E lenses in preference to those. I wasn't using my older lenses and AF-S is so much faster and quieter.

The Sigma 100-400 C is a far better lens than the AF-S 70-300 VR, even if the focusing is slower.

My 2 cents.

 

[Dak on cam]

Now admittedly the 2-lens bicycle front case is a bit of a conundrum currently mostly filled with the 35-70mm and a 70-300mm, leaving wide angles underrepresented. The rationale is that outside I can usually step back, and if not, the use case for wide angle typically will not run away, so I can still get the 12-24mm from one of the side bags.

Do I need 1:2.8 when outside? I should probably make a few trips with the Tamron as test case. If that works out reasonably, it makes sense to consider a step up in image quality with a similar setup. But if I find myself not going wider than 35mm most of the time…

In other words: it will likely take the summer for me to thin out the current set of lenses without too much regret (though I did find myself occasionally musing about lenses I previously sold after convincing myself I'd not be needing them) before I get to consider stocking up again.

To get nice Bokeh and to help the camera's AF, a fast lens is a bonus, but otherwise, no.

Fast lenses also help with MF, doubly so if you have old-fashioned focusing screens with split circle and microprisms (slow lenses make all of them go dark).

"Strong bokeh" and "nice bokeh" are orthogonal. If you photograph a grass plain, the strength of the bokeh determines how fast the grass stalks go out of focus, but the quality of the bokeh determines how gracefully they go out of focus. If you have specular highlights that look like rings, then usually the grass becomes unsharp in the manner of camera shake: you get more an impression of the stalks getting double outlines than of the outlines dissolving into the background.

If computational sharpening is a necessary part of your workflow, the bokeh quality tends to suffer. Fast lenses tend to deliver sharper results at the same aperture than slower lenses. And larger zoom ranges tend to come at the cost of sharpness and distortion as well. All that is not a given, but when a lens surpasses the expectations from its nominal specs significantly, it has a tendency to surpass the expected price point as well…

And then there is indoors…





By the way, here is an example of the Tamron:





Where it is in focus, it is sharp. But take a close look at the QR code next to the right shoulder of the right person: that is kind of the definition of busy bokeh, or "nisen bokeh".

The lower right corner of the image also shows a lot of that. That is kind of a bummer for me.

In contrast, take a look at how the 35-70 dissolves the grass and other outlines here:





Either lens was at 1:5.6 here, with a focal length around 50mm. Now if a lens exhibits nisen bokeh, it tends to do so strongest when wide open. That gives the 35-70mm 1:2.8 a nominal advantage here, but it actually still has better bokeh quality at 1:2.8.

The combination of its general image quality with its fastness and its moderate size make me really like that lens.

--
Dak

 

[Dak on cam]

Second is the AF-P 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 Nikkor. Note that -P in the designation it is critical.

Also it is the AF-P Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6E, and that E makes all the difference between getting a DX lens (with or without image stabilisation) or the real thing.

Because the earlier AF-S 70-300 f4.5-5.6 Nikkor G is a bit of a pig after you hit 200mm.

I've now done a bit of research, and that AF-P lens (apart from being a compatibility pig needing firmware updates on newer cameras and balking on older ones) appears to be unduly prone to damage in a flex ribbon. Quite a few reports about lightly used lenses going out of order. The image quality (when it is working) is supposed to be excellent. I've just returned one that was sold with "autofocus not working" because actually that wasn't all by far. The autofocus might have refused working because the aperture was unable to open up (and autofocus needs open aperture) once you stepped it down. Manual focus also did not appear to work (it is fly-by-wire). A bigger repair job/problem case than I would want to tackle.

So it looks like I'll stick with the older one.

 

[Dak on cam]

Second is the AF-P 70-300mm f4.5-5.6 Nikkor. Note that -P in the designation it is critical.

Also it is the AF-P Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-5.6E, and that E makes all the difference between getting a DX lens (with or without image stabilisation) or the real thing.

Because the earlier AF-S 70-300 f4.5-5.6 Nikkor G is a bit of a pig after you hit 200mm.

I've now done a bit of research, and that AF-P lens (apart from being a compatibility pig needing firmware updates on newer cameras and balking on older ones) appears to be unduly prone to damage in a flex ribbon. Quite a few reports about lightly used lenses going out of order. The image quality (when it is working) is supposed to be excellent. I've just returned one that was sold with "autofocus not working" because actually that wasn't all by far. The autofocus might have refused working because the aperture was unable to open up (and autofocus needs open aperture) once you stepped it down. Manual focus also did not appear to work (it is fly-by-wire). A bigger repair job/problem case than I would want to tackle.

So it looks like I'll stick with the older one.

Or not. Got a good offer after all, and of course I need to sell the old one to finance it. I'll probably regret it, but I think that at least on the long end, both image stabilisation and overall image qualilty are somewhat of an improvement. It is a tiny bit bulkier though, making my already tight "light pack" more awkward.

 

[Dak on cam]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

The Nikon 28-200mm is gone, and so is the Tamron SP 24-135mm, both at a similar price as I paid for them. The Nikon had seen pretty little use by me, the Tamron had been routinely on the camera a few trips, so I may well miss it. But generally I like the rendering of the Nikon 35–70mm 1:2.8D better, and the latter is somewhat unique in that it is so sharp that more often than not it is hardly possible to apply any amount of sharpening without getting haloes and other artifacts.

Yes, the range is really constrained, but so is its size.

 

[RubenJ]

Well, then my advice would be to sell the lot of 4 lenses and buy one good instead, such as the 24-120.

Kind of what this is about, just with the question mark on what to consider a "good one" while taking into account portability as well. And, well, while you are right that the money for the whole set of them would work towards a more expensive lens, most of them were bought with a view towards reselling them again if they did not make the cut, not as a permanent investment. In contrast, a lens you keep, particularly an expensive one, will eventually lose most of its resale value along with their "hosting" DSLRs.

The Nikon 28-200mm is gone, and so is the Tamron SP 24-135mm, both at a similar price as I paid for them. The Nikon had seen pretty little use by me, the Tamron had been routinely on the camera a few trips, so I may well miss it. But generally I like the rendering of the Nikon 35–70mm 1:2.8D better, and the latter is somewhat unique in that it is so sharp that more often than not it is hardly possible to apply any amount of sharpening without getting haloes and other artifacts.

Yes, the range is really constrained, but so is its size.

 

[Dak on cam]

Sometimes I envy compact camera users (like myself a year ago): lots fewer choices in a similar quality range. I'll need to whittle down my choices eventually.

Welcome to "paralysis by analysis."

There is no one right decision in your situation, but the easiest way to make a wrong decision is to allow other people's subjective preferences to overrule your own. All lenses are engineering compromises, and only you can choose your own tradeoffs. In your case, it's a bit more difficult, because technology has advanced significantly from when those lenses were designed.

For example, the 35-70mm f/2.8 was a professional quality lens in its time and, within its limits, can still produce great results on your D750. But the so-called "IQ" of a missed shot is exactly zero, so if the shot called for a 28mm focal length, it doesn't matter how good the lens is. On the flip slide, if you have to crop from 70mm to 200mm to get the image you want, you'd be better off even with one of these first generation 28-200mm lenses.

For me, the 24-135mm would come closest to the best compromise. No shock -- I've owned all 4 versions of the 24-120mm Nikon produced and I use a 12-60mm on my MFT camera. But that doesn't mean it's right for you. My suggestion is that you step away from the computer and spend some time shooting with each.

I am clearing up the paralysis part by selling off lenses that don't make it frequently "into the bag", and the bag decisions have a lot to do with size and weight. The 24-135mm indeed was a comfortable range, but a bit on the bulky side and with bokeh that disturbed me when it became a significant part of the image. Its sharpness and contrast put it above several other lenses.

The ones that are currently labeled "keepers" are the 35-70mm (which is really good but occasionally manages to turn some backlight into monstrous veiling flare) and the 28-80mm which ticks quite some boxes but still tends to be kept out of bags due to not offering much (other than flare resistance) over the 35-70mm.

Some of my lens sales have not aged well: after I got hooked on the 35-70mm, I have second thoughts about having sold my Sigma 17-35mm/2.8-4 USM for a 12-24mm/4.5-5.6: 12mm is sometimes nice to have, but the gap up to 35mm was filled more competently with the 17-35mm, and the 12-24mm does not exactly shine on its "long" end.

But who wants to maintain a lens museum just in case?