Do you really know which lens you can't live without?

[Wendelius]

I was writing a post mortem (http://www.gasperazzo.net/CameraBlog/wordpress/?p=191) for my PAD challenge and brought up the meta data filter in Lightroom with last month's photos selected. The numbers listed per lens surprised me. Out of 2351 shots left on my hard disk, the repartition went as follows:

http://www.gasperazzo.net/images/camerablog/march2k9padlensstats.gif

That's 82% (over 1,900) of my shots between 10 and 35mm. Over 65% between 17 and 35 (some of the 10-22 were taken at the "longer" end too). This includes urban and natural landscapes, architecture and portraits. Quite a few of them.

It really surprised me, because I love my 70-200mm lens. I love its colour rendition and I think it's great to be able to get close. But it's cumbersome. it looks like I've been getting close a lot with my feet. And my walkabout lens is not the 28-135 or the 70-200, It's one of 2 lenses which force me to put my camera in the face of my subjects. That surprised me. But I'll remember it next time I'm packing only a few lenses. :)

I checked my shutter speeds. But the 35 shutter speeds I used were fairly reasonably distributed (in a kind of flattened bell curve. Nothing unexpected).

So what about you? What type of shooter are you? What's your favourite focal range? Just curious how close or how far you like to get?

Wendelius

[Boink!]

Wide angle man myself, though my most used lens is my Nikon 28mm f/2.8. My least used is (thinking about it) is my Sigma 70-200mm that I'll probably sell off.

[Fozzybear]

My favourite, most-used lens is the Nikon 70-300mm VR - it's the one lens I take when I go for wildlife watching walks. I think that will stay the case as although I've just bought a Sigma 150-500 that is far too big and heavy to take on casual walks!

My least used lens is the 50mm f/1.8 - I use it very occasionally but it was a waste of money really. People everywhere were saying "you MUST buy the 50mm!!!" to anyone asking about lenses and I got caught up in that but quickly realised that although it was ok for a walkabout lens with my film SLR it was a pretty useless focal length on my dSLR. At least it was fairly cheap! I probably use the Sigma 10-20 about as often, but it does at least fill a real need, which the 50mm doesn't.

[Boink!]

I'd probably only use a 50mm for TTV photography (with a closeup filter on), I have a manual 50mm which I've used for macro work and some landscape stuff, but for TTV I'd want AF. Yours going cheap, Paul? ;)

[Gizmo]

Probably my Pentax DA 16-45mm - I found when I had my bridge camera (fuji S5200 with 38 - 380mm zoom) I was shooting wide for the most part despite it's range.

I also like my 50mm prime which is a nice portrait lens. My two longer zooms rarely come out the camera bag.

[RobDickinson]

10-20 without doubt.

[Woz]

When I've run exposureplot on my pictures folder in the past it's shown that I use my 28mm f1.8 the most, although I prefer the 50mm f1.4, so the results were counter intuitive. This is on a crop camera so the 28mm is the equiv of a standard lens.
Can't do a current check because my pc's off being repaired at the moment.
I don't really do zoom lenses though - I tend to use one of three primes all the time.

[silverpenguin7]

My most used lens is the 600mm. Although, the 200-400 with a 1.4 on the D300 gives you great reach but also very close focus ability and it's my kit of choice for travelling out of the country with - light, versatile but good quality (and easy to walk around with all day compared to the prime).

[Fozzybear]

My most used lens is the 600mm. Although, the 200-400 with a 1.4 on the D300 gives you great reach but also very close focus ability and it's my kit of choice for travelling out of the country with - light, versatile but good quality (and easy to walk around with all day compared to the prime).

First time I've heard the 200-400 called travelling light! ;)

I'd probably only use a 50mm for TTV photography (with a closeup filter on), I have a manual 50mm which I've used for macro work and some landscape stuff, but for TTV I'd want AF. Yours going cheap, Paul? ;)

Dunno mate. Might be interested for £75, but any less then I may as well keep it for the very occasional use it gets on my film SLR. If that's reasonable I'll stick it up on the classifieds.

[silverpenguin7]

First time I've heard the 200-400 called travelling light! ;)


lol I know - you get used to lens size very quickly though.

[Fozzybear]

I guess so, I imagine the quality of the shots gives you an impetus to carry that weight around and certainly in terms of cameras the D300 felt very very heavy when I first got it but now it feels fine and the D80 feels like a toy. :)

[Gizmo]

10-20 without doubt.

I'm already certain a 10-20mm is my next purchase. Couple of question if you don't mind Rob.

Does it take long to get used to shooting that wide?

Do you get much distortion at the widest end?

[RobDickinson]

Does it take long to get used to shooting that wide?

Do you get much distortion at the widest end?

Long? No. I think it takes a slightly different aproach, cant just point it at a pretty and click you have to have some foreground/sky etc intrest any thing at all at a distance vanishes quite quicky.


As for distortion, it depends how you use it , if you keep it square its not to bad soon as you shift from that it does distort especialy in the corners but what do you expect..:) You can usualy avoid it when you want and exagerate it for effect.

[Wendelius]

I'm not surprised silverpenguin7 prefers the longer lenses I can't quite get myself to fit on without a specific purpose in mind.

I've seen your pics in DP and visited your blog and you definitely make great use of them! :thumbs:

Gizmo, I've been really pleasantly surprised with my 10-22 but RobDickinson is right. You can use it to make urban or natural landscapes shots, but the lens really produces its best if you can find a foreground item that will add to the interest. Otherwise, everything tends to get lost looking very far away. It's also a great lens to get really close to something and make it look very different.

There is some distortion at the very wide end and I'm still experimenting with that. But it's not horrible.

Wendelius

[Questor]

My most used is my 50mm f/1.8 - I use it to force myself to do something interesting with the shot and not rely on zoom.

I want a 10-20 though - need to save up first!

[Wishy]

Modern stuff wise, I have a 12-24 which i don't use anywhere near as much as i thought i would (I shoot on 35mm - F90X, so full frame -> 12mm is verrrryy wide). Then again I've not found myself too much interesting architecture of late.
My Sigma 24-60 2.8 is without doubt my most commonly used lens, cracking range on full frame. Very (But not super) wide angle to "normal".

Most the time I'm not using the F90X though, and if I'm not using the F90X its almost always a manual focus 50mm prime. (Or the 22mm on a vivs, I love my vivs)

[nictry]

My 28-75 f2.8 is probably my most used lens although my Nikon 80-200 f2.8 is my favourite lens but is a bit heavy to lug around day to day!

[DeadYankee]

I'd be lost without my Canon 200mm f/2.8. I use it for gigs, wildlife, portraits. It is the greatest thing ever.

[chrisns]

Oly 70-300mm by a long way (coupled with the E-510, it's small enough to carry virtually every day, but still give tremendous reach). However, the bigma is rapidly moving up the pecking order.

[barrynorton]

my Carl Zeiss 16mm-80mm for my Sony Alpha is the one lens I always have with me.

[Taq]

70-200L 2.8IS deffo for me - use it probably for 90%+ of my photos

[commjo2]

My Sigma 10-20mm without doubt. I took it with me to my recent trip to India and used it for over 2/3rds of the shots on my D90.

I also took my 70-300 VR and used it twice !!!

Photos from India are on my Flickr - see siggy below ;)

[GarethH]

Photos from India are on my Flickr - see siggy below ;)

Can't seem to click on it :(

[commjo2]

Can't seem to click on it :(

Ahh, a technical hitch - my HTML skills aren't the best !!!

Flickr page here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/umr

Just need to amend my siggy.