Big

[Bill Pierce]

I have some big lenses. They don’t get used much. Some are long, fast zooms used for theatre work during tech/dress rehearsals. Some are just big like the Sony 135/1.8 or the Sigma 40/1.4 or the Fuji 50/1, lenses that are used for the way they look wide open and rarely stopped down. But they are just too big to use as all around, general purpose lenses. Yet large, high speed (and expensive) lenses seem to have dominated the new lenses hitting the market.

For most of my regular shooting I use lenses like the Fujicrons, the Sony f/2.5 compacts, the smaller manual focus Voigtlander Apo-Lanthars or Zeiss Loxias and other lenses that are small and convenient (and a few have relatively small prices). I use them in dim light with no problems thanks to the sensitivity of modern sensors. While it is hard to find a modern lens that doesn’t deliver top performance stopped down bit, a number of these small lenses are among the sharpest I own for wide open work.

Yes, some of the high-speed (high-priced) lenses, including newer zooms, are remarkable. But are they every day, all the time lenses or special tools? Obviously, because of their size, I think they are special. But I see folks carrying some big lenses in broad daylight that obviously disagree with me. And I don’t assume I’m right and they are wrong. I just don’t understand why they do it. What do you do and why do you do it (especially if you’e a big lens person).

 

[xayraa33]

The right tool for the job is my motto...if that tool is small and light in weight and unobtrusive then all the better.

 

[Dogman]

When I was shooting film in Canon EOS bodies, I was in love with the 70-200/2.8L lens. I carried it everywhere and shot a lot of nice photos with it. But that was then and this is now. I like smaller lenses...shorter focal lengths. Spinal stenosis has a lot to do with this but the main reason is I just prefer the look of somewhat wide to dead normal focal lengths these days.

Further, I like smaller lenses as opposed to bigger, faster lenses. I use the ƒ/2 Fuji "crons" lenses over the ƒ/1.4 models. Voigtlander makes some great small manual focus lenses for Leica that adapts to the Fuji really well. Even with an adapter attached, some of the Voigtlander lenses are tiny. The Chinese third party companies are making some brilliant manual focus lenses based on old optical designs and, in many cases, they are small and fast. Even lenses like the ƒ/0.95 7Artisans is only a bit larger than the 35/1.4 for Fuji. And zooms? I don't use them with the Fujis and, for the Nikons, my standard zoom is a 24-85/3.5-4.5 lens. High ISO isn't an image destroyer these days. I like the look of fast lenses but I don't really need them anymore.

 

[Timmyjoe]

For sports and events where you couldn't get up close, I used big lenses. But for everything else, if I want a picture of it, I can use my two foot zoom. No need for 400mm, or 300mm, or even 70-200mm. I keep downsizing, maybe it's age and not wanting to lug around tens of pounds of equipment. The smaller the better, is my motto now.

Best,
-Tim

 

[willie_901]

I also enjoy using the four F/2 Fujicron lenses and almost all the images from my X-Pro 2 are made with one of these.

I used big, ultra-wide zoom lenses (well maybe not that big) when I was doing interiors photography. Walls and other interior features often make it impossible to move the camera far enough away from the subject.

Otherwise my needs are well met by these four F2 lenses.

 

[Nitroplait]

I detest any lens larger than necessary and wonder, like you, what motivates people to carry a 70-200/2,8 around like it was the most natural thing in the world.
The largest lens I own is a Nikkor Q 200/4 (Ai'd) and I take it out once a year only to refresh my memory of how big it is and how useless I find long lenses.

I have a goal to shoot at least a whole roll of film a year with each of my lenses to justify that I keep them - with the 200mm it is really hard to finish a whole roll but I know that if I sell it, I would probably forget how little I need it and buy something long/heavy and useless again in a few years.

In other words; the reason you may see me carry a 700grams Nikkor-Q 200mm/1:4.0 around, is to remind myself that I don't need something that big.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Starting this year I'm not only concerned with size and weight, but also with weather sealing. Local weather is on the wet side for significant change comparing to previous years of dryness for weeks.
Now if no rain, just wait another hour.
For less weight I'm using two light RF STM lenses on light RP and thinking of letting go of all old and heavy EF Ls and let go to Canon 5D MKII and get OM instead which is superior on weather sealing and smaller in size. Or just sell it and get weather sealed phone for few years or RX0II for longer use.

 

[jsrockit]

Or just sell it and get weather sealed phone for few years or RX0II for longer use.

I think the RX0 II could be good for you.

 

[hap]

I find phone photography weird. Probably because I am a dinosaur. Yes, you can do "pro" things with still and video, but the phone has a lot of other stuff on it and if you screw it up it's a big pain . Mission critical software and function needs to be protected. What would be wrong with something like a Olympus TG4-6?

 

[jsrockit]

Size matters to me...completely. However, some cameras that aren't small are just great to use... so I have small, medium, and large options: Ricoh GR IIIx, Fujifilm X-Pro3 and Fujifilm GFX-50R. I use the smallest native lenses available for the two Fujis. It helps that I basically only care to use 40-75mm lenses. That said, my next camera is the regular 28mm GR III... I just can't resist having both GR cameras.

 

[Evergreen States]

I realized that I will always want at least one fast lens per camera system, probably a fast normal. But all other lenses I prefer to be light and compact.

When I wanted to get a medium telephoto for my Fuji X-Pro1, the choices were the 56mm ƒ/1.2, the 56mm ƒ/1.2 APD (same lens but with an apodization filter for bokeh) and the 60mm ƒ/2.4 macro. Reviews of the 60mm were dire but I went with it. The rendering was lovely, it reproduces 1:2 (at the time I was hoping to use it to digitize film negatives), it focused close and was compact. I had also been using a 55mm adapted Minolta and found it to be too short. 60mm was perfect. I've gotten a lot of good use out of it and have never been tempted to replace it with the 56mm or even the 50mm ƒ/2. And now that I shoot with the X-Pro3, the 60mm ƒ/2.4 macro has only gotten better.

I also wanted to have a weather sealed Fuji lens with the most modern autofocus motor to take on holiday. I didn't want to stray too far from "normal" and didn't want to replace my existing 35mm. I settled on the 23mm ƒ/2 WR because it would make both zone and autofocusing easier than the 35. Plus not having too drastic a difference in angle of view would not confuse my brain in trying to look for two very different kinds of pictures.

I also have a 14mm wide angle but I don't use it often. I live in American suburbia so everything is very spread out, making wide angle lenses tedious to use. Really I only use it for indoor events. But the other reason I don't use it is that, fitted on an X-Pro, it's a large lens that unbalances the camera. Maybe a thumb grip would make it easier to hold. And it's not even the largest wide angle lens Fuji makes! The 16mm ƒ/1.4 is enormous!

 

[newst]

So I'm an amateur. I am never going to make that cover shot on anyone's magazine, and don't care. Ninety-five percent of my photography these days is with one of my Canon rangefinders, and I rarely use anything over 105mm at f/2.5. For speed I have a Canon 1.2/50 and 1.4/50, but I am usually shooting a 2.8 or 3.5 lens. It suits me. Small, and mostly light (they are solid brass and glass Canon LTM lenses after all).

 

[zuiko85]

Hasn’t the adoption of digital caused a lot of these giant, high element count lenses? My only digital camera, other than an iPhone 7 is a ancient (in digital years) Olympus EM10. Used almost exclusively with legacy or Chinese manual focus lenses I can now magnify the image to absolutely silly size and the limitations of a lens made 1965 show up much more than so than in the darkroom era when giant enlargements from tiny negatives were much more work.
Could be the flagship companies are assuming that everyone wants to make detailed wall size murals from their photos. Personally instead of a 17mm f1.1 the size of a large soup can hanging from my small camera body I’d much rather have a tiny f2 manual focus, maybe sticking out 19mm from the camera and with a small filter size and a 19mm long hood with a lens cap that fits the hood. To me that would be an ideal out and about set up.
I don’t have a short zoom but if I didn’t mine the $300 price tag the 14-42mm tiny Olympus lens seems to fill that slot.

edit; Well, I see B&H has that lens for $225……so perhaps.

 

[JeffS7444]

There's not much we can do to reduce the mass of an existing lens, but we might be able to reduce bulk considerably simply by fitting the lens with a different lens shade. Remember rubber lens shades? They may not provide the same degree of light-blocking as the manufacturer's custom part, but they sure are handy. And in the case of my Sony SEL24F14GM, that may be good enough, because 24 mm has so far not been one of my most-used focal lengths, so why not make the most of what I already got?

 

[Evergreen States]

Hasn’t the adoption of digital caused a lot of these giant, high element count lenses?

I'm certain of it. The continuous drive towards higher resolution sensors requires lenses to match, at least in the eyes of reviewers, consumers and rival marketing departments. There is a small slice of buyers who make use of the resolution. Most only think they do or hope they will.

 

[farlymac]

Myself, I'll use whatever lens I can to get the photo I want, and if that means digging out the Sigma 170-500 APO then I'll do it. BTW, that is a crappy lens so I don't use it anymore, but wish I had a replacement for it. If I'm just strolling around town then a short zoom of no more than 80mm on the long end is fine, or maybe stretch that a bit further to something like 120mm if I'm doing scenic stuff. But no, I can't see hauling out the Z 24-200mm, Z DX 50-250mm, or 80-200mm 2.8D for everyday use. Those are for birding or special events where I have to stand-off a distance. Even my venerable old non-Ai 300mm has only had limited use, but I'll be keeping it for just that special time.

PF

 

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Been thinking about your topic, trying to come up with a description of what I do/did and reasons why. Not that anyone here really gives a pitooty about what an amateur gearhead junky like me does or why. In my youth I bought an 18-200 lens for my Nikon because I couldn't afford all the primes that it covered, and it was, well, 'good enough' as they say. Not being as flush with coin as some here I've learned to 'make do' with what I've got or could afford to get. It served me well for a lot of years and I took some of my best photos with it.

Then I started coming here and read about IQ and corner sharpness. Before I knew it I found I wasn't all that satisfied with my photos. My 'good enough' wasn't. In the mean time, life intervened as so often happens to us all and I got laid off. Prematurely retired by the big bad corporation before I was really ready to 'retire'. As I'd been laid off before ('92) I looked at it as an opportunity to delve into my cameras, finally. Kids were gone, out of the house, on their own. What better time to get involved with something I've always wanted to do but never really had the time to do?
That big heavy Nikon system had competition from some old stuff I'd inherited and I soon wanted to see what it could do, but without the film aspect of it. We are on a fixed income now after all.

So I jumped on the Sony band wagon so to speak and adapted them to it. Sent the Nikon off to my sister in Australia so as not to waste it with someone who won't appreciate it.
My lenses tend to be smaller now, as well as lighter too. I've got adapters to fit all my 'old stuff' on the new camera bodies, which I do from time to time now, just to keep it interesting. But the old eyes have led to the laziness(?) of liking auto focus a lot. Plus the grandkids ain't getting any slower the older they get. My 'biggest' lens now is probably my Sony 24-105 G. The Sony 90 Macro is a close second and is a recent new addition. Again, I got the former because it's such a good 'all around lens' and really isn't THAT big and heavy. I've recently added two of the Sony G's, a 24 and 40. Now these lenses are ideal, IMO, for walking around with a camera just for the hell of it. Not too big, not too small, just right when on my Sony bodies. They make me appreciate where the industry has gone lately, especially when I dig out my Nikon 300 f4 and put it on. Now that is one big lens, but I wouldn't take it to the zoo. I don't think I could get my wife to carry it for me.

 

[Pál_K]

99% of my photography is with lenses between 28mm and 135mm (and equivalent in other formats). These are prime lenses and not very big.

The longest and biggest lenses I have are the old Nikon 200mm and 300mm pre-AI lenses, also the 500/8 mirror lens, but I have used them only for special landscape or cityscape photos and a few good shots of the Moon. I have taken the 300 and Nikon F2 to the zoo!

I suppose the other “big” lens is the 135/2 DC (defocus control) lens which I’ve used for portraits.

One other: a 135mm Hektor for my Leica M’s only because this satin-finish lens was in such beautiful condition and it gave me an excuse to use that viewfinder frame. It produces good results and it’s easy to get used to using.

I’ve never been fond of zooms, especially those with a broad range. 28-85 is about right and the ones I have, Nikon, Minolta, are not big at all.

 

[Dogman]

Last year in BP (before pandemic) I agreed to shoot some photos for a friend's planned recording. I was trudging down the street with a D810 with a telezoom and a D800 with a wide to telezoom and a bag with a couple of other lenses when I recalled the years when I did this every day. I also recalled why I no longer do it.

 

[Canyongazer]

Long ago swapped my Nikon 70-200 f 2.8 for the f 4

Recently swapped the Fuji 56mm f1.2 for the Fuji 50mm f2.

All four lenses are excellent.
But I am pleased I made the switch.