Have we all been Gaslighted?

[nickthetasmaniac]

My musings for the day...

I recently picked up a second hand Nikkor Z 50/f1.8 S as the first native lens for my Z6. It's great; sharp, fast and reliable AF, fully sealed, beautiful rendering etc. etc. No complaints.

But holy moly it is big. Like really, really BIG.

What's more, it's at the smaller end of the new generation of faster 50's (have a look at the latest offerings from Pentax, Sigma, Panasonic, Zeiss and so on).

My SMC Pentax 50/f1.2 is 385g and was designed in 1975. Obviously, the new generation of lenses are better performers, but with 45 years of development in design, materials, and coatings, not to mention the potential of software corrections, shouldn't lenses be getting better and smaller?

When did enormous lenses become the norm, and when did we become OK with it?

 

[Freakscene]

When we needed telecentricity for digital sensors we gave up compact. It’s an optical inevitability.

Marty

 

[Beemermark]

I've made this complaint on this forum before. With everyone rushing to built the fastest 24mm, 28mm, and 50mm lenses for Leica M which are simply gigantic, why can't someone make a modern lens like the 50 Elmar, 35mm Elmar or 28mm Summaron in LTM with an M adapter for that matter? 7Artisians pricing.

 

[Rayt]

I like Cosina Voigtlander lenses for this reason but please bring back LTM lenses with M adapters.

 

[das]

There is a ton of glass in the Nikon Z 50mm lens - like double the amount in the AF-S lens. Nikon's AFS primes were also pretty big and had more glass generally that the AFD versions. These new Z lenses are even more complex and better. Check out the diagrams if you can.

 

[charjohncarter]

I've never understood marketing. In California everything bigger is better: but Lenses?

 

[Moto-Uno]

Put any of the earlier silver Kowa Six lenses in your hand and then come back and remark on what you consider to be large 🙂 . Peter

 

[zuiko85]

Perhaps this is one of the reasons of the popularity of older manual focus lenses on modern mirrorless cameras. Even if they are not as good (or nearly as expensive) as modern lenses at least their compact size and lighter weight are appealing.
I have a EM10 and get along fine with several old 1960’s Pen F Zuikos originally designed for half frame.

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

Put any of the earlier silver Kowa Six lenses in your hand and then come back and remark on what you consider to be large 🙂 . Peter

A 'normal' Kowa 85/f2.8 is about 530g, so only about 115g more than the Nikkor, and I *think* the Nikkor might actually be physically bigger...

I guess that's kinda my point 🙂

 

[Larry Cloetta]

Perhaps this is one of the reasons of the popularity of older manual focus lenses on modern mirrorless cameras. Even if they are not as good (or nearly as expensive) as modern lenses at least their compact size and lighter weight are appealing.
I have a EM10 and get along fine with several old 1960’s Pen F Zuikos originally designed for half frame.

This is also one reason why Nikon didn’t make small, manual focus, slow lenses which exhibit distortion and aberrations like older lenses do...there is no market for that because those lenses are already out there and cheap to come by, and lots of photographers own them already. For a manufacturer that’s one of the pitfalls of going with mirrorless body designs, everything fits your camera, all the old, manual focus, small and cheap stuff. Nikon’s (Sony, and Canon as well) best avenue to lens sales, as I am imagining they saw it, given the above, was to market something you could sell with better stats than older lenses. Higher resolution, sharp to the corners, blazing fast and nearly silent AF, minimal vignetting, almost no chromatic aberration, or distortion, and being able to produce and offer them at a pricing structure far less than something from, say, Leica. All those things require “big”, or seem to, to cover a full frame sensor.
I have no reason to buy something like a 50/3.5 Elmar to use on a Z7, because I already have one and it works fine on the Z body. Nikon knows this, so in a way, they have been forced to go upmarket with their own lenses. But, yes, the 50/1.8 S is pretty big. Fairly light, though and handles well on the body, IMO. Upcoming 50/1.2 S will be even bigger.
It’s nice to have the options mirrorless cameras bring in terms of lens selection. Many people don’t even like the rendering of highly corrected lenses, so the option of smaller, older lenses is there. There are tradeoffs inherent in every size option, looks like.

 

[dourbalistar]

But holy moly it is big. Like really, really BIG.

Have you seen the Nikkor Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct? 😀
https://nikonrumors.com/2020/09/20/...f-0-95-s-noct-specifications-comparison.aspx/

 

[markjwyatt]

I've never understood marketing. In California everything bigger is better: but Lenses?

Are you conflating California and Texas? 🙄

 

[mcfingon]

Canon may be going against the trend with their recently-announced RF 50/1.8. I like the idea of that size, weight and price, but I've invested in Sony A7III gear at the moment. Maybe Sony will make something like this for the A7C?
John Mc
https://www.digitalcameraworld.com/au/news/a-pound220-nifty-fifty-for-the-eos-r-the-canon-rf-50mm-f18-stm-is-here

 

[zuiko85]

This is also one reason why Nikon didn’t make small, manual focus, slow lenses which exhibit distortion and aberrations like older lenses do...there is no market for that because those lenses are already out there and cheap to come by, and lots of photographers own them already. For a manufacturer that’s one of the pitfalls of going with mirrorless body designs, everything fits your camera, all the old, manual focus, small and cheap stuff. Nikon’s (Sony, and Canon as well) best avenue to lens sales, as I am imagining they saw it, given the above, was to market something you could sell with better stats than older lenses. Higher resolution, sharp to the corners, blazing fast and nearly silent AF, minimal vignetting, almost no chromatic aberration, or distortion, and being able to produce and offer them at a pricing structure far less than something from, say, Leica. All those things require “big”, or seem to, to cover a full frame sensor.
I have no reason to buy something like a 50/3.5 Elmar to use on a Z7, because I already have one and it works fine on the Z body. Nikon knows this, so in a way, they have been forced to go upmarket with their own lenses. But, yes, the 50/1.8 S is pretty big. Fairly light, though and handles well on the body, IMO. Upcoming 50/1.2 S will be even bigger.
It’s nice to have the options mirrorless cameras bring in terms of lens selection. Many people don’t even like the rendering of highly corrected lenses, so the option of smaller, older lenses is there. There are tradeoffs inherent in every size option, looks like.

Good reasoning Larry, and it makes sense. No need to make a lower tier set of lenses when the used market is littered with them, often for coffee money.

 

[zuiko85]

Thinking about it, some of the Fujifilm lenses don’t seem too big.....ah, almost forgot, smaller sensor helps.

 

[Jamie Pillers]

This is THE reason I’ve stuck with Fuji APS-C cameras.... I just can’t enjoy full-frame kits that force me into the world of giant lenses. I guess I got conditioned by the form factor of my old Nikon bodies and manual focus Nikkors. And a bit later by the jewel-like Leica bodies and their tiny exquisite lenses.

 

[Richard G]

Bokeh and fast and sharp have distracted us from more useable lenses. And a Nikon D3 seemed to invite a big lens. On my M9-P right now is the tiny late offering from Leica, the revival Summaron M 28 f5.6.

I hardly use a 1.4 or 1.5 or even f2 lens lately, and prefer compact f2.8s. But on the Monochrom most of the time is the f1.4 Summilux, light and compact and nearly fifty years old.

 

[Godfrey]

I dunno.

• I was walking with the Hasselblad 907x yesterday, fitted with my nice old Summicron-R 90mm. The body is very small, the lens is meaty. The camera felt great in my hands and hung comfortably at my side while I walked.
• I often wander about with the Panasonic GX9 fitted with an Olympus Body Cap Lens 15mm f/8 too. The body is a nice size, the lens is almost literally indistinguishable from a body cap. That works well too.
• The other day, on an amusing notion, I stuffed both the GX9 fitted with Summilux-DG 25mm and the Leica CL fitted with Summilux 35 from 1972 into my bag and snapped a bunch of photos with both of them. Both fit my hands nicely and performed very well. The 'Lux-DG is small but for the huge lens hood, the 'Lux 35 is very small for so fast a lens but weighs more ... Both work great, two different cameras with fast normal lenses. Both a very classic shape and size.

• My Light L16 is the most compact, easiest to carry 50 Mpixel camera with a 28 to 150mm zoom lens equivalent I know.

It all works. It just what you get used to using. 😀

G

 

[nickthetasmaniac]

Have you seen the Nikkor Z 58mm f/0.95 S Noct? 😀
https://nikonrumors.com/2020/09/20/...f-0-95-s-noct-specifications-comparison.aspx/

I have, but I’d expect a 50/f0.95 or 50/f1.2 to be enormous. The 50/f1.8 is, as it stands, the ‘compact’ option for Z mount...

 

[CharlesDAMorgan]

I have been using a Rollei 35S a lot of late and taken some very nice photos with it. More so than any other camera in my cupboard. The reason is it fits very nicely in any pocket I possess, so gets used a lot.

I no longer have any desire to lug large things around - only if I'm going to be close to my car will I pack a camera with lots of lenses. But these things aren't marketed at me, and I'm not their likely buyer!