Which Fast Lens?

Which Fast Lens?

  • Total voters
    213
Boring pictures or not, I like the very idea of fast lenses. If I win the lottery I'm going to hunt down one of the 50mm/f0.7 lenses that Zeiss made for NASA and have the finest craftsman in the world modify it for M-mount. Same with the Rodenstock 50mm/f0.75 and the Canon 65mm/f0.75. And then double up on the upper body work at the gym.

But this is the real world, so I voted for the Hexanon 50/1.2. It is fast enough, and it is the smallest and most modern of the poll group designed for M-mount.

Hacker, do you know anyone who is doing an M-mount conversion on the Canon FL series? I have a converted/coupled Canon 55mm/F1.2 FD but have not heard of anyone doing the FL lenses.

EDIT: Last night I saw Victor Chan's latest offering on eBay is a conversion of the FL lens.
 
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Still sounds like it's the photographer.

I see no particular reason why wide open photographs would be automatically more boring than other photos. I would say that a disproportionate # of boring photos are taken w/wide angle lenses & large DoF (the default on every point & shoot & cellphone camera) but that doesn't mean that wide angle lenses &/or large DoF are inherently boring.

rxmd said:
Only partly.

The whole point of using a superfast lens is using it wide open, so people tend to take lots of wide open photographs with it. Many of those I tend to find rather boring, pictures taken to satisfy the inner geek. Since I would only get a fast 50 because of the exercise in numbers myself, I would fully expect to take a disproportionately large amount of boring pictures with them.

It's not all about the photographer.

Philipp
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I have no experience with these aforementioned lenses but I like my Nokton, Jupiter 3 and Summarit lenses.
 
rxmd said:
Only partly.

The whole point of using a superfast lens is using it wide open, so people tend to take lots of wide open photographs with it. Many of those I tend to find rather boring, pictures taken to satisfy the inner geek. Since I would only get a fast 50 because of the exercise in numbers myself, I would fully expect to take a disproportionately large amount of boring pictures with them.

It's not all about the photographer.
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Huh?

So, a superslow lens produces a small amount of boring pictures?
 
Gabriel M.A. said:
Which fast lens what?

Is heaviest? "Sharpest"? Bluntest? Rounder? Prettier?
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No criteria, but if the selection is made, then the answer to "Why" should be stated. I steered away from any critieria such as weight as we can just go weigh all the lenses and rank them. I'm just curious what would people choose and their reasons.

Seems like for the all the bashings the Noctilux gets at times, it is still the leader. The Hexanon is second if added together (both 50mm and 60mm).
 
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Hacker said:
No criteria, but if the selection is made, then the answer to "Why" should be stated. I steered away from any critieria such as weight as we can just go weigh all the lenses and rank them. I'm just curious what would people choose and their reasons.

Seems like for the all the bashings the Noctilux gets at times, it is still the leader. The Hexanon is second if added together (both 50mm and 60mm).
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If only the Noctilux could run for President...😱
 
I would go with the LTM 50/1.1 Nikkor, partly because I haven't had one and partly because its images looked so nice in the comparison Raid did a while back.

Actually, I would be even happier with an external-mount S version, if it came with an SP attached to it! (I know, Gandy had this very combo for sale a few months back, so I missed my chance... small matter of several thousand unavailable dollars...)
 
furcafe said:
Still sounds like it's the photographer.
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Well, of course any picture is taken by the photographer...

furcafe said:
I see no particular reason why wide open photographs would be automatically more boring than other photos.
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...and this particular photographer knows that if I purchased a superspeed lens because I had read on online forums about it, I would take a disproportionate amount of boring pictures with it. That's the effect this kind of purchase has on me. And I'm saying that my impression is that it has it on a lot of others as well, which is why I think it's not only the photographer, but also the phenomenon of GAS-induced exercise-in-numbers purchases in general.

As far as the photographs themselves are concerned, oh, technically they'd be fine, but then it's easier to acquire technical skills than creative ones. If I take pictures just to play around with the wide aperture of my shiny new lens most of those are going to be for the bin, and that's not because they are bad technically, but because they're boring. I would get the lens, run around, take lots of pictures at f/1 or whatever, and most of the first roll would be rubbish. Make that most of the first ten rolls. Maybe the occasional lucky shot or so, (which is then posted on RFF) but we're not after lucky shots, we're after creating good pictures reproducibly. Oh, of course, lots of shallow DOF on those rolls, no doubting that - that would be fine if shallow DOF was somehow interesting in itself, but it's not; it's just a special effect that wants to be learned (just like wideangle distortion, or tilt lenses, or fisheyes). In fact I would need it quite rarely, so I probably wouldn't get to learn it particularly quickly if at all, and the meantime would be filled with boring pictures. Shallow DOF doesn't make a picture less boring. In fact it may well make a picture more boring, especially when the picture is taken just for the sake of shallow DOF.

I don't know about you guys, maybe purchasing f/{x:x<1.4} lenses after reading about them extensively brings about instant expertise with the lens, along with some inner creativity, but with me, I can honestly say that GAS makes me take boring photographs.

Philipp
 
These are all large impressive light-gobbling beasties, but perhaps more importantly what body would you be using? I have heard tell that the most consistent results come from an RF matched to the lens. I have to confess that the only lens I own in this range is for my (evil!) canon SLR. I did get it for the reasons mentioned and more: Wide-open performance, low light performance, widest range of DoF, etc.

Then again, I do a fair amount of hand-held low-light photography, and sometimes you do need that extra half-stop (or more). I have personally encountered situations where 3200 ASA and 1.4 are not fast enough. And that's what these lenses are for. I wouldn't consider any of them general-purpose lenses, as a group they tend to have a higher incidence of aberrations and the like. Then again, under the conditions you would use these lenses you're not going to be copying documents.

It's a compromise, like many others we make every time we choose our gear.
Some people are willing to make that compromise (or justify it), others-such as rxmd-obviously are not.

YMMV
 
I would agree that anyone who buys a lens purely for its specifications, i.e., without a creative product or objective in mind, is likely to take a lot of boring photographs, but my point was simply that that tendency has nothing to do w/lenses themselves & applies to all lenses, not just fast ones.

rxmd said:
Well, of course any picture is taken by the photographer...


...and this particular photographer knows that if I purchased a superspeed lens because I had read on online forums about it, I would take a disproportionate amount of boring pictures with it. That's the effect this kind of purchase has on me. And I'm saying that my impression is that it has it on a lot of others as well, which is why I think it's not only the photographer, but also the phenomenon of GAS-induced exercise-in-numbers purchases in general.
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furcafe said:
that tendency has nothing to do w/lenses themselves & applies to all lenses, not just fast ones.
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I think the tendency is somewhat more pronounced with fast lenses, for two reasons: partly because of the more pronounced character of the OOF effect of the lens, which tends to dominate the pictures above a given aperture, but mainly because fast lenses have a special "geek appeal" - because of the exercise in numbers involved, and because there is a disproportionately large amount of discussion about them, and because you could also use them as plain old normal lenses when stopped down (unlike wideangles), they tend to be more GAS-inducing than other lenses. You certainly read a lot more about Noctilust and GAS for 50/0.95 lenses than about the quest for the ultimate ultrawideangle.

Philipp
 
It's got to be the Zunow 5cm F1.1 in the rarest mount it came in. What would that be? Was there a pure Contax version? This lens is simply so rare and visionary that it's actual perfomance is sort of irrelevant to me (I'll use a late model Nikkor or Canon 50m F1.2 on a SLR for serious low light work).
 
David Murphy said:
It's got to be the Zunow 5cm F1.1 in the rarest mount it came in. What would that be? Was there a pure Contax version? This lens is simply so rare and visionary that it's actual perfomance is sort of irrelevant to me (I'll use a late model Nikkor or Canon 50m F1.2 on a SLR for serious low light work).
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There is an LTM mount of the 5cm. Maybe you are referring to the Miranda mount?
 
Assuming I had unlimited funds? Probably the Noctilux f1.

But I would miss using it on my Canon P's.

So maybe the Canon 50 1.2, just because it's LTM, and so much more versatile. 😉
 
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