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What lenses are you currently using?

pablolie

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More so now than in previous years, Leica's niche is as a luxury-products company, where much of the appeal is not merely as an image-making tool, but rather, the brand seeks to evoke certain emotions. In fact, for a time, they were part of the LVMH consortium, and they've ventured into automatic wristwatches. No one ever said that hand-crafting small batches of cameras and lenses was the best way to achieve consistently high quality in the 21st century, but for those who crave a certain "something", they may be worth the occasional minor inconvenience.
Leica makes amazing cameras and lenses. Sure there are many hobbyists that just like to show off the red dot. But Leica knows what they do - who they design their cameras and lenses for, and they build reliable cameras that one can get amazing results with.

we shouldn't judge brands by the fact that some users simply buy them to show off. At last Ferrari or Leica or Audemars Piguet etc have real engineering excellence on their side... unlike a $10k Louis Vuitton bag and stuff like that.
 

pablolie

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...
Lumix Leica DG Summilux 25mm F1.4 Mark II - "nifty fifty" with nice bokeh
Awesome lens indeed! Hate that you spilled the secret. :)
M. Zuiko 45mm F1.8
M. Zuiko 75mm F1.8

Love those myself! The 45/1.8 is a fantastic and super easy to use portrait lens with nice bokeh (and maybe a leader in price-performance ratio), and the 75 has a narrower use case, but has one of the most gorgeous bokehs I have ever seen - love using them too!
 

MAB

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I like macro photography. I have an old PB-4 bellows, it has tilt and shift although a bit limited in 35mm... I have lots of odd macro lenses. My favorite is the Nikkor 105mm f/4 bellows lens.

105mmf4bellowMantisB.JPG

All of these handle like fine instruments, so fiddling around with them while taking pictures is nice... The Leitz 105mm has nearly identical performance to the Nikkor 105mm. Same for the Minolta 100mm. The Nikkor 135mm bellows lens is an aardvark, and predates the F-mount I think... The Schneider 40mm and the Zeiss 25mm are both for extreme enlarging ratios and become challenging to use. I didn't pay much more than $100 for any of these items, some less, although I have had them for some time.
1668897058997.jpeg

This was taken with the 105mm bellows Nikkor.
1668895687798.jpeg
 

JeffS7444

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Sony RX100. A bitterly cold Christmas morning in 2017. Ai Weiwei's Circle of Animals.
_DSC1352.jpg
 

Keith_W

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Yes, but Leica offers something that no other brand does. Tiny lenses which are high quality. You could argue that the Zeiss Otus 50/1.4 is technically a better lens, however that lens is massive compared to the Leica Summilux 50/1.4. I mostly do travel photography, and I do not want to lug around a massive heavy collection of lenses. I have travelled Europe once with a Canon 35/1.4L and 50/1.2L, and then again with a Sony 35/1.4. It was quite unpleasant and by the end of the day it is quite tiring indeed.
 

dualazmak

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Hello friends,

Thank you for your interesting and important discussions on tilt-shift lens Canon TS-E17mm f/4L.
Let me respond to you hopefully soon tonight Japan Time (now it is 8:33 AM Sunday here).
 

pseudoid

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I was an old Canon diehard when things were chem-based.
202211_CanonA1.jpg

The Canon A1 was the brick-sh*t-house of those years and mine just refused to die.
Talk about my memories; my A1 was the bearer of them all.
Talk about my secrets; my A1 kept them all!
That A1 followed me across multiple continents and back.
My A1's black ABS Pelican case became our partner in 'crime' and very handy in our long trips.

While working for Panasonic, the Lumix G1 was just being introduced in the heydays of digital cameras.
The G1 was a mirrorless 'DSLR' and had the 'Micro-FourThirds' (MFT or M4/3) format/mount; making it much more portable than a regular DSLR.
Employees got 55% off MSRP on Panasonic products. So, I splurged and also bought a few Lumix G-Vario lenses besides the standard (14-42mm @F3.5+) lens.
While getting to learn digital medium, I realized the G1 needed a firmware update. Fine, Okay! Let's roll!
Imagine my surprise :)mad:) when I found out that my monster 45mm-200mm (@f4.5+) G-Vario H-FS405200 Zoom lens also needed a firmware upgrade. [I used F-bombs at this discovery]
202211_LumixGVarioZoomH-FS405200.jpg

I knew right then-and-there that digititus had truly become a epidemic and there was no fighting it, even in photography.:(
The other lens I splurged on was a G-Vario H-H025 (25mm @f1.7).
202211_LumixGVario25mmH-H025.jpg


I now understand there is a new "L-Mount Alliance" and the old MFT mount has passed the baton to this new Lumix-mount for the latest Lumix mirrorless cameras.
I aim to keep my Lumix #3 (currently, a DMC-G7) w/o having to dump my old lenses for moh-bettuh versions.
DMC-G7 got a good video engine/gpu (4k/16Mpixels) but HDMI2.x; it is NOT!:confused:

Edit: My 2nd Lumix (a G5) was stolen but fully refunded by AX.
 
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Destination: Moon

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I don't get too hung up on gear anymore. It's the image that matters. Hell, I've printed cell pics to 16x20 and they are perfectly acceptable. I grew up using SLR cameras when that was the tool of "serious" photographers. Now the tech is so good the gear is becoming almost irrelevant. It's knowledge and skill that makes an image pop today.... And sometimes luck

Can you tell what format this was shot on?
 

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pseudoid

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pseudoid

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Thanks for blanking that. I'm not really sure what I'm looking at? Meta data obviously. Does it have sensitive - personal info?
Not germane to your original 'guess-my-format' test << but it is the storage location of what you posted and what I could "saveAs..." in 99% quality from where-ever it was stored, and rendered on my screen. << meaning that my answer to you is "There is no guessing what format it was shot at originally... w/o you telling us.. rather than an impossible guess..."o_O
 

Frank Dernie

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I don't get too hung up on gear anymore. It's the image that matters. Hell, I've printed cell pics to 16x20 and they are perfectly acceptable. I grew up using SLR cameras when that was the tool of "serious" photographers. Now the tech is so good the gear is becoming almost irrelevant. It's knowledge and skill that makes an image pop today.... And sometimes luck

Can you tell what format this was shot on?
I think it was pretty well always the case that the photographer made more difference than the kit, I remember a famous case here where back in the 1950s a pro photographer took a stunning picture with an amateur camera to prove it wasn't all his Rolleiflex making the pictures.

I would say that the biggest change over the time I have been interested by photographic equipment was the technical skill required to get a good image.
Getting an in focus, properly exposed photograph took a lot of skill and knowledge when I was a kid with my first camera in 1961. It had manual focus and both the distance and exposure had to be either guessed or measured - and I could afford neither a rangefinder or exposure meter.

Nowadays, apart from the limitation that the exposure meter is of necessity reflective rather than incident, which is in principle wrong but the error cleverly hidden for most pictures with digital sensors by algorithms using the whole frame, all technical skill is built into the camera and the photographer no longer require much, if any.

But still standing in the right place and pressing the shutter at the right moment are the most important skills for a good photograph, and these aren't automated yet.

Each picture was a non negligible cost to a schoolboy so I thought long and hard about taking an exposure. Very few people had a camera at all and outside enthusiasts those that did mainly took one roll of film per year on holiday - here in the UK anyway! Now everybody has one on a phone and take a gazillion free pictures per day.

HiFi and photography often appeal to the same sort of person. As with hifi there is a broad range of enthusiasm from the mainly the kit to mainly using it. In my case I am far more interested in listening to music than playing around with kit but with photography I am more the other way - I enjoy playing around with, understanding and using the kit more than I do image making.
Sorry.
 
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Gorgonzola

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I think it was pretty well always the case that the photographer made more difference than the kit, I remember a famous case here where back in the 1950s a pro photographer took a stunning picture with an amateur camera to prove it wasn't all his Rolleiflex making the pictures.

I would say that the biggest change over the time I have been interested by photographic equipment was the technical skill required to get a good image.
Getting an in focus, properly exposed photograph took a lot of skill and knowledge when I was a kid with my first camera in 1961. It had manual focus and both the distance and exposure had to be either guessed or measured - and I could afford neither a rangefinder or exposure meter.

Nowadays, apart from the limitation that the exposure meter is of necessity reflective rather than incident, which is in principle wrong but the error cleverly hidden for most pictures with digital sensors by algorithms using the whole frame, all technical skill is built into the camera and the photographer no longer require much, if any.

But still standing in the right place and pressing the shutter at the right moment are the most important skills for a good photograph, and these aren't automated yet.

Each picture was a non negligible cost to a schoolboy so I thought long and hard about taking an exposure. Very few people had a camera at all and outside enthusiasts those that did mainly took one roll of film per year on holiday - here in the UK anyway! Now everybody has one on a phone and take a gazillion free pictures per day.

HiFi and photography often appeal to the same sort of person. As with hifi there is a broad range of enthusiasm from the mainly the kit to mainly using it. In my case I am far more interested in listening to music than playing around with kit but with photography I am more the other way - I enjoy playing around with, understanding and using the kit more than I do image making.
Sorry.
Nothing here I disagree with in the least, but I certainly don't regret the advent auto-focus or that in-camera AI that cameras have today -- simply put, I get better better pictures today in the all-manual cameras I owned of yesteryear.

My first "adjustable" camera was Petri 1.9 35mm with a 45mm f/1.9 lens. It had a rangefinder but no meter. Of course shutter speed and aperture were up to me but I had Sekonic reflective light meter to help me. Cloudy day pictures I took were mostly poor because the grey skies produce lower f-stop readings than optimal.

Pic of a Petri 1.9 like mine ...
Petri_1.9.jpg


I should say that the non-interchangeable 45mm lens I perceived as a limitation from the get-go.
 
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Gorgonzola

Gorgonzola

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The type of lens you favor depends on the type of photography you favor. I'm you're into architecture and travel, you'd hate to be without an wide-angle or two; it's different if you tend to bird-watching and sports where telephone is what you most often need.

I'm more into the former and I love my wide-angles. I just ordered a Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D to supplement or replace my 7artisans 12mm f/2.8 -- will the slightly shorter focal length really matter? Yep, sometimes.

Here are a couple of pics I'd have had to pass up without that 12mm ...
SML-DSCF1310.jpg


SML-DSCF1023.jpg
 

LTig

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The type of lens you favor depends on the type of photography you favor. I'm you're into architecture and travel, you'd hate to be without an wide-angle or two; it's different if you tend to bird-watching and sports where telephone is what you most often need.

I'm more into the former and I love my wide-angles. I just ordered a Laowa 9mm f/2.8 Zero-D to supplement or replace my 7artisans 12mm f/2.8 -- will the slightly shorter focal length really matter? Yep, sometimes.
The visible difference between those two lenses does not correlate with the difference of their focal lengths (9-6) but with their ratio (9/6). Hence it is not a slight difference, its like going from 75 mm to 50 mm .
 
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