Saturday, June 16, 2012

Trivia (L) pro advice



"I’m done building out my collection of Canon lenses, maybe forever. At the peak, I had about 10 lenses, I recently sold 2 of them. I have the wonderful Canon EF 70-200 f4 L IS, a fantastic lens, one of my favorites. I have a nice collection of Canon primes but I really don’t use these too much, anymore. They’ve been replaced by my Panasonic Lumix 20mm f1.7 and Lumix 14mm f2.5. My Olympus 45mm f1.8 can go toe to toe with my Canon 85mm f1.8 optically, but the Olympus wins hands down for size and comfort. The Lumix 20mm beats the Canon 35mm f2 and Canon 50mm f1.4 optically, no question. Oh and on the Olympus bodies, all of these prime lenses have image stabilization, something that I could only dream about in the Canon world. The newer prime lenses for Canon all seem to be targeted towards the L crowd and priced accordingly while the lower priced offerings tend to be cheap kit zooms. Contrast this with the micro 4/3 world where high quality prime lenses are still relatively affordable. 
I look at the micro 4/3 world and all I see are fantastic lenses that I want to own. Panasonic and Olympus, probably by design, nicely compliment each other in building out the m4/3 lens portfolio. Even Sigma has joined the party. I own 3 prime lenses; which prime do I buy next? Do I go wider with the Olympus 12mm f2.0 or go for the Panasonic Leica 25mm f1.4? Also in a month or so Olympus is releasing their 75mm f1.8. On the zoom front, Panasonic is filling out the line with the already announced 12-35mm f2.8 followed by the rumored 35-100mm. While some of these lenses are pricey, they are in line or priced lower than their Canon and Nikon counter parts. And unlike Canon and Nikon’s 10 – 20 year old aging primes designs, we have modern glass on the m4/3 front."

Andy Atmtx, from Austin, Texas
atmtx photography blog here

No comments: