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Ok, so I was thinking about going Leica last year and while I found the body I wanted rather quickly I wasn't sure what lens to get exactly. I knew I needed a 35mm, and there aren't that many different (Leica) ones, but I spent many nights reading up on all of them, and looking at thousands of images, read comparisons and opinions from god know who..
Long story short: at that level nobody can see the fucking difference - if you don't purposely do very specific things that lens A is very good at and compare it to how lens B performs in this regard, and put images right next to each other.
And while most Nikon lenses may not be on par with Leica lenses it's still the same issue - sure the 50/1.2 will give you something the cheap Series E 50/1.8 can't do so well, but in a "normal" setting, subject in the center, shot somewhere between 3.5 and 8 even that cheap lens will give you great results.To be fair it took me a lot of years to finally come to this point but a former boss (chief photographer of a daily newspaper) told me a few years ago that I should stop bitching about my equipment and concentrate more on being a good photographer. And a few month later I was regularly getting great shots out of a shit Canon with the stock zoom lens. Of course I still lusted after the premium gear, but you get my point.
Now (for me, for analog photography) it's just about finding some camera / lens that I actually like shooting, it's about how the thing feels more than corner-to-corner sharpness or that super special kind of bokeh.
Fuck bokeh.
salad-
Yeah - this is exactly what I am trying to avoid. Gear acquisition. Which is why I want to find the camera that is perfect for me. The problem I have with the Pentax is whilst it’s all manual (fine), the shutter dial is stiff as fuck. I can’t turn it easily. It’s difficult to shoot stuff if it’s time critical. The K1000 I had was better in this respect. The Nikon was much better in this respect.
@platypus everything I’ve read about that camera says it’s inflated price is due to its rarity rather than the quality of it - any truth in that?
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Yeah, I think most of what’s written about lenses is bollocks. Put two A4 prints in front of someone, one taken with a Leica lens, one taken with a Nikon/Canon/Olympus etc and I doubt anyone could tell which one was which.
I can only think that most of the snobbery that’s written about lenses comes from the days when cheap cameras where cheap with plastic lenses.
@JB as Tina says, just decide what focal length you like (id guess it’s going be 28, 35 or 50) and buy the lenses you can afford. Nikon don’t really make a duff lens in those focal lengths, you just end up paying extra for rarity/ wider apertures.
JB
Ste_S
Not at all. It was more of there were any lenses that are like ‘must own’ nikon lenses.
Will just do some more research into lenses at my desired focal lengths :-)