I just don't get lens prices.

JonBowles

JonBowles

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No I just don't get it....


I have bought some expensive lenses; I have the "native" 24-70mm and 70-200mm f4 zooms for my A7s and A7rii. Plus the excellent SEL 90mm f2.8 macro. And then I spend £34 on a Minolta 35-70mm f4 af zoom and find it's sharper than the $1000 Sony SEL 24-70mm f4......wtf.....
 
aliengrove said:
No I just don't get it....


I have bought some expensive lenses; I have the "native" 24-70mm and 70-200mm f4 zooms for my A7s and A7rii. Plus the excellent SEL 90mm f2.8 macro. And then I spend £34 on a Minolta 35-70mm f4 af zoom and find it's sharper than the $1000 Sony SEL 24-70mm f4......wtf.....
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sharp isn't everything. Low light, (speed) af ability, newer lens coatings and age of design all make a difference. if its worth it to you is another matter
 
weight, looks. weatherproofing.

To some may not be the be all and end all but im sure that market research says otherwise
 
Why pay £700 for the new iphone when you can pay £300 for the previous model which does pretty much exactly the same. It's a lot to do with social status.
 
How much was that Minolta when it was new?

Had to be relatively expensive at some stage for the manufacturer to make a profit, bit like owning a luxury car twenty years on. Someone has to take the hit on the new price for you to pay thirty or so quid years later, good result whatever.
 
With modern fascination with paper thin dof manufacturers don't find small slower aperture lenses a priority and they're probably right not too they would be a niche. All to often the mentality is slow small = cheap amateur crap, fast large = expensive pro best.
 
rjbell said:
With modern fascination with paper thin dof.
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I had realized that it was how the world is now. Could you expand on that? I not saying you are wrong, more I didn't know that, please tell me more.
 
davholla said:
I had realized that it was how the world is now. Could you expand on that? I not saying you are wrong, more I didn't know that, please tell me more.
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Its no right or wrong its just a pitty it seems no market for well build top quality optics with a compact slower aperture. You would think now more than ever with the compact system cameras they would be appreciated but not so. You take fujifilm x series for example the most asked for lens is a 33mm f1.0. Thats gonna a be a lumpy old lens on a compact camera. I've not been around long enough shooting to know for sure but from what i've read its a relatively new trend to shoot extremely shallow.
 
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rjbell said:
You take fujifilm x series for example the most asked for lens is a 33mm f1.0. Thats gonna a be a lumpy old lens on a compact camera. I've not been around long enough shooting to know for sure but from what i've read its a relatively new trend to sheet extremely shallow.
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... the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1 came out in 1976. And I believe Canon made a 50mm f/0.95 all the way back in the early 1960s

Of course a 35mm f/1.0 on Fuji would be the equivalent to having a 50mm f/1.5 on a full frame.
 
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Eloise said:
... the Leica Noctilux 50mm f/1 came out in 1976. And I believe Canon made a 50mm f/0.95 all the way back in the early 1960s

Of course a 35mm f/1.0 on Fuji would be the equivalent to having a 50mm f/1.5 on a full frame.
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Yeah i'm aware its been possible for a long time fast lenses have been around a long time but has it been fashionable to shoot wide open with such dof since then or had it been a relatively new thing? Shooting wide open was a necessity rather than a aesthetic choice it often is now maybe?
 
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aliengrove said:
No I just don't get it....


I have bought some expensive lenses; I have the "native" 24-70mm and 70-200mm f4 zooms for my A7s and A7rii. Plus the excellent SEL 90mm f2.8 macro. And then I spend £34 on a Minolta 35-70mm f4 af zoom and find it's sharper than the $1000 Sony SEL 24-70mm f4......wtf.....
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The Minolta 35-70 f/4 is the 'little brother' of the Minolta 'Beercan' - the 70-210 f/4.

Both are very good, IQ wise, and price was kept reasonable as they were 'only' f/4.

The 35-70 f/4 is indeed a very sharp lens, with the lovely 'Minolta Colour' to it's rendering.

What keeps the price low are the 'negatives'

1) Limited focal length (most want a 24-70)
2) Slow - 'only' f/4
3) Screw drive (so perceived as slower AF than SSM lenses).

But if it fits what you need, don't complain, you've got a real gem for peanuts:)
 
rjbell said:
Yeah i'm aware its been possible for a long time fast lenses have been around a long time but has it been fashionable to shoot wide open with such dof since then or had it been a relatively new thing? Shooting wide open was a necessity rather than a aesthetic choice it often is now maybe?
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I get your point...

I took a bit of a break from photography during the 2000s until around 2013 ... I'm sure I never heard the term Bohek so extensively talked about (in publications) until coming back in 2013. It feels at times that (for some people) Bohek is the only criteria for their photography and lens choice.
 
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As far as I am aware the Minolta 35-70mm f4 was a kit lens, and not very expensive. I was pretty shocked to find its sharper than the much more modern, and higher price bracket, SEL 24-70mm, which is also only f4. It makes me wonder why no one is making very cheap yet very good lenses.

I also have a few old fast mf primes that are very sharp. It seems that apart from coatings, lens design has not improved dramatically in the last 40 years.
 
aliengrove said:
As far as I am aware the Minolta 35-70mm f4 was a kit lens, and not very expensive. I was pretty shocked to find its sharper than the much more modern, and higher price bracket, SEL 24-70mm, which is also only f4. It makes me wonder why no one is making very cheap yet very good lenses.

I also have a few old fast mf primes that are very sharp. It seems that apart from coatings, lens design has not improved dramatically in the last 40 years.
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The new lens has twice as many elements in there.
 
aliengrove said:
As far as I am aware the Minolta 35-70mm f4 was a kit lens, and not very expensive. I was pretty shocked to find its sharper than the much more modern, and higher price bracket, SEL 24-70mm, which is also only f4. It makes me wonder why no one is making very cheap yet very good lenses.

I also have a few old fast mf primes that are very sharp. It seems that apart from coatings, lens design has not improved dramatically in the last 40 years.
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:D Nonsense lens design has moved on even in the last few years.

Yongnuo and many other companies make cheap lenses for those that want them.
 
Its all relative. The cost to develop a decent lens is huge and if you go into specialist/scientific areas the expensive consumer lenses suddenly seem very good value.
 
tiddlybiz said:
Its all relative. The cost to develop a decent lens is huge and if you go into specialist/scientific areas the expensive consumer lenses suddenly seem very good value.
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Do you reckon? With modern simulation programs I doubt it. I think the margins are huge! We're getting ripped off but the state of the market if we weren't we might not have any camera companies to buy from.
 
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Eloise said:
I get your point...

I took a bit of a break from photography during the 2000s until around 2013 ... I'm sure I never heard the term Bohek so extensively talked about (in publications) until coming back in 2013. It feels at times that (for some people) Bohek is the only criteria for their photography and lens choice.
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It's one of the easiest and most obvious photographic tricks you can do with a big expensive camera which you can't do with a smartphone. In fashionably ignorant circles it's therefore become the definitive mark of owning a big expensive camera.
 
Obviously you want a lens to be sharp & contrasty with nice bokeh characteristics but for me the main thing is AF speed.
people rave about their 85mm f/1.8 primes but i literally never use it just because it seems so slow to focus after the 24-70 or 70-200....
 
While I'm surprised that the 35-70 is sharper than the modern 24-70 (maybe you're is a poor copy?) older minolta lenses have often been very strong performers. My fave lens on Sony is a 50 f1.4 - basically the old Mino 50 with modern coatings - and it's much better lens than the current Nikon equivalents to the point where I thought the Nikon 50 AFS I first tried on a D610 was faulty. I use Nikon mostly these days, and many lenses are disappointing by comparison at a like-for-like level.
 
Minolta lenses have always had a good reputation, although I must admit I was expecting a favourable comparison with modern lenses to be about the MD 35-70/3.5 not the AF 35-70/4. I wouldn't personally spend £35 on the f/4 when the ghetto-Leica f/3.5 can be found for £70..

I'd really like to see some directly comparable sample shots from the OP to make a judgement between the modern and older lenses. I shoot a mixture of new and vintage lenses. I wouldn't expect sharpness to be noticeably better with the Minolta kit lens, however I would expect contrast and micro-contrast to be different which could give the illusion of sharpness with the older lens if you weren't sure what you were looking for. Modern digital cameras and their lenses are generally designed to give results significantly less contrasty SOOC than in the past - a flatter raw file gives better options for in-camera and post-processing of digital images.
 
Maybe my manual focus Minolta lenses are a bit old for this conversation but... They can't compete with modern lenses wide open, they're not as sharp and they have more optical nasties, and although they sharpen up well as I close the aperture down to the point that they can begin to look very sharp in the central area of the frame they still can't compete with modern lenses as we leave the centre of the frame and begin get towards the edges. Due to the lack of modern coatings and absence of the specialist exotic glass used in some modern lenses and the advantages of modern manufacturing and testing maybe older lenses can never compete with the best of the newer ones if we go looking for the differences.

Maybe the same is true of less old old lenses too.

PS.
And none of this takes account of how the final image looks. It may be that we may just like the way an old lens captures and image, faults and less good attributes and all.
 
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rjbell said:
Yeah i'm aware its been possible for a long time fast lenses have been around a long time but has it been fashionable to shoot wide open with such dof since then or had it been a relatively new thing? Shooting wide open was a necessity rather than a aesthetic choice it often is now maybe?
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Could it also be down to modem AF systems allowing much more accuracy with fast lenses whereas in the past you would use smaller apertures to increase the chance of getting the shot? I certainly don't trust my MF skills with F1.4, F1.8 etc without focus aids. Even with split prisms it's tricky.
 
snerkler said:
Could it also be down to modem AF systems allowing much more accuracy with fast lenses whereas in the past you would use smaller apertures to increase the chance of getting the shot? I certainly don't trust my MF skills with F1.4, F1.8 etc without focus aids. Even with split prisms it's tricky.
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The focussing issue is a good point, and sometimes there's a lot of 'spirit of guesswork' in manual focussing. Older SLRs also had terrible screens to focus with *outside of the split prism area* and were dark and gritty, with lower resolution of detail. I use a Samyang 85 f1.4, set around f1.7 or f2.0 regularly for shots of the band I play with, and sometimes I can rely on the focus system in the camera to indicate when a shot is in focus, but often the light is too dim and there's not enough contrast for it to work or the subject is moving too much & I have to guess using my eyes. Certainly practice heps though, and my hit rate is better than it was in the beginning.
 
I never used an AF camera, till Digital came along. So AF speed is not a priority for me.
F1.4 lenses were easier to focus manually on 35mm as you had a nice bright image on the screen with very little depth of field.
For the most part, the cameras I used professionally were medium and large format and rarely had lenses wider aperture than F 2.8.
Even today I would suggest that my most used apertures are in the region between F2 and F8. so I would not mind much If F2 was the maximum.
 
strumstrum said:
not with lenses it isn't
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Agreed, a lens fulfils a purpose. I've never bought any photography gear thinking it gives me street cred, probably does the opposite if anything :LOL:
 
woof woof said:
Here's a nice little article, in defence of depth...

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2012/06/in-defense-of-depth.html
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Thanks for that, I understand what you mean now. I am really interested in macro first, birds and animals second everything else first, but I would like to be good with all of them.
In Macro depth of field is highly desired - if you look at the most popular macro photographers, most stack and have a lot of depth of field so it is strange that for other fields it is not the same.
 
davholla said:
Thanks for that, I understand what you mean now. I am really interested in macro first, birds and animals second everything else first, but I would like to be good with all of them.
In Macro depth of field is highly desired - if you look at the most popular macro photographers, most stack and have a lot of depth of field so it is strange that for other fields it is not the same.
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Having control of depth of field enables one to use it as a tool to shape the way an image is seen and understood by the viewer. Want to draw attention to one aspect of the image or separate something from what is behind it? A shallow depth of field can do that. Want to show a tiny creature in all it's fully detailed glory? An extended depth of field created by stacking can do that. I love being able to use a dof of just a couple of inches front to back to isolate a subject, whether a person or a feature in a landscape. But I'll also happily wind the aperture to f13 or f16 to maximise depth of field if I feel the image calls for it.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Having control of depth of field enables one to use it as a tool to shape the way an image is seen and understood by the viewer. Want to draw attention to one aspect of the image or separate something from what is behind it? A shallow depth of field can do that. Want to show a tiny creature in all it's fully detailed glory? An extended depth of field created by stacking can do that. I love being able to use a dof of just a couple of inches front to back to isolate a subject, whether a person or a feature in a landscape. But I'll also happily wind the aperture to f13 or f16 to maximise depth of field if I feel the image calls for it.
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Those 5 words is what it's all about ... control being the most important. A good photographer won't always have a small depth of field, but will control it to get the effect required.
 
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