UKC

Still waiting on Mr Amazon to deliver a 12-35mm lens for a Panasonic GH4.

I'm not in the market right now for a new lens, seeing as I've spent them all on a new toy, if I was to get a prime then what focal length would the great collective of UKC suggest?

For simplicity of my little brain could people make suggestions as if my camera was a 35mm full-frame camera. I can understand this and then make the required adjustments when choosing the relevant focal length.

In fact I may even buy a 35mm full-frame lens and attach it to my camera so that I can get the dof that full-frame users get.




The only times I have ever used a prime lens were for indoor shots when I wanted fast apertures and could not use a flash. And that lens mimicked a 50mm lens for a full frame camera.

In reply to The Lemming:

I love a fast (f1.2ish) 85mm - lovely portrait lens, flattering length and usually great bokeh. The Fuji 56 1.4 covers this really well on my XT10 and I've enjoyed the Canon 85 f1.2 before I sold most of the Canon kit.

That said, it's hard to go wrong with a classic nifty fifty (f1.4/1.8ish)...perhaps more versatile...

In reply to The Lemming:


My understanding of this is that to get the same DoF (I'm guessing you mean shallow DoF) you'd need to use a different, faster, shorter focal-length lens.

This was a bit brain-bending (for me) to remind myself of why that's the case. Using a given lens on a 4/3 sensor camera would mean that you need to be further away from the subject to get the same picture* as if you were shooting with the same lens on a full-frame camera.

Focused on point further away = increased (deeper) DoF. To get the DoF back down again you'd need a larger aperture with 4/3 than the same subject composition* in a full-frame camera.

* Talking here about the subject, say, a cat, being the same size in the image. Due to needing to move closer or further from the cat, the backgrounds of the images would differ, appearing (because of different perspective) further away in the full-frame shot.

Can't really escape sensor size for shallow depth of field. Pesky physics.

In reply to The Lemming:

And, to actually answer to the original question: my favourites are 50mm f1.8 on 35mm, and 150mm f4 on 6x6 (around 80mm 35mm equivalent, but there's no exact conversion as one frame is square, the other is rectangular).

One of the joys of the 50mm one was that it was outrageously cheap.

In reply to PM:



There is an attachment for a micro four thirds that allows you to use full frame lenses. This puts the lens the correct distance from the sensor and focuses all the light onto the sensor.

The attachment also gives you an extra stop, and most important the same depth of field as advertised on the lens.

Pesky physics

In reply to The Lemming:

It all depends what you want to shoot - it you're doing portraiture then the Oly 75mm is phenomenal according to reviews. If you want something wider then either the new Oly 25mm pro or Panny/leica 42,5 are also excellent, albeit expensive.
Personally I've used the Panny 20/1.7 and currently use the Oly 17/1.8. The Panny has a nicer rendering in my opinion, but it's 'fly by wire' which is a bit slow and impossible to manually focus accurately in the dark. It is THE prime to get for the m43 system and excellent save for the focusing issues above. The Oly is virtually as sharp, but benefits from the dual focus ring with scale which allows you to manually focus properly.

If you get a simple adapter to use your 35mm lenses and get the same depth of field be aware that you'll lose half the field of view.

In reply to PM:



I love my 50mm f1.4 on my EOS 450d (APS-C) for the same reason, it was ridiculously cheap for what it is and I can take indoor portraiture without a flash.
I did have the f1.8 but it got lost and the insurance replaced it with a f1.4 for reasons known only to themselves although I didn't complain! I guess it was the f1.8 that was so cheap but it was a good lens too.

In reply to The Lemming:
Fascinating! Had a read about a thing called a Speed Booster which I guess is what you mean. Looks like you could end up with some really interesting set-ups with that.

Physics is apparently too fickle for me. : )

In reply to The Lemming:

This looks quite decent, particularly for shooting video, but it's probably a bit long for your requirements:

http://ffordes.com/product/13073016001731

In reply to The Lemming:

I love my Olympus 25mm f1.8, it's never spends much time off the camera.

In reply to The Lemming:
your 12-35 2.8 should cover most subjects, so i'd go for something different- smaller, faster, wider/ longer, macro..
what do you shoot? (apart from birds and bouldering vids)
have you searched here? https://www.dxomark.com/lenses/mounted_on-Panasonic_Lumix_DMC-GH3-842/launc...

In reply to The Lemming:

Difficult to answer without knowing what kind of pictures you shoot or want to shoot. For wildlife you want a long lens - 200mm plus. For people portraits something between 70 and 90mm is best. For landscapes a 35mm is a good compromise. I quite like to go out with just a 24mm for landscapes but I never bother trying to get pictures of wildlife, as they just end up a small black dot. If I went to the hills with a 200mm I'd find it had an infuriatingly tight field of view.

So, if you did have a single prime lens, what would you intend to use it for?

Having said all that, in the olden days people would start out with a single "normal" prime lens, which would be 50mm for a 35mm camera. That's how I started and went for several years. I shot landscapes, urban scenes, indoor arty shots around the house, people, flowers. It's a good way to learn all the aspects of photography and how to learn composition and you start to see the world in 50mm terms. You have to accept that it isn't great for some subjects (wildlife, close-ups of climbers in extremis) but you learn to take the pictures that a normal lens suits.

Anthony

In reply to The Lemming:

I've found that I've taken most of my photos either with a 35mm prime, or at about 24mm on an APS-C sensor - 50mm and 35mm on a full frame sensor. If I was going to get one prime, it'd most certainly be either of those, probably the 35mm rather than the 50mm. But it entirely depends on what sort of photography you're interested in; my photography usually either involves opportunistic landscape shots or climbing photos - both of which suit a relatively wide lens.

In reply to The Lemming
I have a good set of primes from my film days and the two that I have used most are a 24mm f2.8 which is super sharp and gives good landscape results - and the 50mm f1.4 which is brilliantly sharp at middle apertures and gives superb low depth of field when it is wide open. Both are a joy to use on my Nikon DSLR. Though neither are digital lenses they communicate well with the D7100.

In reply to The Lemming:

for landscape a 20mm or 24mm prime for landscapes (on and FX camera), I like my 50 mm on my DX as a portrait lens, it is the wide angle prime or lack of for DX that got me thinking about full frame, and the fact the wide angle zooms seem to be better quality at the FX (for nikon and Canon)
enjoy the 12-24,my DX tokina is my most used lens.

In reply to The Lemming:

Voigtlander 17.5mm f0.95

In reply to Toerag:


Totally off topic but I find those abbreviations intensely irritating. I bet you also use 'Connies' for 'Conditions'...

In reply to planetmarshall:

Sorry, I spend too much time on 43rumors.com :-/.