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£500 to spend on a lens.

Klyde said:
Sell the 24mm f2.8d to me for a nice price and invest in a Zeiss manual focus?:)
Click to expand...

I would but I an kinda attached to it, it was my photo a day lens on a D300 last year, it also has some fungus, but that doesn't affect the image.
I have been meaning to strip it down and clean it, or leave it on a sunny windowsill.

I have a spare Sigma 24mm macro it a nice lens this was taken with it.

5th April by Pete Maddex, on Flickr

Pete
 
I would second Chebby's suggestion of going for a premium compact. I've just gone for a Sony RX100 mk 3, (1" sensor) properly pocketable, decent EVF, a great lens and the RAW files are a pleasure to work with. The only drawbacks so far are lack of weather sealing and low light performance, I'm finding anything around ISO 1600 requires a bit of de-noising in Lightroom.

The other side of the coin is the built-in ND filter which helps shooting wide open in bright light, wireless file transfer, and its unobtrusiveness. Taking far more shots than I usually do due to portability, the K-3 spends too much time sitting in its bag as I can't be arsed to take it out for a few random shots. The Sony is 24-70 equivalent.. I usually shoot 21, 40 and 70 limiteds on my Pentax so I'm just about covered by the new wee toy. I follow your pics here Pete, and feel it would suit your style of shooting in a lot of cases.

Having £500 to spend isn't the worst predicament to be in :)
 
IMHO the largest aperture prime lens you can afford would be most useful, as suggested by Mr Cat. So often one runs out of daylight before one runs out of subjects, and turning up the ISO can cause noise.

Why go back to that frustrating, expensive film business ? Although I've always fancied the Hasselblad the Americans left on the moon ...

In 35mm film camera terms, though, since we all have different conversion factors, 35mm focal length is said to be the nearest to our own field of view, but I can sympathise with 85mm too. 50mm was always an unsatisfactory compromise.

My qualification to comment : I used an Olympus OM2n with several OM lenses for 30 years, then tried a compact digital camers (ugh), now have an Olympus E-510 DSLR with entry-level short and long zooms which perform as well as the OM-System lenses.
 
I've just shot the Nikkor 35 1.4 and the Nikkor 24-70 2.8 VR. you may not need the VR version (I fear it's much more than 500 squids), though the 2-70 non-VR should be worthwhile. The 35 1.4 is an awesome tool that sees you shooting 1/8000 /sec when going for big bokeh.
 
Dan,

The 135DC is a good choice but I'm a 105 man, man.

Neither is strictly a portrait lens, but I would bother getting either unless you want to shoot portraits. That's where they shine.

Joe
 
Yep, and looking at the list of lenses Pete has, the Sigma zoom seems the only one over 70mm, so the suggestion for a fast fixed focal length telephoto. Mark LJ got some nice results IIRC (e.g. this landscape http://www.pinkfishmedia.net/forum/showpost.php?p=1814665&postcount=63) . I fear the rest of the focal lengths are already too well covered.

[edit: hmm if the Sigma is f2.8 through the entire range then perhaps the case for the DC is less strong - stick with the festool]
 
Dan M. Nothing wrong with the Makita Plate joiner, I have one its a cracking bit of kit.
Trouble with the Festool Domino is my mate has one that I can borrow, and I also can borrow a both the big and small one from work over the summer, so its not a must have.

I am watching a couple of Sigma Art 35mm f1.4s on Ebay, I did like the 24mm on a D300 I used for my photo a day project, its a nice length on a crop body its 38mm so the sigma 35mm would be similar.



Pete
 
Nikon have really done some good work on their f1.8 range. I have the 20, 28, 50 and 85 which is my full set of primes. The 24 was not out when I bought the 28 otherwise that is what I would have gone for. I do like that focal length for landscapes.

Looking forward to the images Pete.
 
As soon as I get it I will post some pictures, LCE didn't have one in stock so its comming from Nikon, but they do have it at a good price.

Pete
 
Its in my sweaty hands as we speak, and I am off to Tatton Park flower show on Saturday so photos to follow.

Pete
 
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