The Break of Dawn
Keeping Things Simple–
There are so many reasons why people should be careful with firecrackers and pyrotechnics but the reason Filipinos are exposed to is the one that says you should try to keep your limbs. It does get a bit tiresome to be always seeing people with whacked off digits or some bigger part of their anatomy but people still like getting so close to the action, so to speak. Hopefully, this may help sweeten the pot towards being extra careful: Losing fingers may just hamper your ability to control all the functions of your camera. These controls are usually designed with the thought that people who use camera bodies, lenses, flashes, etc., have all five fingers on the right hand and an equal number on the left. Yes, you can get by with maybe just four or even three but holding heavy combos comprised of bodies, lenses and a flash may just not be balanced anymore.
Back to regular programming!
Erick Lirios
It’s happened again: I’ve just been asked for recommendations for lenses. The good thing is, the woman who asked did it very intelligently, describing what she wanted to shoot. One of the major considerations when buying stuff is the budget. What she said there was simple: That can be saved up for. If you know that something will be able to do good stuff for you, then it’s worth saving up for. No real point in just buying what you can buy at the moment.
Okay, that may be a bit of a sweeping statement but consider that if you buy something, make sure that it at least lets you do what you need for it to do within tolerable parameters, keeping things going until you are able to buy the lens or flash that you really want.
For example, you may be offered a very good deal on, say a 75-300 lens. This is a popular range allowing shooters the reach for subjects too far away. Professional lenses in this range are just too big, bulky and budget busting. Some, like me, would have this for some years, letting it handle tasks that it’s built for until such time that a better lens can really be available. When did I let it go? Only after I bought a 70-200 f/2.8L. Yes, it’s a shorter lens but at the time, the 300mm range wasn’t something that important – speed and sharpness were. It isn’t even to say that cheaper lenses are always slow and/or less sharp. One of the best candid portraits I ever took was done using the 75-300 USM. Auto focus speeds won’t compare with Nikon ED or Canon L lenses though. Such speeds are part of the benefit of getting the best lenses.
What about the third party lenses? Are they worth getting? Yes, they are but it depends on some things. One of the irritations of a third world country, aside from politicians who say they’re after the good of the country and its people when all they really want is to ensure the longer reign of their political families and the oligarchy in general and the preservation of their land, is the lack of total technical support for many things.
Nikon users, for example, have been lamenting the fact that they don’t get the good product support they expect. Things are improving, but they are far from the satisfaction levels that Nikon users in other countries are used to. Canon users have it better. If you need product support especially in crucial stages of work, Canon seems to have things quite right. Sony, owing to its long support of its video camera line-up has so many service centers that it’s not at all scary to cast your lot with them.
Things get a bit murky though when you start buying other brands. If truth be told, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Vivitar, and others make very good products but the usual concern is where to get things fixed if something goes wrong. Sigma has enjoyed a very good reception in the Philippines because there is an authorized dealer and, though there are just a couple of branches, they do offer Sigma-specific service. That doesn’t exist with Tamron and Tokina though their lenses are excellent.
One complaint is that they don’t normally last long. Maybe so but it may also be worth considering that the “equivalent” lenses may just be half or even a third of the price of the comparative Canon or Nikon. Why is “equivalent” in quotes? For example, the 24-70 f/2.8 standard zoom is the one of the most revered and sought after lenses by Canon and Nikon users. They are excellently built, extremely sharp, fast focusing and very quiet. So will a lens with the same 24-70 f/2.8 or something similar just be cheaper? Not necessarily. While we in Picture Perfect do not have the capability of testing actual lens sharpness, some American publications like Popular Photography or websites like photozone.de or dpreview.com do and when you are able to decipher the graphs, that’s when things get clearer. (Pardon the pun.) Yes, the specs may seem the same, but the sharpness may not be. Another thing, again, is the build quality. One professional said once that during a wedding shoot, his 24-70 just stopped working. Was it a Canon or Nikon? Nope.
That isn’t to say either that the major brands’ lenses don’t fail or are always better. That’s why it pays to check sharpness graphs and ask people who’ve used the stuff you do want to buy. Then they can tell you if the lens or flash not only does what it says it does but if it will continue to do it after years and years of use. One professional from New York I had the privilege of shooting beside once was using a Canon 28-70 f/2.8L. This is an older lens than the 24-70 but was the bread and butter lens during the film days and early in the digital age. There was black electric tape over the hole where the AF-MF switch used to be. The auto focus switch was gone but why still stay with it? The switch aside, it was still an excellent lens and since Canon allows users to operate their focus rings even when in AF mode, there really wasn’t any problem.
Photoworld Manila is coming, everybody, so better prepare your wallets and make sure you buy good stuff. Again, more on this next week.
