Hi! Recently I met a person who uses EOS 20D and couple of L lenses - 17-40/4 and 70-200/4 both being L lenses.
We looked at each other's photos and I was very impressed with the way the L lenses produce very plastic, very 3D images. He on the other hand pointed out that few of my works were very good while actually spoiled by rather poor optics that I have. Notably, of course, he was "attacking" my FA 28-70/4 and F 70-210 zooms. Indeed, a cheap $100 zoom cannot really compete with $750 monsters from Canon :). However, this made me concerned, in a sense that it could be some other of my lenses are not on par with modern quality. This guy also mentioned that to him I appeared as if having outgrown most of my gear, so that now my lenses were bottleneck in my further deveplopment as a photog... Although flattered by this comment, I am very unamused. I went to pbase.com and looked up some considerable number of shots made by Pentax gear. I saw rather bad shots made with Limited lenses as well as some excellent shots too. I do admit that I am after plasticity of my lenses. It is what makes the picture look really good. So here are the lenses I find questionable: K 24/2.8 M 35/2.8 Takumar Bayonet 135/2.5 Of course two zooms: 28-70/4 and 70-210/4-5.6 I am unsure about that Sigma 18/3.5 that I recently bought. The lenses I am sure are excellent are: FA 50/1.7 M 50/1.4 F 85/2.8 soft (truly unique) Tamron 90/2.5 SP (thanks Joe Wilensky!) I don't seem to have anything left unmentioned. I have some particular questions to add to this little rant: 1. Is there any of the "questionable" lenses above that are actually very good? 2. What things I should be aware of to improve plasticity of my images? 3. If I indeed have to replace all/some of those "questionable" lenses, what would you recommend? My plan was to stop my enablement and do some extensive shooting. It seems it is falling apart somehow... -- Boris
