A couple of days ago I wrote about the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit." It was based on some old thinking and the examples of certain famous photographers who started the Magnum news imaging service. That lens kit consisted of a 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm lens.
Some might wonder why I don't just use, oh, let's say, a Sony 16-70mm ZA f/4 OSS on one of the beautifully small and very capable APS-C EVF mirrorless bodies? Why not, indeed. In fact, when traveling and attempting to keep the overall weight of my camera gear to an absolute minimum and to maintain domestic harmony I'll take this lens and put it on a Sony A6000 or NEX7 EVF APS-C and call it "done."
If there ever was one zoom lens to rule them all, it would be this Sony Zeiss. The out of focus rendition is very similar to Nikkor lenses (ie: gloriously smooth behind the point of focus). The Sony Zeiss is very sharp. And there is nearly nothing of that common zoom lens design field curvature that makes the edges go soft when shooting flat 2D subjects. The rendition of this 16-70mm ZA zoom is something to proclaim far and wide. Except...
I love the way fixed focal length lenses render. It's subtle. It's not obvious (I know, I repeat myself, repeatedly). Perhaps it's only me who can claim to pixel-peep "see" any differences, but in general, I love Nikkor optics for the way they capture a scene. They "feel" to me to be a little step above even the Sony Zeiss.
In current times and with the advent of cellphone cameras people have migrated toward using wider angle lenses. I see this even in photographers who shoot their more "serious" works using larger sensored cameras. Wider seems to be "better."
So, in the spirit of keeping up with the times, here is a proposal for a slightly different 3 lens kit. This answers a question of what would happen if we extended the "ends" of the kit just a little bit. What might that look like, while remaining very usable for a wide range(r) of subjects?
On the long end, I propose a slightly longer than 85mm Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm (Xenotar-type) f/2.5 pre-Ai lens. The wide open "character" of the 105mm f/2.5 Nikkors is nothing short of sublime. I'm sure everyone remembers Steve McCurry's famous images made using this focal length lens from Nikon. It seems to have cemented not just his celebrity but the celebrity of the optic, too. Not a bad place to start building this extended range 3 lens kit, then.
In the middle, I put an early Nikon Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 lens. This is filled with "character" when shot wide open. Stopped down a stop or two and lens performance looks remarkably similar to current optics. From this standpoint the 50mm Auto might be seen as an interesting "all around" selection. You can have your "character" and modern rendition out of the same focal length lens.
Moving to the wide end of things, 28mm lenses fall nicely between all too often distorting 24mm optics (similar focal length to cellphone "selfie" lenses) and the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit" 35mm selection. On one hand, 28mm's is definitely wider than 35mm. On the other, 28mm's take a bit more work than 24mm's to make it distort a scene. As a bonus, the 28mm lens I chose has a bit of the wide open aperture "character" that I've come to appreciate from early Nikkor manual focus lenses.
Here it is, a proposal. This lens selection is wider on one end and longer on the other than the "Ultimate 3 Lens Kit" and contains three lenses that I find are filled with "character."
- Nikon Nikkor-N 28mm f/2 pre-Ai (updated with factory Ai aperture ring)
- Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai
- Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai
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