lenses, the good, bad & ugly

[spectric]

Hi all

So who rates what brand of lenses ? I am not thinking of the Nikon / Cannon debate but more along the lines of
Ok so should one use Nikkor lens on a Nikon DSLR, or Cannon lens on a Cannon DSLR or how good are the other manufacturers lens. I have heard Tokina & Tamron are supposed to be highly rated, Sigma as well but they don't last as long.

So lets have your opinions,

thanks Roy

[cemtex]

off brands are not as good as from the manufacturer themselves, even though its common and quite hated among older enthusiasts that everything is outsourced and built by other companies now a days.

They also say that todays lenses have no life to them, they are wrong....I feel that only the early lenses as well as the low end EF-S lenses are not worth using after a couple of years. I just been to a camera show with all older stuff. I saw very early EF lenses and putting them on my 10D caused crashes as well as little to no function (these are canon lenses may I add). A couple of the kept ones worked fine, but the bundle lens I stuck on never worked...and crashed my camera almost 100%

I decided to truly go vintage. I bought on Ebay the nikon F adapter for my 10D, I wanna try my moms super smooth nikon F 28-200.

so you get what you pay for....off brands may shoot allright, but they are not built well and have glare.

[D70FAN]

off brands are not as good as from the manufacturer themselves, even though its common and quite hated among older enthusiasts that everything is outsourced and built by other companies now a days.

They also say that todays lenses have no life to them, they are wrong....I feel that only the early lenses as well as the low end EF-S lenses are not worth using after a couple of years. I just been to a camera show with all older stuff. I saw very early EF lenses and putting them on my 10D caused crashes as well as little to no function (these are canon lenses may I add). A couple of the kept ones worked fine, but the bundle lens I stuck on never worked...and crashed my camera almost 100%

I decided to truly go vintage. I bought on Ebay the nikon F adapter for my 10D, I wanna try my moms super smooth nikon F 28-200.

so you get what you pay for....off brands may shoot allright, but they are not built well and have glare.

I am speechless. You might consider editing this response, or better yet just read it through. There are some pretty sweeping statements at the end that I personally think are in error.

Would you mind offering the names of "off brands" "that are not built well and have glare", so we can avoid them?

Thanks.

[Cold Snail]

I picked up a Sigma 70-300 f4-5.6 APO lens a few weeks ago for my digital/film combo and am impressed enough with the quality for the price.
The auto focusing is quite noisy, but overall it's a good lens over the full frame.

Try PhotoSIG (http://www.photosig.com/go/photos/browsecategories?typeId=7) to browse at how lenses perform. (You will need to register and some of the pictures there WILL NOT be suitable if kids are around.)

Happy hunting.

Paul.

[cemtex]

I am speechless. You might consider editing this response, or better yet just read it through. There are some pretty sweeping statements at the end that I personally think are in error.

Would you mind offering the names of "off brands" "that are not built well and have glare", so we can avoid them?

Thanks.

off brands would be something like vivitar, sigma, or any of those russian varients I have seen as well. Thier glass is ok, but has glare and does not wanna focus sometimes (I go manual now a days so its no bother). I know it is not an issue with my camera because if I put on a new canon lens (as I have said I have access to a couple at will) they perform beyond my wildest dreams, even better then the D70's focusing (from personal expierence, not reviews).

I say buy a vivitar as your first lens, it does not cover as much but for its price its still sharp and can go 30-50 somthing in 35mm equiv. If you buy a canon ASAP get some lens adapters to use older lenses from pentax and nikon, they are a million times more durable and are easily had for cheap prices.

to give an idea of what you can yield from a off brand lens, I just (as in less then 30 minutes ago) created this picture of my beater camera with a vivitar 1 lens cranked at 35mm (50something in digital equiv.). Mirror lock with a 3 second delay, 1/3 a second with an apeture of 6.3. Only thing in photoshop was process the RAW file with full sharpening and addition of some warmth and shadow, and then a little color balance to finish it, crop and shrink.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v51/AaronA/SD10.jpg

[Ant]

Wow. I guess I must have been imagining the fast accurate focus and total lack of glare on my Sigma 50-500mm EX lens then.

[cemtex]

Wow. I guess I must have been imagining the fast accurate focus and total lack of glare on my Sigma 50-500mm EX lens then.

glare is less a problem on telephoto, gets bigger on wide angle. My lens has a nice curve to it, and goes to about 30.5MM, and I notice some nasty glare if I stray too close to the sun...

After seeing pictures from this one place

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/lenses/14-vs-16.shtml

I completely did not want anything sigma near me, in some of those pictures the quality is worse then that of my little SD10, and this coming from the same kind of body as my camera (he used a D30, I use a 10D).

I dont know what telephoto is like, personally I never find much use for going out farther then 200mm. when I get the money I might drop the couple hundred and get a canon 28-135 IS, it shoots real good and its focus is fast as could be, that would be the longest zoom I will want.

[Ant]

LOL. You're using that test as a comparison. The canon lens in that test is almost twice the price of the Sigma....It damn well better be a better lens.

I'm sure I could compare a fairly cheap Canon lens with a double the price Sigma lens and come to the conclusion that I'd never touch a Canon. ;)

It's also worth noting that that particular person was very happy with that lens until: a) he tried it on a full frame camera, and b) he compared it to a lens twice as expensive.