My first new lens - Baby beercan

[TenD]

Yeah but the DOF has to be incredibly small. The Canon 50 f/1.0L wasn't very well received.

[DonSchap]

Well ... there is a cost to all of it, I suppose. Anyway ... the 50mm and 85mm f/1.2 lenses are the practical versions. Yep, shallow DOF with them, too ... what's a few mm between friends, eh?

ISO and overall sensor-size seems to be the only avenue left for picking up the brightness, without illumination improvements. The next couple of years should deliver some truly impressive noise/image ratios that will allow practical use of ISO-6400 thru 12800. What an impressive technological leap for a handheld camera than from just a few years ago.

[TenD]

Sensor sensitivity and NR are the things that seem to be making the biggest strides in the latest introductions. I for one am very impressed by what my 5D can do with natural light.

[seanhoxx]

Can you imagine ISO 6400-12800 with ONLY the noise we now get at 3200 be pretty amazing, can X-ray imaging be that far behind? What I would love to see is Sony getting the noise cleaned up at higher ISO's but thats another thread we have going.

[DonSchap]

When calculated, a 35mm f/1.2 would be quite useful, still referring to optics. The 35mm f/1.4 G has been around for a long time, relatively. It just seems that they got close, then stopped. Still, it is an expensive little lens.

Back to the Baby Beercan (the center of this thread), I may just resubmit my AF 35-70mm f/4 MACRO to see if they can make any improvements to its focus. It still is not sharp. The TAMRON SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) just seems to be the easier choice for the newer cameras.

[laydros]

When calculated, a 35mm f/1.2 would be quite useful, still referring to optics. The 35mm f/1.4 G has been around for a long time, relatively. It just seems that they got close, then stopped. Still, it is an expensive little lens.

Back to the Baby Beercan (the center of this thread), I may just resubmit my AF 35-70mm f/4 MACRO to see if they can make any improvements to its focus. It still is not sharp. The TAMRON SP AF 28-75mm f/2.8 XR Di LD Aspherical (IF) just seems to be the easier choice for the newer cameras.

Yeah, the real benefit to the Baby Beercan is the fact that it costs the same as about 2 cheap filters. It's been a fun little lens, and turns out to be an ok focal length for taking pictures of people inside. 35mm is wide enough for a small group photo, and 50-70 is great for headshots. Of course, the Tamron 28-75 gets in more light, and a better focal range on both ends, but the 35-70 has turned out to be a fun toy to get me by a little longer.

[Peekayoh]

Not that I'm nitpicking (Oh yes, I am)
But the 35/70 isn't a Baby Beercan.
Metal body - yes / constant f4 zoom - yes / internal zoom and focus - no

[laydros]

Not that I'm nitpicking (Oh yes, I am)
But the 35/70 isn't a Baby Beercan.
Metal body - yes / constant f4 zoom - yes / internal zoom and focus - no

I picked that up from the reviewers at Dyxum, didn't make it up myself.

I think a lot of it came from the fact that it has the constant f/4, and at the time was the kit lens that bumped right into the beercan, the way today Sony has the 18-70 kit that bumps (minus 5mm) right into the 75-300. Also, at least at Dyxum, people had similar feelings about the sharpness between the beercan and the 35-70 f/4.

However, the two lenses probably have pretty much nothing to do with each other as far as Minolta was concerned, and the Baby Beercan moniker is kinda dumb... just like the big beercan nickname.

[DonSchap]

Let's face it ... it would help to be a little tipsy with the results this older 35-70 f/4 lens seems to generate.

I say, "Make mine TAMRON" and see what a $329 - f/2.8 substitute can do for your photography ... and life goes on! Yeah!

[laydros]

I've been looking at lot at walk around replacements after some of the stuff in this thread, and I'm still leaning towards either getting a Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 or 17-50 f/2.8, but I've found the Minolta 24-105 a few places for fairly cheap. Seems like a nice focal range... not as wide as one would really want on APS-C, but ok, and a little slower than the Tamrons, but it sounds like they aren't great wide open... and I am seeing it some places in the $250 range. The reviews on dyxum and for the Sony version on kurtmunger.com are pretty good. Any input on that one, especially compared to the Tamron f/2.8s?

I guess my thinking is that if I only spent $250, then I can work on picking up a couple of primes to supplement the walk around.

The problem with the Tamrons is the range. The 17-50 is kinda short, 28-75 is kinda long. Sony's 16-80 seems perfect, but it's quite a bit of money, so I'm just weighing options.