Gear Talk (1 Viewer)

[RSJ]

A thread for talking about equipment and such. I'll start by pasting from another thread. Looking at buying this. Last few times i've been out and about with my camera on holiday, been very frustrated with my lenses (mostly wide), looking for a good wide(ish) to tele zoom and this one has fairly good reviews, especially compared with the Nikon which is about 2.5 times the price and supposedly not worth it. I already have a tamron 17-35 which i use most of the time, are other tamron's good?

 

[magicbastarder]

i've always steered away from zooms whenever possible - not really the optical quality, which i understand has been catching up with primes, but i much prefer having the wider max apertures available with primes, not just for low light, but for the shallower depth of field.
anyway, i'd be suspicious of a zoom offering an 11x zoom factor; it won't be as good optically as a standard zoom and a medium telephoto one. possibly the convenience factor will outweigh that for you though.

 

[mr pharmacist!!!!1]

i agree with magicbastarder...

go for a 50mm 1.8 (around 250) or if you're feeling particularly saucy the 1.4 (around 400)

you've so much more scope for your photos with the added f stops and if you want to zoom.. just use your feet and get closer.

god that sounded really cheesey!

 

[ICUH8N]

^^ Seconded. Fast 50s and 28s = best

 

[RSJ]

Ah yeah, i already have a Nikkor 50mm and a Sigma 28mm 1.8, the reason i only mentioned the tamrom was in context of the lens i'm looking at being a tamron. And yes, fast lenses are deadly, i'm just looking for a good long lens.

 

[magicbastarder]

i've used MF tamrons and have never been able to fault them - picked up a pristine tamron SP 350mm f5.6 mirror in town a while back for 80 bob. i don't think it had ever been used. anyway, it's very well built.

 

[RSJ]

Off the subject of lenses, anyone got a reccomendation for a cheap film camera to build around? Was tempted to get a Nikon F100 to share lenses, but it's about e350 for the body alone. JRaz was suggesting a pentax m - incredibly stupid question but is that a specific camera or a family? First camera i had was a Pentax MZ-M, and i could get it back, worth doing so?

 

[magicbastarder]

you can't go wrong with an olympus OM1 - interestingly, they seem to be holding their value. bought one (a 1n - a minor revision, probably more common) recently myself; i already have a couple of olympus bodies. you should be able to pick one up, with 50mm f1.8, for €200-€250. they're a superb camera.

 

[JohnnyRaz]

Off the subject of lenses, anyone got a reccomendation for a cheap film camera to build around? Was tempted to get a Nikon F100 to share lenses, but it's about e350 for the body alone. JRaz was suggesting a pentax m - incredibly stupid question but is that a specific camera or a family? First camera i had was a Pentax MZ-M, and i could get it back, worth doing so?

it was a pentax km actually, the lens are smc pentax-m. The k-series was amde in the mid 70s, k1000, km, and kx. KM is a k1000 with dof preview and self timer and the kx is the most advanced model; all good solid basic manual camera with which there is little that can go wrong that a 60E service wont put right. Pentax also made m-series camera in the 70s, of which the mx is a fully manual/mechanical compact slr with load of features and is really tiny.
a mz-m is basically a more modern(90s?) model with automatic features.
all being k-mount cameras they share the feature that you can use any k-mount lens made in the past 30 years, which give you a lot of scope for building up a kit, and some the pentax lens are pretty good value for the price