Ever since the Nikon D700 was introduced, there have been a deluge of messages in the dpreview.com Nikon Lens Forum to this effect:
I am going to buy a Nikon D700 soon. Please help me choose some lenses. I shoot things from 10mm to 600mm. My primary interests are candids, architecture, landscapes, people, events, sports, products, insects, and pretty much everything. What are the best lenses for the job? Oh, and I don’t want the Nikon 14-24 or the 24-70 lenses so suggest something else.
What I find remarkable about such posts, aside from the fact that the person is willing to fork out $3000 on a camera body with an apparent total lack of knowledge about camera lenses, is the fact that these people are so lazy. To begin with, they’re naiive to even think that they can get a straight-up answer to begin with. But the least they could do is spend a little bit of time Googling on prospective lenses to survey what’s out there. As if having Google in your life didn’t make things easy enough! I remember the days when my father wanted to buy new car. We went to the library (yes, a physical building) where he would pore over the Consumer’s Reports to help him decide what car to buy. It seems that “knowledge” today—regardless of the quality of it—is simply too easy to come by now with the Internet and people have become lazy to the point of even doing cursory amounts of research.
On the flip side, there are those who seem to think that using sub-$1000 lenses on the D700 is doing some sort of injustice to the D700. It certainly does seem, to me at least, rather silly for people to put on crappy 18-55 and 55-200 lenses on a D700 but I don’t agree with all the posters who seem to think that the D700 should only be mated with the 14-24, 24-70, and 70-200 and that everything else is unworthy. As far as I’m concerned, with my recent experience with the Tamron 28-75, I don’t think things are as clear-cut. There seems to be enough sample variation across all lense manufacturers—even Canon and Nikon—that I think it’s hard to ever conclusively say that Canon and Nikon will be better than other manufacturers all the time across all samples, at least from the optical perspective. If build quality is a key issue, then, of course, the Canon and Nikon pro lenses are vastly superior. But for 99% of the population, this isn’t the case. So many photographers have constantly reiterated the fact that “your equipment is good enough.” It would seem to me as though many have gotten caught up in the technical hoopla and have forgotten what photography is really all about.
Incidentally, I’ve had a chance to shoot with the Tamron 28-75 a little more recently and I have to say that it appears to be, optically, a nice lense. Even wide open, I find that the images are as sharp as what I got out of the Nikon 17-55. It’s difficult to comment on colour rendering and contrast since I can’t compare them side by side anymore. However, my view, these days, most photos are so grossly processed anyway (a rant for another day), colour is not a paramount issue.
I think its the wording of the question that’s the problem. I can understand someone getting a new camera and wanting suggestions for lenses you never know someone might come up with something you hadn’t thought\heard of. It also bugs me that after all that “helpful” advice they hardly ever tell you what they decided to do and why.
I do find some of the answers amusing don’t buy the 100-340 ‘cos the 11-22 is sharper. On what planet do you care if a telephoto is better then a wide angle. Do I take that tiger portrait 6 inches from is nose on 15mm or sitting in the land rover 30 feet away I wonder.
Regards
Richard
You are right, of course. There is no shame in asking for opinions on viable lense options. But the questions that are posed leave so much latitude that there really isn’t any way for people to give constructive advice. And as you’ve pointed out, some of the responses are equally ridiculous. The specific application obviously dictates what lenses make reasonable sense. Clearly, in example post I gave, the user has already discounted the two lenses that are clearly deemed to be “Best in Class.” It seems to me that this particular user has budgetary limitations—which should have been mentioned from the get go.