f/2.8 vs f/4.0 Lenses #132

Street Photography: f/2.8 vs f/4.0 Lenses #132

This pod is for Trish in Brooklyn. Everyone who is a photo snob, and that includes me, thinks it's best to only own f2.8 or faster lenses. Anything other than that is just crap. You are losing too much light, and you are getting poor quality glass, and you certainly shouldn't own anything that's slower. Yep, we think it, and most of us even say it out loud too. But now that I'm older and more experienced, and I did not say wiser, I said more experienced. I'm starting to rethink my position. Is it true that faster lenses are better? Generally speaking, yes. As photographers, we are always looking for more light. And the fact is faster lenses deliver sharper glass and they obviously gather more light. So why am I softening my position on F 2.8 lenses being the end all and be all of lenses? The first couple of reasons is because of the way we view images. And because glass quality has come up so much over the past 10 years, it's difficult to tell the difference between f2.8 and f4.0 lenses. What do I mean when I say by the way we view images? Fundamentally, these days, we are viewing images via a screen and not via a print. And screens don't hold the same high resolutions that prints do, making it difficult to see subtle quality differences. And even if you are producing a high-quality print, It's still difficult to detect the difference without a side-by-side comparison. And even then, I have come to find that unless you are looking at the images with a magnifying glass, it's difficult to detect differences because even the glass quality of amateur rated lenses is so much better now. In the past, you could actually see the poor glass quality right through the viewfinder. That's rarely the case anymore. I have seen some of these lenses but I'm talking about really cheap lenses. And you can certainly not tell the difference with the naked eye between an F2.8 and an F4.0 lens. Another thing that has happened in the last five years is the sensor resolution has improved significantly, such that even images at higher ISOs are incredibly sharp. Because we are becoming less and less concerned about shooting at higher ISOs, it's making it more reasonable to consider the loss of light with a slower lens. The fact is that I purchased my first slow f4.0 lens about 10 years ago, and honestly I haven't felt the pain, and it's my main lens. Another reason I have softened on the idea of shooting a 4.0 lens is because they are lighter and more compact. After 25 years of shooting and sometimes dragging two camera bodies around the world, I've become tired of carrying so much weight. I've not gone to a crop sensor yet. But I'm sure that's in my future too. So if you're young and you have a strong back, I say take the F 2.8 lens. If not, don't worry about it. The F4 will only hurt your ego, not your photography. I'll be talking about other lens features you'll want to consider when choosing a lens over the next few podcasts. So stay tuned. I hope that was helpful. Until next time, keep on shooting.