If there’s anything constant in photography circles over the decades, it’s the universal contempt for the “kit lenses”, basically the standard zooms that come with the camera. They are criticised for being plasticky, poorly made, having terrible variance between samples due to poor manufacturing, unsharp, having lots of vignetting, chromatic aberrations, being too slow, and so on.

The additional problem is that when you try to look for samples of photos made with such lenses, you are invariably showered by terrible snapshots made by people who are very unskilled at photography, and usually quite new to it, so they don’t know what they’re doing. The images produced are thus universally terrible. This creates some kind of confirmation bias – yeah, the lens is terrible, what do you expect from a kit lens, just get a proper one if you want your photos not to look like those beginner snapshots.

I must admit that I once believed something similar, and had an aversion to kit lenses, especially since my favourite kind of photography was to use shallow depth of field to isolate the subject, and kit lenses are generally quite slow – often f/5.6 at the long end – and they also often perform poorly wide open, at least that’s what I saw from the samples online. Sure, I used a Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5 lens when shooting film, and I thought it was a very good lens, but this one seemed to be quite highly esteemed online, since Minolta produced lenses for Leica R system, this one being also produced as Leica Vario Elmar R 35-70mm f/3.5. The fact that it behaved well was thus unsurprising – it is a Leica design executed by Minolta, after all.

The second “kit lens” I had direct experience with was the Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, and it was excellent. If anything, it was even better than the Minolta; quite a stellar piece of optical design, with only a few minor drawbacks, such as the onion-circle bokeh and some green chromatic aberration on contrasty areas when shot into the light. Since this lens was only a “kit lens” because it was sold in a kit with Olympus E-1 professional camera, and was otherwise known as a optically superb piece of gear, this was also not unexpected, and my experience with “kit lenses” remained great.

I had no reason to doubt my understanding of kit lenses until I got to test the Olympus E-500 camera with its ZD 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. While was not as good for closeups as my ZD 14-54mm, it was otherwise almost identical. The colors were clear, sharpness was excellent, and other than the cost cutting being visible from the cheaper materials, optically speaking this lens was great, and especially great for the money.

I was pretty shocked, but shrugged my findings off – it was Olympus, after all; they are known for making excellent lenses, and even their cheap plasticky kit lens must be superior to those of other manufacturers. After all, they don’t produce them by the boatload like Canon for their entry-level cameras.

By that point, however, a conclusion was starting to form, because I made quite a bit of poor images with good lenses when I didn’t know what I was doing, and I also made quite a bit of good images with stuff that would be deemed “entry-level”, but the true shock happened when I bought a Canon 5d, the camera with the best and sharpest sensor at the time, and just for shits and giggles I bought a used EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 lens for 40 EUR or so. It was very old (made in 1987 as a kit zoom for the EOS 650, the first one Canon made for the lineup) and very heavily used, also obviously very plasticky. I quite rightfully expected it to perform terribly, especially on a high-resolving sensor of the 5d. I took it one day for a walk to take pictures of my kid.  I quite expected the results to be fuzzy, resolving less detail than my 5MP Olympus kit, because, after all, the Olympus lens was very sharp; I even called it “the shit lens” before even trying it out.

What I was shocked to see is one of the most highly detailed, crisp-sharp portraits I have ever seen, anywhere, by anyone with any kind of equipment, period. (note: the illustrations here are not representative of the actual raw files due to compression and reduced file sizes)

This is not shot from a tripod, stopped down, or in any other way cooked up to make the lens perform well. I basically opened it up, extended it to 70mm, put the ISO at 400 because the light was dim, focused on the eye and took several pictures. The shocking part happened at home, when I opened the files in the raw converter and saw the detail on the zipper, eyelashes and the fabric of the cap. I quite literally never saw anything this sharp, and I already tested the EF 85mm f/1.8. Far from being a plasticky thingy that would do a disservice to the mighty 5d, I could actually bet that it outresolved the sensor by quite a margin.

Still in shock, I went online to see if I can find any reviews of this lens, and of course, it was universally poorly regarded – low resolution, CA, vignetting, all kinds of blah. It was actually so poorly regarded that very few deigned it worthy of even reviewing it.

And so, I went on to use this “shit lens”, as I continued to call it, in part due to its plasticky design, but now mostly in mockery of the online photographic community, and took some of the sharpest, most colorful and atmospheric images I ever made. It was my favourite landscape lens on the 5d, because of both its range and the incredible color and details it resolved. Sure, it has very nasty flare and bokeh is quite harsh at portrait distances, so I had to keep it within the range of parameters it liked, but when I did, it was absolutely stellar.

There was a conclusion that brewed in my mind, and at some point it came out: “hey wait, those people online are actually completely full of shit”. The fact is, you can make any lens look bad. All lenses can take shitty pictures. However, it’s not actually hard to get even the cheapest lenses to take great pictures. Also, the myths about “sample variance” are also likely caused by very inexpert use.

At some point I decided to test my hypothesis. I went online to check which camera-lens combo was the least well regarded and considered unworthy of even an amateur who wants his pictures to look decent. The consensus seemed to be the Olympus Pen E-PL1 with its kit lens, the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6. The camera had “high noise” and the lens had the plastic mount, collapsible ultra-cheap plasticky design, poor aperture and range, and low resolution, according to the tests. So of course I proceeded to take some of the sharpest 12MP nature shots with it, rivalling the 5d.

To add insult to injury, that lens also had excellent closeup capability, which made it incredibly versatile for almost-macro shots:What about the high noise on the sensor? Well, yes, the sensor is very noisy at ISO 1600 and above, and I don’t recommend using it at those settings. However, there’s something else that I noticed in the dpreview lab test: the on-sensor CMOS noise reduction is very conservative, meaning that it doesn’t aggressively de-noise the RAW files; essentially, it doesn’t remove chroma noise by desaturating the files and killing all the color. As a result, the colors this sensor produces are deep, “meaty” and quite suitable for my kind of nature photography. The sensor is also very sharp and detailed. As a result, something that looks like a toy and is routinely dismissed by the “discerning”, “advanced” users is actually a great camera.

“I can’t see anything on this display, this is terrible.”

Sure, it has flaws – no viewfinder, which means you can’t see shit in bright light, which is when I used it the most. Slow electronics. Display with very poor outdoor visibility. Terrible ergonomics worthy of Sony. All in all, the stuff that doesn’t contribute to image quality, but does contribute to your ability to actually use the camera to take pictures. So, I retired it, and, having proved my point about kit lenses and entry level cameras, bought Sony A7II full frame mirrorless camera with the FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, which, you guessed it, is universally poorly regarded online, and proceeded to use it to shoot the most detailed, colorful landscape shots I have ever made.

The lens itself, of course, is excellent. Colors are excellent, contrast is excellent, sharpness is excellent, and any defects are minor. Is it a perfect lens? Of course not. It’s quite slow, and has poor close focusing distance, making it quite poorly suited for closeups and portraits. It is, however, a stellar performer for landscape photography and for portraits in context. But if you’re ever seen with one in public, your reputation as a photographer will never recover. 🙂

As a conclusion, people are full of shit.

I was wondering – do I have favourite cameras and lenses? Is there a particular reason why I’m using the equipment I’m using? Why am I using 35mm and not four thirds or medium format?

Certainly, equipment I used to take my favourite images would be expected to score more highly, but surprisingly it doesn’t. It’s quite weird now that I think about it, but I don’t get sentimentally attached to gear. So, the question of sentimental attachment is very easily answered; I like using stuff that produces the results I like, and does it effortlessly, but I will replace cameras and lenses without much thought if something better comes along.

As for the format, I guess I ended up using the format that required the least justifications to keep using, because it just had all the lenses I wanted, I could produce the kind of pictures that I wanted to produce, it was not too expensive to get all the gear I wanted, and the stuff was not too heavy. Basically, when 35mm digital cameras became affordable, that solved my problem. Sure, I did think about going with 4/3, but it always turned out that the lenses that would work for me would be too heavy and expensive in order to compensate for the small sensor, dark tonality doesn’t work as well as it does at 35mm and that’s one of my favourites, it’s more difficult to control the depth of field, and so on. Too many things to fuss over, and no need since 35mm solves all those problems. I thought about the medium format as well, but here the system gets too heavy very quickly, and the lens choices are far too limited. Also, it tends to be very expensive, and the benefits are very small; mostly resolution and dynamic range, which are plentiful already at the 35mm, so I didn’t see it as an upgrade, but rather a system for somebody else. I wanted something that can be used to photograph a bug or a flower one moment, and transition to a portrait or a landscape shot instantly, something that could do the stuff that I want to do, rather than me having to adjust to the limitations of the gear. Also, I dislike super expensive stuff, at least unless there’s no other way to get the results I want. I would always take a smaller, lighter lens/camera that is 5% less capable than the multiple times heavier, bigger and more expensive monstrosity. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to make great sacrifices in image quality; it’s just that image quality can be easily obtained using non-extreme means. This meant that Hasselblad and Phase One were out of the question, but I also gave up on the 4/3 as well, since it tended to require extreme lenses in order to compensate for the sensor size, and my calculations showed that the system as a whole was in fact anything but small and light, when I consider the exact equipment choices I would have to make. 35mm felt “right”, I could do everything I wanted, so I stopped fussing about gear for quite a long time, but Canon 35mm was still bigger than a 35mm system had to be, which I knew from my experience with Minolta film gear. When Sony started making small and light 35mm cameras with image stabilisation, that solved multiple issues for me. Sure, they do make some huge monstrosity lenses, but fortunately I don’t have to buy them, because there are lighter, smaller and less expensive alternatives that sacrifice some of the ultimate image quality for portability and affordability. I’m into photography because I like producing photographic art, not because I want to enrol into a competition of who can spend more money on gear. Thanks, but I prefer having money. 🙂 Something really needs to entice me with the offer of photographic abilities that I don’t currently possess, for instance I can no longer make this:

I took it with a huge, very expensive telephoto of stellar image quality that I had for review, and I currently don’t have anything resembling a properly long telephoto; the longest one I have is a 90mm macro. I have been taking almost exclusively normal and wide-angle shots for years. I can’t even take this anymore:

It was taken with a borrowed Nikon APS camera with a 70-300mm telephoto, which means I would need a 100-400mm on 35mm in order to replicate this capability. The problem with such a telephoto is that it is very expensive, and very heavy to carry around during my regular walks, but I keep seeing shots that would be perfect for such a lens, if I had it. In any case, the big telephoto is always on the bottom of every list of necessary hardware acquisitions, simply because it combines heavy, expensive and rarely used, which is my least favourite combination. It does, however, also combine the ability to take an interesting detail out of otherwise uninteresting scenery, with the ability to cut depth of field at a distance, which are among my favourite combinations. We’ll see. 🙂

I do, however, have the ability to do the same thing in the world of tiny things:

Yeah, I’m trying to convince myself I don’t need it too hard, which means I’ll probably just buy it. 🙂

Recently Biljana and I went out in the evening to get some practice with our new equipment, and for the most part all the pictures we’ve taken were shit, until it was so late in the evening that the light started fading fast, to the point where we barely saw where we’re going anymore. At that point, the smoke in the air, sunset and the blue hour combined, and since Biljana’s Canon could pull off ISO 12800, and my Sony could pull off ISO 6400, not to mention IS, we could hand-hold stuff that would usually require a tripod, but I’m sure I couldn’t take those pictures with a tripod, because they were too interactive and happened in the moment; basically, she used her 105mm Sigma macro lens as a short telephoto to pick out details from afar, while I used the 16-35mm wideangle to get the wider context. Essentially, she took pictures and I took pictures of her taking the pictures, including what she was shooting, but in context.

This is her picture of the town fort/church, where people used to take refuge when attack was signalled from the watch tower with the view of the point at sea from which threats loomed.

This is my picture with the wide angle, of her in the foreground and the fort in the background.

This is Biljana’s second shot, toward the town centre, with the boat in the foreground and the bridge in the top left, balancing the diagonal. The color palette she chose very much resembles the Fuji Astia/Sensia low saturation slide film, similarly contrasty but with much more shadow detail, because slide film is just dead there. It also somewhat resembles Kodak Portra low-contrast negative film, but exposed on the low side. The low contrast accentuates the serenity of the scene, the calm before the night.

This is my version – Biljana in the foreground, checking the photo she had just taken on the screen, with the scene in the background. I chose a different color palette – where she went for the subtlety of low-contrast and low-saturation, I did the opposite, cutting into the dark tones and making them bleed ink.

I don’t know whether there are any conclusions to be taken from this exercise, but I thought it’s interesting how differently we captured the same scene; she went for the telephoto while I went for the wideangle, and despite the fact that those two cameras can render color and detail almost identically, we went for completely different palettes and looks in the end.

I frequently hear this statement and I feel it’s both right and wrong at the same time, but I couldn’t formulate a simple answer; until now.

I recently commented that I heard Ray Chen play multiple violins, from cheap garbage to Stradivari and Guarnieri. He himself as well as other violinists could notice all kinds of differences, but to me, he always sounded like Ray Chen. I think that’s the meaning of the “gear doesn’t matter” statement. Of course it matters, because a violinist needs a violin in order to make music. A writer needs something to write with. A photographer needs a camera. However, If I use a camera to take pictures, and the camera in question meets the minimal technical requirements, the result will look like me. This means that no kind of gear can make my photos overcome my limitations, or turn my style into something else. If it doesn’t meet the technical requirements, it can degrade the results to the point where that’s not it any more, however, and that’s another limit of the “gear doesn’t matter” statement. It doesn’t matter as long as it’s above a certain minimum – basically, something needs to meet the minimal definition of a violin in order for a violinist to be able to work with it. The next threshold is that something should be a “good enough” instrument, and that’s a more sophisticated requirement, and more prone to nitpicking, but I know it when I see it – basically, it’s something that an artist can take and produce the kind of results where I can no longer notice a difference between the instruments.

You can’t tell which computer I used to write this article, and the reason is obvious: as long as it can connect to the Internet, open the WordPress admin interface and support the recent enough web browser in order to operate it, they will all produce the same results. With cameras, it’s not as straightforward, but as long as the cameras are similar enough, I can take anything that’s readily available and work with it; for instance, I took this with my friend’s Nikon, because it had a telephoto lens on it and it was on the table at the moment:

It has nothing on it that would make it identifiable as a Nikon photo, but it looks like my typical stuff, regardless of the fact that I don’t have another exactly like it. It’s motive in context, both joined and separated, and the focus of attention:

This is film, Minolta camera and a MD 35-70mm f/3.5 lens. The equipment is very different, the motive is very different, but the style is the same.

This is taken with Sony A7II 35mm digital camera and a Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L lens, on tripod; the equipment is very different, the motive and the context more different still, but the style is the same: something, in context, both joined and separated, with attention pointing to it, making you feel what it’s like to be there in that moment. The subject is isolated not with the depth of field, but with 3d composition.

So, not only does the gear “not matter”, but so is the case with the motive, as well. The style and the intent of the author transcends both, and can translate between photographic techniques, as well. What if there’s no ability to use depth of field to isolate the motive? You can use geometry, or fog:

Yet  again, different camera – Sony R1. The motive, the camera, the way motive is isolated from the context and you are put in its place and in the moment, is improvised, but the style is still recognizeable.

What if everything is sharp? No problem:

Again, different equipment: Canon 5d, EF 15mm f/2.8 fisheye, long exposure of the storm cloud from a tripod. The lighthing itself both creates the subject and puts it in focus. The equipment is again different from before, the motive is different, the technique itself is different, yet the style remains.

Yes, in all cases the equipment is different and often improvised, the way the circumstances of the photo are different and improvised, and “don’t matter”, but on the other hand, everything absolutely matters. It matters that the lens is sharp and has great bokeh and ability to control the depth of field; it matters that the tripod is sturdy, it matters that the sensor or film has great colors, and it matters that the equipment is easy to use. To say that it doesn’t matter means that your style and artistic “fingerprint” persist both across equipment choices, motives and even photographic methods – from extreme wide angle to macro and telephoto, hand-held or on the tripod, shooting bugs, people or landscape. Equipment is here to allow you to express yourself, and the end result is limited by both you and the equipment used; if the equipment is any good, then mostly by you.