For me it's the 135GM as I can do head shots, full body portraits, swimsuits on the beach, outdoor tennis (in secondary courts, not stadium) and indoor volleyball. And that is using my A6700. Now I am getting the A7V so I am looking forward to this field of view.
austinschutz wrote:
The 180/4 is one of my all time favorites. Prices seem to be somewhat sane again. I had to sell my in graduate school for rent, but it is on the list to reacquire this summer as a birthday gift for myself.
That's very interesting: They made so few of these lenses (supposedly about 700 in F-mount), but I guess a slow 180mm MF lens isn't particularly "cool" these days. Don't do what I did and hold out for a deal which includes one of the two dedicated/bayonet Voigtländer hoods (both of which were actually designed for a 75mm lens): They are uselessly short, and just inflate the price. I experimented with a lot of alternatives after realizing the round LH-75S was not really doing much, and found that the Nikon HN-30 intended for the AF-Micro Nikkor 200/4 does the job (though it needs a 49mm to 62mm step-up ring) and also looks very nice as it has the professional-looking hammer-tone finish.
A couple of years ago I sold off most of my Nikon gear and some of my Canon gear. From my Nikon gear, I only kept my manual focus AiS primes and a few AF-D lenses (24mm f2.8 AF-D, 35mm f2.0 AF-D, 50mm f1.8 AF-D, and 180mm f2.8 AF-ED, plus a few 28-105mm f3.5/4.5 D for the two or three D200's I kept). When I sold my Canon 6dmk2, I kept a few of my EF lenses because they worked perfectly well on my R6II. Of all my old EF lenses, I still have/love my 70-200mm f2.8L, 300mm f4.0L, 100mm f2.8L Macro, and my favorite, the 17-40mm f4.0L.
grantgoodes wrote:
That's very interesting: They made so few of these lenses (supposedly about 700 in F-mount), but I guess a slow 180mm MF lens isn't particularly "cool" these days. Don't do what I did and hold out for a deal which includes one of the two dedicated/bayonet Voigtländer hoods (both of which were actually designed for a 75mm lens): They are uselessly short, and just inflate the price. I experimented with a lot of alternatives after realizing the round LH-75S was not really doing much, and found that the Nikon HN-30 intended for the AF-Micro Nikkor 200/4 does the job (though it needs a 49mm to 62mm step-up ring) and also looks very nice as it has the professional-looking hammer-tone finish....Show more →
I am really unsure why prices have dropped, but I am seeing them for $600-$800, which is a smidge more than I purchased for originally, and less than I sold for. With my luck the prices will probably go back up over time, lol. What I suspect is that a lot of small zooms in that range have been released and that has relieved some of the pressure - circa 7 or 8 years ago there were no reasonably sized options in that focal range other than the Leica R 180/3.4 and the Voigtlander (which I believe is the smaller of the two, and to my eyes, I prefer the way it draws).
What a great question and thread. Mine used to be the 50/1.2 GM, which I sold as I migrated to a 35-150 (initially Tamron, then Samyang, and more recently Tamron again) for my wide aperture needs. My choice now would be the 28-70/2 GM. Simply sublime with prime-beating performance.
I don't have any lenses that would need to be pried from my cold dead hands - largely because some (Nikkor Z) that might qualify are compromised by the camera bodies currently available to mount them on.
My most-used lens is the Sony FE 200-600G (even though I also have the 400-800G)
Looking back over time, the lens that has made me the most income (and it's not even close) is the Canon EF 24-105mm f4L IS.
The lens I've kept the longest (and this is also not even close) is my Nikon Series E 75-150mm f3.5
The 50mm APO-Lanthar. I'm also surprised it was mentioned so little. The 35 APO-Lanthar was mentioned at least 3 times, so given an almost exact lens profile maybe this is a reflection of a more preferred focal length. The 50mm, as my last lens standing, was a result of years of shooting photography. I started out avoiding 50mm, selecting 35mm and 75-85mm. When I started using the 50 Lanthar, I noticed I wasn't cropping the photo as much if at all and framing more precisely in camera. In creating multi frame panoramas with a ball head monopod, current megapixel sensors can take advantage of the 50mm APO Lanthar's extreme sharpness across the frame and this takes the place of a 35mm focal length for me.
Logically, one would expect the most named focal length lens to be 35-50mm and the frequency fall off going shorter and longer, but the zooms and long focal lengths imply we have a lot of exclusive specialty shooters out there such as bird/wildlife and sports photographers.
