Good Glass is Timeless

A few years ago, I bought a bunch of 35mm camera equipment at a garage sale.  There were some valuable goodies like camera bodies, lenses, flash units and filters among the lot.  I resold most of the gear on eBay for quite a profit.  I kept a few prime lenses for my Olympus DSLR.  I just had to get a lens converter for them.  Now, when you get older lenses that do not have autofocus capabilities or if you have to convert lenses in any way, you most likely will not have autofocus capabilities.  That being said, it was worth it to have some nice lenses in exchange for the inconvenience of having to manually focus.  I reluctantly sold the lenses just recently because I wanted to save up for a newer Canon camera, which I recently purchased.

I bought the Canon 70D kit at Costco.  In many ways, this camera is far superior to my Olympus E-300.  The camera body itself, I mean.  I knew I would be regressing when it came to the lenses though.  Even though the new lenses have image stabilization and some other cool features, they are nonetheless cheap "kit" lenses.  Aside from the older Olympus OM lenses, I had invested in the higher quality Zuiko lenses from Olympus.  Even though Olympus has apparently discontinued their line of E-Series Four-Thirds cameras, the good lenses are still holding their value on eBay.  There is a reason for this.  It's because good glass is timeless.  As long as there are cameras out there that are compatible, the lenses never become totally obsolete, unlike camera bodies.

One of my benchmark tests for lenses is when you shoot the moon.  Photographing the moon can be tricky because there are so many factors that come into play. I have started a technical article on shooting the moon, but I haven't posted it yet.  Stay tuned for more detailed information. Suffice it to say that this is an area where the defects can be quite revealing.  In photography, you generally want your equipment to be "transparent" or in other words, you don't want your limitations to be revealed.

So without further ado, I will compare the differences:

This is the shot I took of the moon with my Olympus E-300 with the 55-200mm lens racked all the way out.  I cropped the picture so that I could get the moon to fill the frame.  In doing so, you start to see the pixels, especially at the edges where bright meets darkness.  You will also notice something... or not notice something when I compare the photo to the one shot with the Canon 70D.





This photo was taken with the Canon 70D racked out all the way to 250mm.  You can see more detail but around the edges you will see chromatic aberrations (unnatural coloring due to properties of the glass in the lens).

The perfect combination would be a good camera body with a professional lens.  If there is anywhere you want to spend the most money, it would be in your lenses.  Professional photographers spend far more on their lenses than the camera bodies.  In fact, I will spend twice as much money for a high-quality Canon zoom lens than I did for the entire 70D camera kit, but it will be worth it.  Another investment (that is actually a compromise) is to get a doubler.  What this does doubles the focal length of your lens.  This will enable you to get closer without digitally zooming in post production.  Your limitations will be in your glass and not in your processing software, so any details you will lose will be in clarity and not with revealing digital pixels.

I intend to post more detailed information on shooting the moon in a future blog post.

Image courtesy of: SnapKnot - Wedding photography prices