deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

I love my "nifty-fifty" (as someone on this board called it)!

gualbertoa

I remember a supervisor at my workplace that used to tell me, " Don't spent a lot of money on equipment unless you already know how to use it, photography is not about equipment, it is about the person behind the camera", he showed me some pictures taken by his cellphone and they were amazing...

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

"There will never be a clear cut answer to these discussions until you become a professional photographer and then of course it is ALL about the photographer."

Actually, then it is all about the customer and their needs and wants.

This could be an interesting experiment or challenge though. I only think I can blame a "blown" shot or "opportunity" on one of my lenses very rarely though. And that does not seem to be it's quality or lack of but me the photographer not using it correctly. I've on occasion not focus one of my wide angle lenses correctly (manually) and gotten mush. Once, I am embarrassed to say I rotated the focus ring the wrong way thinking "this is easy, just set it to infinity and aim at the mountain." I forgot that particular lens, a different brand vintage prime, has an opposite rotation direction for focusing the ring. On the other hand, I do have a few, again, vintage film lenses that I never use (1) because they are not focal lengths that are interesting for APS-C Sensor use or are duplicated focal lengths in my collection; (2) I suspect they are not sharp (enough for digital use) so I just pass on using them. And some of these never got used with a film camera. So I never have used some lenses either for digital or at all. So I guess I could try one of those "suspicious" lenses and see if I can get a good image or at least a good composition. Then also do I choose a 14MP, 16MP, or 24MP camera body. I have all three. I am sure some of my lenses will disappoint me when used with the 24MP body!

lamiaceae Loc: San Luis Obispo County, CA

Yes, often that is the sharpest lens one can have. Often not the very fastest on though, but the f/1.4 or f/1.7 or f/1.8 version. I have several 50mm and 55mm lenses in the f/1.4 to f/2 range.

cambriaman Loc: Central CA Coast

f./8 and be there!

kdogg Loc: Gallipolis Ferry WV

After reading this post I thought I would go through my old Minolta mount lenses. Lo and behold I found a lens that I had totally forgotten about. Has anyone ever heard of a Sima 100mm SF lens. It was a very simple lens with I believe a single element and 2 fstop inserts, a 4.0 and a 5.6. It has a three stop range of 2.0 4.0 and 5.6. It is an artsy soft focus lens. In the spirit of your challenge I'm going to clean it up and mount it on my 7D and see what happens. I already have the adapter for MD to EF as I still do use some of my old glass from the last 40+ years of GAS. KInda like going back to the future.

deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

You guys are awesome! I will post some pics of my own when I can get out of my work the next couple of days grrrr.....

JimH123 Loc: Morgan Hill, CA

Here is a shot taken with an old Minolta Rokkor 50mm f1.4 MC lens of the Shane telescope at the Lick Observatory near San Jose, CA. I bought this lens for $60 about 3 years ago. This lens was introduced in April 1973 and produced until its MD replacement came out in 1977. What I like about this lens is how sharp it is and the really smooth manual focus. For this image, I was using a cheapee adapter to use it on a Sony A6000. Didn't write down what f-stop this was, but ISO was set to 1000 and shutter speed was 1/4000 sec. so perhaps the aperture wasn't stopped down too far. If you zoom in, you can see how sharp this lens actually is.

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whwiden

Yes. I went on a trip to Iceland and left the 50mm lens on my Nikon d750 for 10 days. Had other lenses for full frame but did not use them. Supplemented with a camera phone, and a wide angle on a backup d3300 which I rarely used. For general travel it can work well. Not so much for a Safari or birding--but for most things of a travel nature, it can work well.

One of my cheaper lenses is a Nikkor 105mm f/2.5. Still use it on the D750 for portraits.

deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

I would love to see what you get out of that lens!

travelwp Loc: New Jersey

Examples of lucky shots with expensive equipment:

http://travelwp.com/2017-0919-photos-from-nikon-d850-page.htm

deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

All right - this is the first chance I have gotten to take my own challenge! I took this old 28-80mm Nikkor and got some pics of apple blossoms that were fooled into thinking it was spring after a little warm spell. The most interesting thing I noticed on this was the bokeh from this lens. I kind of like it ;D (these were all handheld - should have taken my tripod)

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not great comp but the bokeh is cool!

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deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

Wow - nifty fifty even back then - really really sharp!

deer2ker Loc: Nashville, TN

That would be great to see what you can come up with! Thanks for getting in the spirit of the challenge!