The ten-lens challenge!

The ten-lens challenge!

Developing Phil Taylor’s idea about ten lenses, and setting a challenge for those who like lenses. Name your ten favourite lenses, and give a bit of explanation.

1 Top of my list is my Zeiss Planar 85mm f/1.4, bought in 1977, and still going strong. It’s featured here (the blog about accidents, as the bayonet mount wore out and it plummeted to the pavement outside Moor Hill station in Birmingham), and it remains a delight to use, with smooth, backlash-free focus. I learnt one of my trademarks – very shallow depth of field – with it, wide open, often with T-Max P3200 loaded. I love this lens, and it will probably be in my memory box when they cart me off to the House on the Hill (where they give you pills).

2 Lensbaby Muse – this was the first Lensbaby I bought: technically, it has the double plastic optic fitted, and at f/2, there are plenty of aberrations in the images, as well as flare. But the crucial thing is that the way that the lens is mounted on a flexible plastic tube utterly changes the way that I work. It has to be instinctive. Control freaks need to buy the discontinued Control Freak mount, but will never have the same liberating experience as the Muse gives. Currently, the Spark does similar things…

3 The Lensbaby Velvet 56mm f/1.6 is weird and wonderful, with a field that’s not flat, making some weird and lovely effects possible. There’s a lovely aura at wider apertures, just like a Softar filter, and interesting levels of flare.

4 Zeiss Pancolar 50mm f/2 – my affair with wide apertures started here in 1970: far more expensive than an f/2.8 Tessar, and with the potential for more flare and aberrations – but it served me faithfully for several years, and the one I acquired a year or two ago is delightful to use and see results from.

5 The Olympus 45mm f/1.8 must be the biggest bargain in MFT lenses: the cheapest real lens for the format (I exclude the ‘lenscap’ fisheyes and manual focus only offerings from China), and the ideal focal length for portraits. It’s not the sharpest possible lens for the format, but it’s easily up to really testing use.

6 As my main system is based on Alpha 7 bodies, there has to be a native E-Mount 85mm. Possibly surprisingly, the lens normally found on my camera is the Sony 85mm f/1.8 FE. A third of the price and weight of the lovely G-Master f/1.4, but it runs it close on quality, while feeling balanced and ‘right’ on the body, either in my hand or on my shoulder.

7 The Samyang 24mm f/2.8 came as a revelation – the Korean manufacturer has been gaining ground steadily over the last ten years or so, and is a real force to be reckoned with these days. This optic is tiny and light, and a match for the Minolta lens it displaced from my camera bag. Other manufacturers might want to take a lead from Samyang in terms of lenses that make for shoulders that won’t get sore on a long day out.

8 I love taunting Canon fanboys with my Canon 100mm f/3.5. It’s a lens made in the Fifties/Sixties for rangefinder cameras, and was a free gift with the Leica M6 I bought from a friend in around 2005. It’s remarkably sharp, but the contrast is very low, and it’s incredibly prone to flare. Like so many ‘imperfect’ lenses, it’s popular with female models: unlike many other lenses from the same era, I’ve not met another example, and it’s not (yet) achieved cult status.

9 There has to be a special place for the Leitz Summar 50mm f/2. For many years, this uncoated and utterly-imperfect lens suffered a very poor reputation – if you want the sort of quality that you probably associate with the marque, get an Elmar instead. But if you like a Lensbabyesque mix of soft and sharp, this is a lovely lens, and can give something akin to 3D results at wide apertures.

10 My final lens is a new love, and a recent acquisition. When I owned an Asahi Pentax Spotmatic in the Seventies, I chose the f/1.4 standard lens, and it was only when I bought a secondhand Spotmatic with a Super Multicoated Takumar 55mm f/1.8 that I tried the slightly lower-spec lens. And it’s delightful, just like the Spotmatic (about which I waxed lyrical a few weeks ago). If you think about a Platonic ideal Seventies SLR, the Spotmatic is it: and the 55mm is on the front. Self-effacing and gently perfect, it makes using the Pentax addictive.

If the idea interests you, either get in touch with me and we’ll do an email interview, to post here in my blog – or, better, write your own blog and just put a link to it here.