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Your Lenses are More Important Than Your Camera


For over 15 years, the Phoblographer has been saying a very important thing: your lenses are more important than your camera. To this day, we continue to test new lenses on old cameras to give photographers an idea of what it’s like to use them with older bodies with full understanding that not everyone wants to buy new cameras every two years. And it’s a statement that we still stand by. Over a decade ago, lens manufacturers told us that the lifespan of lenses are going to get shorter and shorter. But the truth is that that’s not really the case. Older lenses still render beautiful images on newer cameras even though they might not resolve as much detail. And honestly, considering the retro-digital look, we’re inclined to say, “Who cares?”

In 2014, the CEO of Sigma told us that lens resolution will be very noticable. “Compared to the time when sensor resolution is lower, the life of the lenses will be shorter. When the resolution was lower, the lens performance difference was not as noticeable.” states Sigma CEO Kazuto Yamaki in the article. “The higher the resolution, the easier the customers can tell the difference in the lens performance. This could be the driving force behind the shorter life span of modern lenses. Seeing this noticeable difference in lens performance may drive the customers to upgrade.” Of course, this is only true if you’re looking at images on desktops with large monitors and often at 100%. In today’s world, web compression kills the details when you try to zoom in on them.

Where it will matter most is when you’re publishing images on your website or with a publication — and that’s providing that the publication’s web editors understand the parameters around image resolution and sizing with the design of their website.

In many situations, however, lenses might remain unchanged. The Sony Zeiss 55mm f1.8 was only recently outdone by the 50mm f1.4 G Master. And still, that lens is both unique and still quite capable of delivering sharp images. But what’s even more important is that brands also don’t talk about the importance of lighting — specifically flash. The output from flash and the science behind how flash sync works acts almost like a second shutter speed. And to that end, it renders even better sharpness. The truth, once again, is that an older lens with a flash can still outperform a newer lens without a flash.

By all means, your lenses can outlive your camera.

So why then would you want to upgrade lenses?

  • Focusing speed: sometimes newer lenses have better and faster motors that let the optics move faster.
  • Weather resistance: weather sealing has only become more important to manufacturers in recent years thanks in part to publications like us who have been pushing it for years.
  • A new feature that makes your images stand out. In the case of the Canon RF 100mm f2.8 L Macro lens, there is special control that lets the photographer be much more creative. Otherwise, they’d need lens filters or other things to make that happen.
  • A good lens can help you save money due to weather resistance and durability, autofocus performance on your camera’s battery life, and generally speaking, different lenses make you think differently. Thinking differently is the biggest thing a photographer can do to outwit Generative AI.

Generally speaking, we’re all much smarter these days. People tended to only pay attention to focal lengths, but now we also pay close attention to the aperture range.

For most of my career, I also really preferred prime lenses. And if I’m being exacting about the work that I’m doing, then I will only reach for primes. But zoom lenses have gotten better — though still not enough to where I don’t need to do post-production.

Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris’s editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He’s the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He’s fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he’s legally blind./

HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men’s lifestyle and tech. He’s a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He’s also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like “Secret Order of the Slice.”

PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others.

EXPERIENCE:
Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he’s evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he’s done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, WordPress, and other things.

EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he’s learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc.

FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn’t get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don’t do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.



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