Random Neural Firing: Dissecting My Aperture Obsession.
Subtitle: An aperture of diminishing returns.
Warning: Nonsense ahead. This is all nonsense. A theoretical exercise meant to distract me from the madness of the day. At least for a little while.
Two recent purchases and one return brough about a logic vs emotion epiphany.
In this age of modern image sensors with great high ISO performance aperture may not matter as much as I thought it did.
Let me back up.
For the sake of this post I will use f/1.8 as the aperture cutoff between standard issue and exotic,
What are the advantages of a large aperture?
Real.
- Light gathering.
- Allows lower ISOs.
- Crucial for film with fixed ISO or older sensors that do not plat well at higher ISOs.
- Bokeh.
- Buttery backgrounds.
- Or blurred for less sophisticated designs.
- Image Quality,
- The assumption that a high spec lens will be designed to a higher standard. A lens good at f/1.2 should surpass the image quality of a mortal aperture when stopped down.
Emotional.
- Gaping maw.
- The pure nerd joy of gazing into a massive front element while manipulating the aperture blades.
- Bragging rights.
- The Spinal Tap-ian pleasure of uttering, but this one goes to f/1.2.
- Foolishness, but real.
- Build and heft.
- Many can double as melee weapons in a pinch.
There are downsides.
- Size and weight.
- Not always convenient to swing around a melee weapon at the front of the caamera.
- Cost.
- These things are typically not cheap.
The Songraw hoped to address this last bullet. But, in my case, anyway, while features, performance, looks, and feel held up, quality did not unfortunately.
So… I took these pics with the f/1.2 lens above.
Haze courtesy the broken elements. But after I packed the lens up and sent it back I cleaned them up a bit.
Decent. Bokeh as expected. For giggles I took similarly framed pics with an f/1.8 lens I am falling for.. testing.
Hm.
Perfectly acceptable bokeh/background blur/subject isolation.
So that strikes the bokeh justification for my purposes.
And furthermore I learned on a photo shoot that I seem far more interested in blurred backgrounds than my customers. Once I trucked out a crown jewel of a fast portrait lens for a graduation session. A graduate that was a part of the theater program at the University. Because of this we started the session outside of the theater entrance. Took a pic. Proud of the mass of background blur I showed the photo to the subject.
Very politely she asked:
“Nice, but is there a way to see the theater in the background?”
Right. Context. Fair enough.
I then out away the the portrait bazooka prime with the pie plate sized lens cap and took out my all purpose zoom for the rest of the pics.
And she was very happy.
What of the light gathering?
I am glad I imagined that you asked.
As mentioned above new sensors do very well at high ISOs.
And even when pushed past acceptable ISO levels you can hit the image with the Lightroom denoise stick.
And f/1.8 still affords relatively low ISOs.
Same goes for IQ. The EVO 55mm f/1.8 is every bit as good as more expensive glass stopped down.
What of build, ergonomics and such?
This EVO lens is built to a wonderful standard that is the equal of the G Master by my memory, with all buttons, dials, and switches present.
I am surprised by none of this. The wonderful EVO 85mm f/2…
…and EVO 26mm f/2.8…
…are exactly what motivated me to get this lens.
And there are disadvantages to these faster lenses.
- Size and weight.
- Swinging around a brick bat of a lens in bag or on the front of a lens has its downsides. Sometimes it is better to travel light.
- Not stealthy at all.
- People see the gaping maw of a front element and tense up.
Again, this applies to modern sensors. I am more familiar with full frame lenses but I am sure there are APS-C sensors that impress as well. MFT may need these faster apertures, but…
<here I go on another tangent>
For me that negates the advertised advantage of MFT. Small size. Large apertures mean larger lenses. Larger and heavier lenses means larger and heavier camera and lens combinations.
<moving on>
If you have made this far, thank you.
So… let’s wrap this up.
That was a lot of words just to say this.
For my purposes f/1.8 is fast enough.
That being said, do I still want faster glass?
Always a yes.
But it is now clear to me now that this is a want, and not a need.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
