Originally posted by vector Roger Cicala at Lensrentals.com has been testing all kinds of things lately and he has a great post about this that demonstrates the multiple personalities of zoom lenses at different focal lengths. They really are a mixed bag of tradeoffs vs even budget prime lenses.
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That's because zooms have an infinite number of "bags." Primes have only one.
There is simply no lens made you don't have to get to know. But the pay off in zooms is when you do that you have many different shooting possibilities, more with one zoom than with camera a bag of 10 primes.
If you have a DA*18-135, you may not like it at 135mm... but you may find it acceptable from 20mm to 45mm. At least you have something. I bought the cheap 35 2.4 and don't like it. I got nothing for my money. At least with my 18-135 I got a walk around lens I love to use that's stellar at some focal lengths.
This can be spun more than one way.
SO I ask you, which is the preferable mixed bag? A range of 20-45 that's excellent in many categories... or a 35 prime that's excellent in one category, that you don't like?
Not only that Roger's post doesn't refer to "primes vs zooms".
It refers to "bargain primes vs bargain zooms."
I've taken comparison images with my DA* 60-250 against the DA*200 and Tamron 90. The DA*60-250 images hold up very well, at every focal length. When you get into quality zooms, the whole article is not relevant.
Even if only one area of zooms is prime quality, it still gives you more than a prime does in the big picture.
And for lenses like the 18-135.... not only does it give you prime quality through good range, it gives you access to things like 29mm, 32mm, 33mm 34mm 36mm etc that aren't even available in primes.
Bottom line, zooms should be your work horses, primes for when you have total control of the situation, as in studio or in the case of birders, where any zoom you can get will be too short or too slow, and you're going to crop extensively in any case.
Zooms vs primes is another one of those black holes people more intelligent than me avoid.
Every lens deserves it's own evaluation. Prime vs zoom has nothing to do with that.
There are great zooms, there are great primes. There are poor zooms, there are poor primes (although not so many lately). What works for one, doesn't work for everybody. There's no free lunch. Work with your lenses, get to know them. Zooms are more work to get to know. But the pay off is infinitely more FLs to shoot. For establishing your shooting preferences it doesn't matter what Roger or anyone else says. That's up to you.
In my polls a zoom has to be really really cheap, like FAJ 18-35 cheap, before nobody likes it. I paid $100 CDN for mine. Even kit lenses will get a few votes in blind tests, although many wouldn't have voted for them if they knew it was an 18-55, just on principle. It seems to be fashionable to deny the worth of cheaper zooms in some circles.