The three score mark is still half a decade away for me, but I can empathize. I tend to look down on superzooms but I really should not. Being macho with an old school manual focus prime lens is not as easy as it used to be, especially in situations where people are moving around a lot, e.g. sports and weddings. My body is still OK with lugging around a bag full of primes. Actually, I have enough lenses to fill two bags but that is another problem.
The major bugbear is that I use a pair of multifocal prescription lenses to get by in day to day life. These things just do not work well with a 50mm f/1.4 MF lens, trust me. I have had enough badly focused shots to be able to say that. The diopter correction in the camera viewfinder is no good, because my variable sight means that the optimum setting depends on the distance! I found that single focus glasses worked better, but then I could not see the display on the back of the camera. I then had a pair of bifocal glasses made especially for photography. It is an improvement but still not perfect for shooting portraits at f/1.4.
There are some ways to get around this:
- buy a new 55mm f/1.4 (no can do)
- buy a used FA 50mm f/1.4 (not that cheap and fairly rare)
- buy a used fast zoom like a 24-70mm f/2.8 (working on it)
- take it slow and rely on the viewfinder confirmation (works fairly well)
- take it slow and use live view (works fairly well)
- forget about large apertures and use one of the four AF zooms I already have (no more wild bokeh)
I have recently come to the conclusion that my little mirrorless Samsung with kit lens takes more consistently good pictures than my Pentax with MF lens. The problem is with me and my aged eyesight, of course. Perhaps I should go mirrorless?
The picture of the dove looks pretty good. Some post processing to tweak the contrast and it will be perfect. Enjoy your photography and use the superzoom to your heart's content. Don't let guys like me tell you that it is no good!
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