Originally posted by paperbag846 We will see. I predict the DA 35 2.4 will sell fantastically. Shallow DOF creative work is a niche market - most good photographs are not abstracts and flowers.
what about low light, at 1.5 stops slower than the sigma 35mm, that is a much darker viewfinder at night, regardless of shooting aperture.
Quote: Most people want high quality sharp images of people and places at a reasonable cost. Very few photographers are good enough to shoot good pictures of a person at f 1.4. Most prefer the look of f 2.8.
but that was with 50-85mm lenses on film, what does F2.8 give you with a 35mm lens , about 4 times the Depth of field
Quote: The people who want those low DOF shots can pay the premium, I'm sure Pentax would prefer to sell a cheap lens to many people, who do not care that it is "slower" than the bulky sigma prime for 2X the cost.
that is where the argument will be. I am not so sure that an F1.4 /35mm needs to be any bulkier. look at the simple math Fstop = focal length / aperture diameter. F1.4 on 35mm is a 25mm diameter element, this is already very small compared to the diameter of the lens mount, which to some extent determines the lens dimensions. The bulk will be in the packaging not the glass.
Quote: I agree with the contention that lenses should be marked with T-stops. Most lenses I have tried let in different levels of light at equivalent f-stops. For me, the f-stop is less about DOF, and more about getting the light in. Occasionally I'll use one of my 50's to blur the background but the fact is my two 50's let in different levels of light at equivalent f-stops! It's a dated way of measuring lens performance and I think it's going to need to change if the primary format has moved from film to 1's and 0's.
but you don't need T-Stops unless you are going to do away with internal metering, and, by the way, digital has much more exposure lattitude than slide film, where F stops were found to be acceptable, so why go back to something painful to measure.
T-Stops are only of need when you do not have an internal light meter, that is why they disappeared they were no longer needed.