Beni wrote:
Why not, the nifty fifty is that cheaply built but it's incredibly good fun for the price.
But it doesn't count as a "lens" if it's disposable. If I have a paper cup factory and you make proper porcelain cups, and I make more than you because all mine are thrown away, do I have "more cups out there"? No, I have made more cups than you, but there are not more melcat cups than Beni cups.
I'm not disputing the 90m figure, but it is almost meaningless.
Depends if you don't define a paper cup as a cup. The 18-55mm in its various incarnations may be cheap and nasty junk (it is) but it is a lens and it probably a sizeable fraction of those tens of millions ever made. It's cheap but it does the job. Like cheap tires I suppose, no they won't give you the same speed, fuel economy, life, etc of a decent tire but you can drive on it, get up to 90mph, go from A to Z and no one would ever say that it wasn't a tire. Most of my students have nothing but a cheap 18-55, you should see the stuff they can achieve because they have imagination and drive rather than most gearheads with the most expensive gear but very little to show for it all. One of my students took the most incredible night picture this week, a picture I would have killed to have taken, with one of the cheapest Oly Pen mini 4/3 cameras with kit lens. I think the cheap lenses are too real and can do too much to be irrelevant.
Beni wrote:
Most of my students have nothing but a cheap 18-55, you should see the stuff they can achieve because they have imagination and drive rather than most gearheads with the most expensive gear but very little to show for it all.
Yes, Canon are to be commended for putting more affordable photographic tools into peoples' hands. And they did it long ago with the AE-1, too.
Beni wrote:
Depends if you don't define a paper cup as a cup. The 18-55mm in its various incarnations may be cheap and nasty junk (it is) but it is a lens and it probably a sizeable fraction of those tens of millions ever made. It's cheap but it does the job. Like cheap tires I suppose, no they won't give you the same speed, fuel economy, life, etc of a decent tire but you can drive on it, get up to 90mph, go from A to Z and no one would ever say that it wasn't a tire. Most of my students have nothing but a cheap 18-55, you should see the stuff they can achieve because they have imagination and drive rather than most gearheads with the most expensive gear but very little to show for it all. One of my students took the most incredible night picture this week, a picture I would have killed to have taken, with one of the cheapest Oly Pen mini 4/3 cameras with kit lens. I think the cheap lenses are too real and can do too much to be irrelevant. ...Show more →
The IS version of the 18-55 kit lens is actually pretty remarkably sharp. It's not ultra fast for aperture or AF and the contrast doesn't pop like and L, but it's darn sharp, I dare say it might even be sharper than the 24-105L! (if less rich color/contrast).
