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 p.2 #8 · Sony 35mm F1.4 GM vs Sony 50mm F1.4 GM | |
milend wrote:
I need some advice regarding the 35mm and 50mm 1.4 GM lenses. My current lens lineup consists of:
- 24-70mm F2.8 GM2
- 40mm F2.5
- 24-50mm F2.8
The 24-50mm is my current favourite lens because it's relatively lightweight and it covers my most used focal lengths - 28mm, 35mm and 50mm. So it stays on my A7IV all the time.
I find the 40mm redundant because I bought it with the intention of having a lighter weight setup but the package is still not small and not much of a difference between the 24-50mm, so I never use this lens.
The 24-70 is too bulky, so I'm going to sell it.
My use case is simple - photos of my family (we have a newborn baby). I'm looking to add a fast prime and would love to hear from parents who went through the early years of their children - which focal lens worked best for them?
The advantages of the 35mm is that it's more versatile, I can capture more of the environment but it's harder to compose as field of view is wider. On the other hand, the 50mm makes it easier to compose, better suited for portraits but might not be wide enough indoors.
Alternatively, I could just continue using my 24-50mm (which I think will use 90% of the time if I got one of these 1.4 primes) and don't get anything else....Show more →
I have all the lenses you are considering and spend a lot of my photography time taking pictures of my three grandchildren who are 4 and 2 and 2 (twins). The lenses all work in different situations for different kinds of images and also for other photographic purposes like travel. I think the best I can do to help you decide is to tell you how each lens functions for me and let you notice whether any of those uses rings a bell for you.
The 25-50 is small and covers a lot of the range one wants when shooting families and children. The f2.8 is a slight limitation, but noise and post processing software, as long as you are comfortable with it, gives you the option of using it effectively even in dimly lit bedrooms. This is also a great travel lens.
The 24-70 is an outstanding lens, but it only adds a little to the 24-50 for child and family images. I use it sometimes when I feel like using the 70mm end for tighter portraits, but mostly I use it for landscapes, still lifes, architecture, sometimes for travel. I find its size a bit unhandy for family photography, but you could use it as a one-and-done lens, which is what it was designed to do.
The 35/1.4 GM is a great lens and it is an excellent focal length for family images because it lets you easily get a child's interaction with another person or with their environment. It is less useful during the first six months, but gets used more as the child gets more mobile and capable. The single focal length makes me concentrate on composition and framing better than a zoom does. The zoom seems to make it too easy to frame the shot, so composition gets neglected a bit with the zoom. The 35mm makes me think about what image I can get.
The 40/2.5 is one of my favorite lenses because it is small and pretty well does what both the 35 and the 50 can do. I use it for family, kids, travel and especially in situations where it is nice to be a non-intrusive photo-taker--it is so small and easy to overlook.
50mm has always been one of my favorite focal lengths and I have and use multiple 50mm lenses. They are great for portraits and for images of one or two people close together. I think of it often as a portrait lens with the wide aperture aiding subject isolation, and it is great for this purpose with babies and children. It has some limitations for indoors because you can't be far enough away to get everything you want and still have decent composition. Henri Cartier-Bresson used 50mm for most of his images, but most of those were taken outdoors. However, his 50mm portraits, mostly shot indoors, are wonderful.
My last thought is to encourage you to try some of your images in B&W. It eliminates the color-clutter of so many documentary and candid pictures and emphasizes the people who are in the images as their faces and skin tones usually are one of the largest tonal objects in the image, and it removes distractions.
So, I don't know which lenses you should choose to own, but maybe some of my experiences and uses as described above will resonate more with you than others do, and that might provide some direction for you to pursue. I will say that my ideal kit in your situation would be the 25-50/2.8, the 35/1.4, and the 50/1.4.
Good luck!
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+ do not have to change lenses so often... perfect for traveling!