Are Kit Lenses Worthless?

 Also in this issue:

• The Next Seminars
• Other Tidbits

My New Favorite Travel Camera

When it comes to travel photography, there was always a soft spot in my heart for the Konica Minolta A1 and A2 bridge cameras.  These came out before the legendary KM 7D, and I used the A1 for half of my China blog.  By today's standards the image quality falls short for all but the lowest ISOs, but as far as form factor and function goes, these cameras had a certain gem quality to them.  The user interface was clearly designed by a photographer (as opposed to a marketing team); they had a real wide angle lens (most bridge cameras of the time didn't) and thankfully they had a manual zoom ring (as opposed to the motorized kind that only drained the batteries and offered no real benefit).  It shot movies, it had a built-in intervolometer, and it was my first exposure (no pun intended) to the promise of the electronic viewfinder.

Fast forward to about three weeks ago, when my NEX-7 and kit lens FINALLY arrived.  Imagine - all the quality of the A77 without the weight or volume! 
Every camera has its strengths and weaknesses - shooting sports is probably not this camera's strength, but as a travel camera, it's hard to ask for anything better.  It took awhile to configure the camera to my liking (it would have been easier if Sony had allowed all functions to be assigned to any soft button), but I think I've got it to the point that every important variable that I usually need to change in the field is one- or two-button presses or wheel rotations away.  Once I got that, the rest of the menu system didn't annoy me as much. :-)

The first "real" assignment I gave it was to take it on a family vacation to Sedona, which it served as both a point-and-shoot for family shots AND a high-end landscape camera for sellable shots.  Was this wise, given the less-than-stellar reviews the kit lens has received?  (As always, clicking on these images makes them larger and less fuzzy.  Plus, every image on this page is available for download and scrutiny.  No sharpening has been performed on any of these images.)

A friend and his son.  This shot is much sharper than I was expecting.

Every vacation should have one establishing shot (that sets the stage in one image) for your photo album.

 

(I don't eat if all I do is take "me too!" shots of famous places.  So I always strive to take pictures that nobody else has taken.  This can be used to illustrate the overcrowding of America's national parks and monuments. :-) )

If you measure the lens' characteristics on an optical bench, you'll discover that it has visible barrel distortion at the wide end, and chromatic aberrations.  You don't see those artifacts here because these were shot in .jpg and therefore corrected in-camera; but even if they hadn't been, for landscape shots with no specular highlights there's little chance they would be noticed.

I even compared the kit lens in the studio next to one of my favorite sharp lenses of all time, the Minolta MD 100mm f/2.5 in another composition where the lens' weaknesses won't show.  (Studio portraits are the acid test of lenses, since the subject is close and they often get enlarged so detail is scrutinized.)  I'll admit it wasn't a good test because the camera-to-subject distance didn't change enough for a true, meaningful side-by-side comparison.  Still, download the original files (here's the link again) and have a close look. 

I hate standard head shots.  So I imitated my old differential equations professor instead.

Can I take pictures where the lens' deficiencies are visible?  Of course!  Check out this picture of a telephone answering machine I designed and built when I was 15 years old, when such things were illegal.  (This shot was made for the talk about my NASA days that I'll be giving in Copenhagen on April 24th):

Using the kit lens

Using the Minolta 50mm Macro lens

Here the differences become apparent when you zoom in to the corners:

Kit lens upper-right-hand corner 100% crop

Minolta 50mm macro lens upper-right-hand corner 100% crop

This is really an unfair comparison, since macro and portrait lenses tend to be the sharpest lenses made, so ANY other lens you compare to them will likely come up short. 

Are the Zeiss lenses better?  Yes.  Does that make this lens unusable or undesireable?  No - in fact, it's better than most people give it credit for.  As I said earlier, if you understand and work within a lens' strengths and weaknesses, you can take great, sellable and enlargeable shots with the kit lens.  As a travel photography lens I think it's ideal; it's not too large, focuses quickly, stabilizes the image, and it fulfills the NEX' promise of a small, easy-to-use and portable system.  I plan to use it as my primary shooting lens in my upcoming trips.

(Scholarly note: The Macro lens shot was taken with the A65 since I didn't have my Maxxum-NEX adapter handy.  But hey, it's the same sensor!)

Tidbits

I'm leaving for the Copenhagen events in just a few days, and there's a lot of stuff I want to talk about but just don't have the time.  So here's an abbreviated version:

1) The A65 / A77 ebook is now available in Spanish!  http://friedmanarchives.com/alpha77/A77-index-SP.htm 

2) The English version of the A65 / 77 ebook has been updated to include details of Firmware version 1.5 (plus some other fixes as well).  Existing owners should have received notification with a download link.  If you didn't, email me a receipt and I'll send you a link.  (But please be patient for a response.  I'll be travelling the next few days and won't be able to respond with my usual swiftness.)

3) The .epub and .mobi versions of the A77 books are still a work in progress.  It turns out that there are NO good .epub authoring tools out there that can handle complex layouts.  Probably worth a blog post all its own.

Until next time...
-Gary Friedman

Me and Grandchild #2. Show me a person who can see barrel distortion in this shot and I'll show you a person needs to read this XKCD comic. :-)