topic Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D in EF & RF Lenses

Prime lens kit for canon 60D

ayalara — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 16:38:37 GMT

Hi,

I am building a prime lens kit for my canon 60D. I already have the canon 50mm f1.8 stm and the canon 135mm f2.8 soft focus. I want to add prime lens in the wide, normal and medium telephoto focal length range. Don't have the budget to spend on L series lenses. Any suggestions?

Thanks,

Alberto Ayala

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

kvbarkley — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:24:06 GMT

Do you need a macro?

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

kvbarkley — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:25:19 GMT

Primes are usually EF lenses and as such geared for FF lenses. So primes don't go very wide for crop-frame cameras. You might want to look at the EF-S 10-22 zoom

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

RobertTheFat — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 17:48:11 GMT

@ayalara wrote:
Hi,

I am building a prime lens kit for my canon 60D. I already have the canon 50mm f1.8 stm and the canon 135mm f2.8 soft focus. I want to add prime lens in the wide, normal and medium telephoto focal length range. Don't have the budget to spend on L series lenses. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Alberto Ayala

A "normal" prime lens on a 60D would be about 31 mm. Sigma used to make a 30mm f/1.4 that wasn't bad and was very affordable. Maybe there's something similar today. Also, I think I read that Canon makes a 30-something prime that might be worth looking into.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

ayalara — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 18:44:01 GMT

I have in mind the canon 24mm stm, 40mm stm, sigma 30mm f 1.4, canon 35mm f2.0 and the canon 85mm f1.8. I saw those rokinon manual lenses but since those lenses don't have focus indicator on the camera it would be hard to focus.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

RobertTheFat — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:00:53 GMT

@ayalara wrote:
I have in mind the canon 24mm stm, 40mm stm, sigma 30mm f 1.4, canon 35mm f2.0 and the canon 85mm f1.8. I saw those rokinon manual lenses but since those lenses don't have focus indicator on the camera it would be hard to focus.

That list is a bit deficient at the wide end. Any decent walking-around zoom lens for an APS-C camera will reach down to 17 or 18 mm. And true WAs range downwards from there.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

Waddizzle — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 19:52:11 GMT

"Don't have the budget to spend on L series lenses. Any suggestions?"

@kvbarkley wrote:
Primes are usually EF lenses and as such geared for FF lenses. So primes don't go very wide for crop-frame cameras. You might want to look at the EF-S 10-22 zoom

On a budget? Good advice, there. The EF-S 10-22mm zoom will give the Full-Frame equivalent of 16-35mm, which would go well with your "nifty fifty." Many zoom lenses today have great image quality, and afford you a wider range of coverage than a set of primes. Also the EF-S 10-18mm zoom is worthy of consideration if you're on a budget.

If you do not have the budget for what you know to be quality lenses, then do not compromise on your lens purchases. Over the long run, you will wind up buying the lenses that you had originally set your sights on. While the EF-S 24mm, and its' cousiin the EF 40mm "shorty forty", are fairly good lenses, I would not want them to be the "best in my bag lenses." Having a good general purpose, walk around zoom lens is invaluable for one just starting out.

I know the feeling, I do. You want everything at once. Call it "lens fever", and it cannot be properly cured. But, the money you would spend on that collection budget primes could be better spent on one of the wide angle, zoom lenses suggested above, or even on more costly the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens from Canon. Trust me. Trust us. You will very rarely be disappointed investing in quality Canon lenses.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

RobertTheFat — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 20:59:10 GMT

@Waddizzle wrote:
"Don't have the budget to spend on L series lenses. Any suggestions?"
@kvbarkley wrote:
Primes are usually EF lenses and as such geared for FF lenses. So primes don't go very wide for crop-frame cameras. You might want to look at the EF-S 10-22 zoom
On a budget? Good advice, there. The EF-S 10-22mm zoom will give the Full-Frame equivalent of 16-35mm, which would go well with your "nifty fifty." Many zoom lenses today have great image quality, and afford you a wider range of coverage than a set of primes. Also the EF-S 10-18mm zoom is worthy of consideration if you're on a budget.

If you do not have the budget for what you know to be quality lenses, then do not compromise on your lens purchases. Over the long run, you will wind up buying the lenses that you had originally set your sights on. While the EF-S 24mm, and its' cousiin the EF 40mm "shorty forty", are fairly good lenses, I would not want them to be the "best in my bag lenses." Having a good general purpose, walk around zoom lens is invaluable for one just starting out.

I know the feeling, I do. You want everything at once. Call it "lens fever", and it cannot be properly cured. But, the money you would spend on that collection budget primes could be better spent on one of the wide angle, zoom lenses suggested above, or even on more costly the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM Lens from Canon. Trust me. Trust us. You will very rarely be disappointed investing in quality Canon lenses.

Truthfully, a case can be made that zooms are now so good that it usually makes sense to buy only special-purpose primes. e.g. the 30mm f/1.4 (because there are no affordable f/1.4 zooms) or the 60mm f/2.8 macro.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

jrhoffman75 — Wed, 27 Apr 2016 23:32:44 GMT

The EF-S 17-55 and the 85 f/1.8 are both highly regarded for their image quality.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

ScottyP — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 10:12:08 GMT

I love primes too, but agree with the suggestion of the Canon EFS 17-55 f/2.8. That gives you the normal angle and the moderately wide angle.

Later on you might get an 85 f/1.8. If you have that you could then get rid of the 135 soft focus and get a 200mm prime for the long end, if you really need a long end.

We should ask what you shoot though. Some people try to have a lens for every focal length. It is better to have just a couple of good lenses at the focal lengths you use most rather than five or six cheap ones, covering lengths you don't really use much.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

ebiggs1 — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 22:17:45 GMT

"... primes don't go very wide for crop-frame cameras."

I don't know what he means? Because there are some very WA lenses no matter what you put them on. Like the Rokionon 8mm, 10mm, 12mm, 14mm, etc, primes. OP says he can't MF focus but in this focal length almost everything is already in focus so focusing won't be a problem.

Now before some of you blow a gasket I know they aren't as WA as they would be on a FF, so just save it. 10mm is still pretty WA even on a cropper.

I believe Sigma still has a 19mm prime but it might be a M lens? They have a 15mm with AF, too.

And there are more in the normal range and of course in the tele range. But these get pretty expensive pretty quickly. That fact remains, prime lenses are a specialty item. The current offerings in the zoom lens' often are better that some of these high priced primes. I too must recommend you or anyone stick with zooms as the best go.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

kvbarkley — Fri, 29 Apr 2016 00:06:09 GMT

As I said, most *Canon* primes are EF lenses and the widest is 14 mm, certainly wide angle on a crop frame camera, but not super wide.

ETA, I see that I did *not* refer to Canon lenses in my original post. But I meant too. 8^)

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

ayalara — Tue, 03 May 2016 14:18:53 GMT

I have a question about the rokinon and other brand EF lenses that are manual focus and selecting the aperture manually. Since the lens does not have chip to connect with the camera, how the focus accurately and can you see the aperture in the camera viewfinder?

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

kvbarkley — Tue, 03 May 2016 14:27:02 GMT

The best way to focus accurately is to set the lens to the maximum aperture and use liveview/zoom to focus.

Re: Prime lens kit for canon 60D

Waddizzle — Wed, 04 May 2016 19:46:32 GMT

@ayalara wrote:
I have a question about the rokinon and other brand EF lenses that are manual focus and selecting the aperture manually. Since the lens does not have chip to connect with the camera, how the focus accurately and can you see the aperture in the camera viewfinder?

Select Rokinon manual lenses contain the AE chip, so that the lens can communicate with the camera's AF system. All of the manual lenses contain an approximate distance scale, which can be accurate for FF or APS-C sensors, depending upon the mount for the lens. Most Rokinons are made for FF bodies, so the distance scales would only be accurate for FF sensors.

For lenses that don't have an AE chip, it is best to use the lenses in "M" or "Av" mode. Depending upon the focal length, you may be able to get focus by looking through the viewfinder. Success is entirely up to how well you can see. With wide angle lenses [below 20mm] you can usually set the focus distance to inifinity, or just below it, and everything beyond a short distance will be in focus.

The old 35mm film cameras usually had a focusing aid in the viewfinder. Those focus reticules have been dropped with the advent of auto-focus lens technology. Today, it is best to use the LCD, LiveView, to zoom in on a subject to achieve critical focus, especially when you get into using focal lengths over 20mm. In those scenarios, with standard focal length manual lenses and longer, I am almost always using a tripod.

[EDIT] As has been already noted, prime lenses have become somewhat of a specialty use lens. I also want to point out that because most manual lenses do not communicate with the camera, your shots will not contain any lens shooting information in the EXIF data regarding focal length or aperture. All you will get is shutter speed, which the camera generates, and other information generated by the camera, but no aperture value of focal length data. In fact, if you use AFMA, the camera will probably not be able to tell the difference between one manual lens and the next.