I’ve been going through my library of old photos and thinking.

Before 2006, I’ve been using standard zoom lenses by default, and when you ask people why those lenses are good, they will tell you it’s because they are universal, and allow you to take all kinds of pictures – from landscapes to portraits and details and so on. However, when I look at my photos taken with Olympus E-1 and the ZD 14-54mm standard zoom, over 90% of them conform to the pattern of “extend to 54mm, aperture wide open”. I was not a “diverse” photographer at all, and in fact I could have used the ZD 50mm f/2 macro instead of the standard zoom, without any adverse effects. Even then, I was very specialised for isolation-based closeups, and from what I can tell, I produced very “mature” work in that area. I knew what I was doing and the results turned out the way I wanted them:

However, there was a reason why I used the lens almost exclusively at 54mm: I didn’t know anything about shooting landscapes, or wide angle anything in general. It’s not that I didn’t try, but the results were crap, in a sense that I couldn’t control the scene in such a way that would capture the feeling of calm stillness that I learned to capture with closeups. When I think of it, I tried to follow a formulaic approach for shooting landscapes, and the images sucked. Also, when I would use wide angle, the scene felt cluttered and full of distractions that created something that was the exact opposite of what I did with closeups. Also, the 5MP camera lacked the level of detail that would be required for a wide angle landscape shot in which everything is supposed to be sharp.

And then I decided I’m going to learn landscape. It certainly was a learning curve; my early attempts were crap, until the point I was reviewing the Olympus ultra-wideangle, the ZD 7-14mm f/4, and at some point it clicked: I stopped trying to remove things from the scene in order to simplify it. I embraced the chaos in the scene and just arranged it into a flow. When I think about it now, it’s not that I learned to use wide angle; rather, I changed my attitude towards Chaos as a principle, by no longer trying to eliminate everything chaotic and thus create order, and instead felt the wild spin of the Chaos in a scene and freeze a moment that feels right.

It took me years to get comfortable with the concept of infinite depth of field, chaos, suggested motion, people in the frame, random things in the frame, non-obvious composition, and, sometimes, intentional motion blur. But, how else do you take a portrait with a fisheye lens in dense woods? 🙂

I must admit that the technique required me to pretty much abandon my usual style and methodology, and initially the equipment more-less dictated what I did; essentially, the camera took the pictures it wanted to take. It took me a while to first control the process, then get comfortable with it, and eventually extend my style through it. At some point, wide angle shots I took started looking as just my normal stuff, and that’s when I became happy with it. Even if it’s not nature, and if it’s black and white.

If there’s anything constant in photography circles over the decades, it’s the universal contempt for the “kit lenses”, basically the standard zooms that come with the camera. They are criticised for being plasticky, poorly made, having terrible variance between samples due to poor manufacturing, unsharp, having lots of vignetting, chromatic aberrations, being too slow, and so on.

The additional problem is that when you try to look for samples of photos made with such lenses, you are invariably showered by terrible snapshots made by people who are very unskilled at photography, and usually quite new to it, so they don’t know what they’re doing. The images produced are thus universally terrible. This creates some kind of confirmation bias – yeah, the lens is terrible, what do you expect from a kit lens, just get a proper one if you want your photos not to look like those beginner snapshots.

I must admit that I once believed something similar, and had an aversion to kit lenses, especially since my favourite kind of photography was to use shallow depth of field to isolate the subject, and kit lenses are generally quite slow – often f/5.6 at the long end – and they also often perform poorly wide open, at least that’s what I saw from the samples online. Sure, I used a Minolta MD 35-70mm f/3.5 lens when shooting film, and I thought it was a very good lens, but this one seemed to be quite highly esteemed online, since Minolta produced lenses for Leica R system, this one being also produced as Leica Vario Elmar R 35-70mm f/3.5. The fact that it behaved well was thus unsurprising – it is a Leica design executed by Minolta, after all.

The second “kit lens” I had direct experience with was the Zuiko Digital 14-54mm f/2.8-3.5, and it was excellent. If anything, it was even better than the Minolta; quite a stellar piece of optical design, with only a few minor drawbacks, such as the onion-circle bokeh and some green chromatic aberration on contrasty areas when shot into the light. Since this lens was only a “kit lens” because it was sold in a kit with Olympus E-1 professional camera, and was otherwise known as a optically superb piece of gear, this was also not unexpected, and my experience with “kit lenses” remained great.

I had no reason to doubt my understanding of kit lenses until I got to test the Olympus E-500 camera with its ZD 14-45mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens. While was not as good for closeups as my ZD 14-54mm, it was otherwise almost identical. The colors were clear, sharpness was excellent, and other than the cost cutting being visible from the cheaper materials, optically speaking this lens was great, and especially great for the money.

I was pretty shocked, but shrugged my findings off – it was Olympus, after all; they are known for making excellent lenses, and even their cheap plasticky kit lens must be superior to those of other manufacturers. After all, they don’t produce them by the boatload like Canon for their entry-level cameras.

By that point, however, a conclusion was starting to form, because I made quite a bit of poor images with good lenses when I didn’t know what I was doing, and I also made quite a bit of good images with stuff that would be deemed “entry-level”, but the true shock happened when I bought a Canon 5d, the camera with the best and sharpest sensor at the time, and just for shits and giggles I bought a used EF 35-70mm f/3.5-4.5 lens for 40 EUR or so. It was very old (made in 1987 as a kit zoom for the EOS 650, the first one Canon made for the lineup) and very heavily used, also obviously very plasticky. I quite rightfully expected it to perform terribly, especially on a high-resolving sensor of the 5d. I took it one day for a walk to take pictures of my kid.  I quite expected the results to be fuzzy, resolving less detail than my 5MP Olympus kit, because, after all, the Olympus lens was very sharp; I even called it “the shit lens” before even trying it out.

What I was shocked to see is one of the most highly detailed, crisp-sharp portraits I have ever seen, anywhere, by anyone with any kind of equipment, period. (note: the illustrations here are not representative of the actual raw files due to compression and reduced file sizes)

This is not shot from a tripod, stopped down, or in any other way cooked up to make the lens perform well. I basically opened it up, extended it to 70mm, put the ISO at 400 because the light was dim, focused on the eye and took several pictures. The shocking part happened at home, when I opened the files in the raw converter and saw the detail on the zipper, eyelashes and the fabric of the cap. I quite literally never saw anything this sharp, and I already tested the EF 85mm f/1.8. Far from being a plasticky thingy that would do a disservice to the mighty 5d, I could actually bet that it outresolved the sensor by quite a margin.

Still in shock, I went online to see if I can find any reviews of this lens, and of course, it was universally poorly regarded – low resolution, CA, vignetting, all kinds of blah. It was actually so poorly regarded that very few deigned it worthy of even reviewing it.

And so, I went on to use this “shit lens”, as I continued to call it, in part due to its plasticky design, but now mostly in mockery of the online photographic community, and took some of the sharpest, most colorful and atmospheric images I ever made. It was my favourite landscape lens on the 5d, because of both its range and the incredible color and details it resolved. Sure, it has very nasty flare and bokeh is quite harsh at portrait distances, so I had to keep it within the range of parameters it liked, but when I did, it was absolutely stellar.

There was a conclusion that brewed in my mind, and at some point it came out: “hey wait, those people online are actually completely full of shit”. The fact is, you can make any lens look bad. All lenses can take shitty pictures. However, it’s not actually hard to get even the cheapest lenses to take great pictures. Also, the myths about “sample variance” are also likely caused by very inexpert use.

At some point I decided to test my hypothesis. I went online to check which camera-lens combo was the least well regarded and considered unworthy of even an amateur who wants his pictures to look decent. The consensus seemed to be the Olympus Pen E-PL1 with its kit lens, the 14-42mm f/3.5-5.6. The camera had “high noise” and the lens had the plastic mount, collapsible ultra-cheap plasticky design, poor aperture and range, and low resolution, according to the tests. So of course I proceeded to take some of the sharpest 12MP nature shots with it, rivalling the 5d.

To add insult to injury, that lens also had excellent closeup capability, which made it incredibly versatile for almost-macro shots:What about the high noise on the sensor? Well, yes, the sensor is very noisy at ISO 1600 and above, and I don’t recommend using it at those settings. However, there’s something else that I noticed in the dpreview lab test: the on-sensor CMOS noise reduction is very conservative, meaning that it doesn’t aggressively de-noise the RAW files; essentially, it doesn’t remove chroma noise by desaturating the files and killing all the color. As a result, the colors this sensor produces are deep, “meaty” and quite suitable for my kind of nature photography. The sensor is also very sharp and detailed. As a result, something that looks like a toy and is routinely dismissed by the “discerning”, “advanced” users is actually a great camera.

“I can’t see anything on this display, this is terrible.”

Sure, it has flaws – no viewfinder, which means you can’t see shit in bright light, which is when I used it the most. Slow electronics. Display with very poor outdoor visibility. Terrible ergonomics worthy of Sony. All in all, the stuff that doesn’t contribute to image quality, but does contribute to your ability to actually use the camera to take pictures. So, I retired it, and, having proved my point about kit lenses and entry level cameras, bought Sony A7II full frame mirrorless camera with the FE 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 kit lens, which, you guessed it, is universally poorly regarded online, and proceeded to use it to shoot the most detailed, colorful landscape shots I have ever made.

The lens itself, of course, is excellent. Colors are excellent, contrast is excellent, sharpness is excellent, and any defects are minor. Is it a perfect lens? Of course not. It’s quite slow, and has poor close focusing distance, making it quite poorly suited for closeups and portraits. It is, however, a stellar performer for landscape photography and for portraits in context. But if you’re ever seen with one in public, your reputation as a photographer will never recover. 🙂

As a conclusion, people are full of shit.