What are your favourite lenses.

What are your favourite lenses, and why are these lenses special to you?

Here to hopefully start the ball rolling, these are my choices, both past and present.

Starting back in the film era, the Tamron 300 2.8 was my standard jazz lens. I still have it as it it is too battered and bruised to have nay meaningful SH value. I could not afford the original Nikon 300 2.8. This lens allowed me to get photographs, that I believe I have never bettered. The lens was constantly set to 2.8

Another old lens I valued was the Nikon Ai 180 2.8. This was my dance and theatre lens. It was considered to be bery good optically in its day

When I used M43, the Panasonic 100-300 was a favourite lens that let me do really long lens pictures without al the bulk of a larger format lens. The little 12-35 2.8 was another favourite. I was never interested in the bulky heavy Olympus 2.8 zooms. The Olympus 7-14 was one of my biggest purchasing mistakes.

My current favourite lens is the Nikon 24 PC. This lens really opened up the world of architectural photography for me. It also has a rendering that none of my other lenses can match. It is my most used Architectural photography lens.

A few weeks ago I would have put the Nikon 24-200 here, not for any optical merit, but for the sheer usefulness and practicality of this lens. The 28-400 has replaced the 24-200 as a generally practical lightweight option for travel and hiking. It is also good for architectural details. Coupled with the 14-35, I have a huge range of FL options that fits into my little rucksack when I hike in the mountains, or do some casual tourism. It also helps to keep the weight of my camera bag down when I do a Architectural photographic expedition with my shift lenses. For details the 400mm long end help cut down of keystone distortion

All my choices are about the usefulness of a certain lens and how it allowed me to do things I could not do before. Sharpness and other optical factors have never been paramount in the choice of a favourite lens.

all time fav has to be the olympus 14 150 mk1,

current tamron 28 75 2.8 g2 and the 70 180 2.8

You certainly di some brilliant stuff with that Olympus lens. I had the Panasonic variant, it was brilliant for bike rides and stuff where I wanted just one lens.

My favorite lens is the one necessary to get the shot.

That said, I tend to gravitate to the extremes. 50mm equivalent is my least favorite and least used focal length, even with zooms. But I use 9mm fisheye, 600mm (on 1.6 crop) and 2,000mm (on full frame) pretty frequently.

The lens I've loved using for many years is the nikkor AF 180mm f/2.8 D ED.
A small and very light 180mm, a real pleasure to carry around, this is a lens to keep for life! 😍

nikkor AF 180mm f/2.8 D ED by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Pretty face by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Sleep Well my love by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

She by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Bewitch by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

It's dinner time by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Kiss by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

And me! by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Meditation by Marc Aubry, sur Flickr

Mine is the Ai version, used to death with a focusing rubber adapted from some other broken lens. I must try it out someday to see how good it still is.

It was my most used lens for more than ten years of professional theatrical photography.

Yes, that was basically what I said in my OP. My favorite lenses have always been my most used lenses, that allow me to do certain things well.

It looks more like he did war reporting 🤣

Hi,

I, too like the Nikkor AF 180/2.8. it's my night auto racing lens. I have the AI version as well, but the helicoid grease stiffened up as is pretty common with those.

My next two favorites are the 105 and 135 F2 DC lenses. Used a lot inside bowling centers for professional tournaments. My wife being one of those Pro Bowlers. So, no flash allowed. Can't even tote in a camera with a pop up flash. The choice of which one I used depended on the layout of each bowling center.

All three used first with a Kodak 620x and then a 720x and, more recently a Nikon Df.

My most used lens though isn't a high performance model. It's a Nikon 28-105 zoom. Just good enough performance for most uses. And it sports a handy half life size zoom capability.

All of these are screw drive AF, and the first three have precluded me from considering any of the Nikon Z series mirrorless models.

I returned to Medium Format anyway, and several lenses are favorites over there, but I'll leave them out of this even though I do have a tilt and shift adapter for those to mount on a Nikon F. They are not used that way very often.

Stan

For landscapes I like my Rokinon T-S 3.5 24mm.

For up close I like my Nikon PC Micro NIKKOR 85mm f/2.8D.

For shallow DOF I like either my Tamron SP 45mm f/1.8 VC or SP 85mm f/1.8 VC depending on the desired AOV.

For walking around I like my recently acquired Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-120mm f/4G VR.

For reach I like my Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 VC.

For overall character and blazing fast AF I like my Nikon AF-S VR NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G.

Other lenses have come and gone, mostly NIKKORs, but these are the ones I have now that stand out for me.

A good selection, but I am curious about why you like the the 24PC Rokinon/Samyang.

I had this lens for a while, before I bought a 24PC Nikon second hand. It was nice and sharp, but I could not get on with the apparently low contrast, which sometimes was a blessing, other times a curse.

The Nikon 85mm PC, is a lens that I sometimes think about getting. I just wonder how much I would use it, for my photography.

It is hard to pick, most lens that are not special to me I just don't keep
The Nikon 200-400 F4 II just because I use it so much for wildlife and its MFD
Nikon 28G 1.8 For street and landscape
Nikon 50G 1.8 general use
Nikon 45 PCE 2.8 mostly for shift but the odd tilt
Nikon 55 S 1.2 Just got this one I love it for B/W
Nikon 105 2.5 mostly for flowers and people
Sigma Art 24 and 30 1.4 Landscape
Sigma 150-600 S it is cheaper and has a very nice rendering for what it is and take it places that I don't want to take the 200-400

I just picked up a Nikkor 50mm f/2.8N Enlarger Lens for reverse mount macro

Changes every week. Nearly. This week it's my Lumix 50mm f1.8. Last week it was my Lumix 14-28mm f4-5.6. Week or so previous, it was my Lumix 85mm f1.8. It's a bit like the weather here, always changing :)