Hi how's it going? I'm Josh and I'm Shane and today we're here with MPB to talk about some
of our favourite lenses we've used over the years, what we use them for and why we like
using them. So today we're going to be talking about three lenses. We're going to talk about the
Fuji XF 56 1.2, the Sony 24-70 2.8 G Master and the classic Canon 50mm 1.8 'Nifty 50'. So
let's kick off with Shane and the the 1.2 which is this is a lens I've used
for about five years in street photography because it's a 56mm lens on an aps-c sensor
and that's the equivalent on a full frame of an 85mm lens so 85mm is very typical for
fashion for portraiture. It's a nice long focal length there's very little distortion in it and
the thing about this lens is that it goes all the way to f 1.2 so it's incredibly shallow
and it gives you a really nice subject isolation you get a very soft kind of creamy
out of focus area in the background and that's why it's used for fashion and portraiture because it
isolates the subject so effectively and that's also why I've used it for street photography.
I love that it has the uh manual aperture on there nice little feature to have yeah because it's a
Fuji lens you know they're very big and sort of manual controls so it's got a really smooth
aperture ring here and the focus ring is quite big really easy to use as well if you want to
use it manually which I don't think most people do because um you know it's a pretty good autofocus
system but the downside is it's not up there with modern autofocus systems like it's slow isn't it
yeah it's a bit slow like it wouldn't be as fast as any of the Sony lenses you're used to and it's
not as fast as any of the more modern Fuji lenses um but I find if you do pair this lens on a modern
Fuji camera like the XT4 or X-Pro3 it does it does keep up with it um it doesn't it's not really that
noticeable that it's super slow but it's just there's so much glass in this lens it's so heavy
that um just trying to move around all that glass is a bit slower than you might expect it to be and
just to have like an 80mm equivalent lens at 1.2 in such a small package like that is crazy right
yeah like you'd never find f 1.2 85 in a lens this small normally like if you look at the canon
or F85 1.2 it is huge it's about three times as big as that so yes size is a huge factor with this
it's really small it's really compact so that's why I use it for street photography as well
just to get 85 1.2 that you can use um on the streets sort of candidly people don't
really notice it it's easy to carry around it's not too heavy that's why I love this lens and
that's why I've used it for over five years and I suppose it's a bit pricey £600, £650, £700 for a
aps-c lens but I suppose when you look at 1.2 lenses for full frame like you said is
yeah it's a it's a good deal I think like for because you are getting 1.2 and that's
that's really really fast like most fast lenses go to f 1.4 but 1.2 is just that step faster so
yeah it is quite pricey at about six to seven hundred used there's something about this lens
that has a lot of character to it yeah yeah and that's not something that you can really
factor in to uh to newer modern lenses there's just something sort of special about it I guess
yeah it's an incredible lens I definitely recommend checking out especially if you're into
portraiture fashion or street photography nothing like that I think it's really good so next up I
think you're going to talk about the the lens we're actually filming with right now yeah so
we're actually filming on my 24 to 70 2.8 Sony G master lens I absolutely love shooting with a
24 to 70 lens I love that you can use it for absolutely anything you can use the wide end
to do landscapes architecture you can use the long end or 70mm to take portraits or just hone
in on details if you put a 24 to 70mm lens on your camera it's really just for me just to kind
of do everything absolute workhorse reliable you don't have to really worry about changing lenses
I just think so they're just a blast to use um like especially on commercial work where you
don't have time to change lenses because you're eating into other people's times you're very
conscious of that so just having one that can sort of do everything and especially at f 2.8 you don't
really need to go faster than that I think no I mean yeah it's nice most zoom lenses are around
f4 or 5.6 so you do get the extra stop of light with 2.8 it's obviously nothing compared to your
1.2 but for the size and weight of the zoom lens I think it's best to keep them around 2.8
and that really is probably the only reason I would ever take this lens off the camera
is just because of the size and the weight if I could get a 24 to 70 that was this size I would
probably never take it off my camera that's probably the only lens I would ever use but
for the most part sometimes it does get a bit much carrying around this big chunky zoom lens so I
sometimes do like to go for a smaller prime but uh yeah I absolutely love using a 24-70 we're using
it for video now it's a great versatile option for video because we can quickly adjust the framing we
can get a bit of a wider angle crop in yeah I love using it for video because you're not really sure
how wide you want to shoot I think it also allows you to be a bit more creative because
if you have it like if you don't have to change the lens I think you're much more likely to try
different options so you might try a wide option uh you might try you know the opposite wide
closer um yeah I think it it helps you be more creative I think and I think if you're
a working photographer just a 24/7 is just like the first lens you buy really isn't it that's
just your go-to um so yeah I love 24-70 I also had one on my Nikon D850 the 2472.8 on that as
well and when I traded when I when i moved to the Sony system I knew I had to go for a 24-70 and
that was the first lens I got yeah and you used a 24-70 for street photography as well which is kind
of unusual like not many people use zoom lenses for street photography I can only think of Martin
Parr who does that but I mean yeah I love using 24-70 for street I just had to remind myself to
switch the lens back to 24mm after I take a shot and that's something I get used to doing just so
it kind of like resets so you know that's your starting point I think that's what works for me
using it on the street yeah that's a good way of doing it so you get used to seeing in 24mm yeah
but then if you do want the option of getting closer if you missed something you can quickly
zoom in a bit but i do want to find myself just shooting everything at 24mm
so that's the Sony 24-70 f2.8 and now I thought we would talk about a lens that we both love using
yeah the Canon 50mm 'Nifty-50' older EF lenses so you've got the the really really old one which is
the EF-2 yeah macro and these can be picked up for about £55 used from MPB so it's an absolute
steel for 50 more prime lens yeah that's crazy 50mm prime f 1.8 lens for £50
that you can use on film cameras you can use on DSLR's like this 6D and you can also use on
the newer Canon RF systems with just a simple adapter um the one I have here is the slightly
newer version it's the 50 1.8 STM lens so I find that the focus is just a little bit faster in this
the focus it gets focused it's just a bit slow and it's quite loud but yeah I mean I have been
thinking about trying the that's £90 isn't it as well this is £90 it's so cheap as well yeah so
you can do anything with these portraits street photography get a nice depth of field as well at
1.8 this one in particular because it's you know a bit older it does have this slightly quite dreamy
soft look which I really like personally but yeah I can imagine that on on film would look
really good yeah it's great yeah and I use this um i've been i've used this solidly for like a year
uh when I got the canon 6D my my purpose was to use this for night photography
and using the 50 1.8 just gave me enough uh light to use at night and I got really really
good results with it um it focused at night like instantly so yeah this became one of my favourite
lenses and I found that I ended up buying more expensive lenses because I naturally thought
well more expensive is going to be better but then I always came back to this lens
so this is this is absolutely one of our best uh lens recommendations you love that 6D don't
you yeah I just use it all the time um i just love the sensor on this camera it gives you a different
sort of colour i think and it's incredible at night and with this 51.8 lens it's just a
really great really great bargain super cheap and just works can't go wrong can't go wrong
those are three of our favourite lenses why we like using them what we use them for
all of them can be picked up on MPB.com thank you for watching along and see you next time