The least likely favorite. For most of my life, primes always held the top honor of favorite lens. Usually being the one with the largest aperture. However as I moved along through the hobby, subject based photography gave way to more documentary. With that comes different needs from my camera equipment. Insert the ultimate (in my opinion) potato lens. It has a positively awful variable aperture design, and the lens telescopes in and out like a cheap kit lens from BestBuy. But for the documentary style shooting lens range trumps all other factors and 28-200 covers a huge amount of range. Wide enough for most wide angle needs, and long enough to compress a background. Now I’m not saying that this lens is a slouch in all other areas, its shockingly sharp, autofocus is good enough, its light, and durable. Heck it isn’t even that expensive (Amazon) for a full frame zoom lens that’s actually good. Now back to that zoom range and why its so important. Here’s some examples of it at 28mm
As you can see from above, it does everything you want from a 28mm lens. enough depth of field to throw the occasional soft foreground in there, minimal distortion, minimal chromatic aberration. But also wide enough for most stuff while also having a f/2.8 aperture to tackle those lower light situations. The middle part of the range is also just as impressive. That sweet spot range from 35mm to 85mm ish. Allowing you to either zoom in on something of interest but more importantly allowing you to frame a whole scene. This is where the variable aperture becomes less important because its all about composition past 28mm. Some more examples of this below
Are you sold yet? There’s one more party trick up this lenses sleeve. Its probably the more underutilized feature of most zoom lenses as well. Compression. All the way out to 200mm, you can find texture in just about anything. Being a pattern recognition obsessed species, its my fall back in boring places. You can almost always find some sort of pattern to fill the frame with.
Additionally it can really add to the story telling part of the scene. Capturing the intimate details of an environment with ease. It truly is the most useful lens in my bag. If this review has convinced you to join me in the potato lens club, help support my page by using my referral links! Its the only way this website generates any income. Thanks for reading!
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