Lens advice, please

[Laurie Caddell]

Today I took 'the plunge' at an otherwise downbeat small camera show, when I bought an S2 for £850 (that's about $1360, US friends) plus VAT.

First thoughts with RAW are that the PS7 plug-in is hideous and the FinePix LE (all we get in the UK) converter is much better but much slower – need PS CS!

Some of my ancient (even manual focus!) Nikkors don't seem to work too well on the camera, so I need to invest a little more money! I need wide angle to medium tele, and have followed the progress of the new Nikon 12–24 and 24–120. Are the latest versions better or will I be 'safer' with the much praised Sigma 15–30mm. And any experiences with either the new Sigma 12–24 and 24–120 lenses, please? Or should I 'go' Nikon?

I'm hoping to ditch my medium-format Mamiya RB 67 for RAW from this camera (this doesn't seem unreasonable from images I've seen posted!), so need best definition possible.

Very many thanks in advance for all advice tendered to these many questions!

Laurie

[S_Leeper]

You need to go quality with the lenses. Nikkor, Sigma & Tamron all have some excellent & some not so good lenses.
In building your lens inventory, budget & shooting situations will have a signicant impact on your choices
i.e. for some a 14mm prime & 28-70 is their preferred combo. For others an 18-35 zoom, 50mm, &/or a 85mm & 70/80-200 zoom is it. For me (a hobbist) a sigma 20-40, nikkor 35-70 & sigma 70-200, along with a couple of primes/macros provided me with what I consider to be a fairly economical & good quality focal length coverage.

[RedSlug]

An amazing price. Congratulations!!

[Wichita Wayne]

My S2 is great but it will not replace my old Hasselblads and it probably won't replace your RB. Besides the price of used film cameras is too low right now. By the way I lugged an RB all over central Europe and got some great pictures. We switched to Hasselblad when we started taking wedding pictures and I love them even more than I loved the old RB. We might sell off a few 'blads but we will keep some around for the times that killer quality is needed. Besides lugging them up and down the Alps builds character.

As far as lenses go I have a lot of older Nikkor lenses that won't fit on the S2. The lenses that I use on the S2 are a 50mm F-1.8, a 60mm F-2.8 D, a 28-200 D zoom, and a 70-300 G zoom. All of them are Nikkor. My son-in-law uses Sigma lenses and you cannot tell the difference between his shots and mine. He mostly uses a 28-200 Sigma that cost half as much as mine. He also has a 70-300 Sigma zoom, manual focus, that he really likes. At weddings he shoots the 28-200 on an S2 and the 70-300 on an F-100 with B/W film. I usually shoot with the 28-200 on an S2 and a Hasselblad with an 80mm F-2.8.

I would really like a 20mm lens and have been looking for a good deal. My wife used an old Vivitar 20mm on a film camera but it got a fatal scratch while they were climbing in Colorado last summer. It worked great on the S2 but you lost all metering and had to shoot manual. Not a hard thing for an old Hasselblad shooter with lots of hand held meters. In fact the more I use the S2 the more I shoot it in manual and ignore all that fancy stuff that everybody complains about. Good pros don't need all that stuff anyway. My wife can even out think the camera' auto exposure system without using a hand held meter.