for the photographers

[focalintent]

Would you rather have:

• a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens
  
• an 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 lens
  

The f/2.8 allows for much lower light/faster shooting. The 80-400mm gives you that much more reach. (Assume that, optically, the lenses perform roughly equivalently, e.g. roughly same levels of vignetting, distortion, softness at certain ends/apertures, etc...)

(Why isn't this a poll? Not only do i want to know which folks would prefer, i want to know the whys : )

Comments

[tk7602.livejournal.com]

i would go with #2.

at the low end, 70 is essentially useless for anything even vaguely close up. so that leaves me mostly looking at the high end.

when i'm zooming in on something far off like that, thus far it has almost always been relatively well lit, and someplace where i can have a monopod/tripod. so the lower light and faster shooting aren't all that meaningful, given the special purpose of the lens.

but, that's based on what i tend to do when i'm zooming. for example, stonehenge wasn't really going anywhere, and it was outdoors on a sunny day. so for that, being able to get that much closer to the details in the stones would be neat.

[sol3.livejournal.com]

*nod* - i'm leaning a bit towards #2 - but damn have i developed a f/2.8 bias. Not having a good zoom to shoot surfers this week is what's putting me in the market for a new zoom. (The 5d shows flaws in the 75-300mm USM III like no tomorrow ) :

BTW - the Tokina 28-70mm f/2.6-2.8 AT-X Pro II lens is -nice-. It's fairly close to the canon 28-70mm f/2.8L that i rented a few weeks ago - but you can get it off of ebay for under $200. It's a bit slower to focus than the L lens (but also $800-1000 less) but seems to be fairly close in image quality. (While the L lens is, I will grant better - the tokina blows my 28-105mm USM II lens out of the water, quality wise)