Can’t Decide? The Best Lens for Travel | Sony 40mm f2.5
This year, I turned 40.
I’m running out of time to figure it all out.
Sony’s 40mm f2.5 on the A7C pushes the limit of how small a full-frame camera can be. The lens is only 173 grams - practically invisible - sticks out less than two inches from the camera. Aperture ring, custom controls, dust and moisture resistance. Stylish, retro exterior, and included lens hood, metallic, cold to the touch, and when paired with the Sony A7CR it’s the first time I felt like a hipster holding a Sony camera?
The catch - it costs $600 US Dollars, a thousand Australian bucks, and it’s only f2.5? Other than style, what are we actually paying for?
The 40mm f2.5 will make my Sony kit much more compact, but do I need any other lenses?
The book “Decisive - how to make better choices” made me take a long hard look in the mirror, because it’s not just camera gear.
The authors talk about 3 bad habits that indecisive people are constantly guilty of, and for me it was an aha moment.
Bad Habit 1: Binary Thinking.
I’m a prime shooter, love both 35 and 50, but can never decide between the two. Binary thinking is a flawed shortcut for our brains to focus on only two options to simplify our decision. But “why not both?”. With the very small Sony A7CR I can pack both 35 and 50mm and let the megapixels take care of the rest. I could downsize to f1.8 lenses and shed even more weight, but space in the camera bag is just half the battle. There’s still the uncertainty, if you’re using the right lens at the right time, which you can only eliminate by exploring multiple options.
40mm is a great one lens to do it all. Wide enough for most of the 35mm frame, 1 step closer for emphasis on your subject, but not as restricting as a 50mm. It’s mathematically closer to our eye’s field of view than either the 35 or 50 - nothing’s exaggerated, nothing’s too close, just a pleasing visual diary of what’s happening around you. It’s perfect for calm travel or documentary photography, which is complemented by the small form factor of this 40mm. But that compressed telephoto look with beautiful bokeh - this is only f2.5, so no go right?
Bad Habit 2: Confirmation Bias.
It’s hard to change our preconceived notions even in the face of new information, and my bias is this: I don’t want any lens slower than f2. It’s why I don’t own any f2.8 or f4 zooms, and why I shoot with primes in the first place. I only like f2 if the lens is 50mm or longer, because I always wanted the option for beautiful bokeh, and low ISO.
Is f2.5 a dealbreaker for 40mm?
A minimum focusing distance of 28 centimetres means you can get really close for blurry backgrounds.
Is the bokeh the prettiest?
No but you can still recognise what the blurred out elements are supposed to be - an isolated figure, shadows and silhouettes, imposing architecture.
Travel should be about the environment and this will make me walk a bit further, explore new areas to get an interesting frame. During the day, f2.5 is totally usable and at night a shutter speed of 1/50 of a second or IBIS should keep ISO low.
This lens breaks my bias towards slower lenses, but none of that matters if the image quality suffers.
Why didn’t I go for the 35mm f1.8? It’s an older lens, a bit heavier, no aperture ring, and a little soft in the corners compared to both this 40mm and my f1.4 G master. It has some chromatic aberration - just like the 40mm - but better controlled in the 40mm.
The 40mm is a bit sharper, and Sony packed it with their latest tech - two linear motors, compatible with maximum burst shooting and tracking autofocus on their latest bodies, focus breathing compensation for video.
Lenses aren’t just optics anymore, they’re a tiny supercomputer that gets out-dated with each new cycle. Really impressive engineering given how small this lens is, which also helps to explain why it’s so expensive. But the ever so slightly better image quality and feature set is NOT the reason I chose 40 over the 35.
I did this to avoid the final bad habit in decision making.
Bad Habit 1: The Status Quo Bias.
The status quo - our comfort zone - can be too powerful to resist. I love 35mm - just like I love 50mm - but the reason I went with the 40mm rather than the 35mm f1.8 is because I already own the 35mm f1.4 G Master.
Two 35s would have made packing my camera bag even more complicated, never breaking the status quo of my creative boundaries. That’s why my current plan is to have this 40mm glued onto my camera as my EDC.
Happy shooting everyone, talk soon.
Jack.
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