First Never sell a good lens.

Second When evaluating lenses, look at the pictures, not at the lens.

The Leica Lens Designer's Precept (apocryphal) The only way to test a lens is to use it for a year. Everything else is a shortcut.

Third You can make successful photographs with any lens, no matter how bad.

...And The corollary to the Third Law You can make terrible photographs with any lens, no matter how good.

Fourth You get no extra credit for using a technically excellent lens.

Ctein's Axiom If you can't see it, it doesn't count.

Fifth You can never spend too much money on a lens.

Corollary to the Fifth Law If a lens works for you, it doesn't matter how little you spent for it or how little it might be esteemed by others, it's still the right lens.

Sixth The proper number of lenses to own is the intersection between the sets "all the lenses you need" and "the lowest possible number." (Another way to say this is "enough but no more.")

Seventh All lenses give their gifts.

Commentaries These are just a few things I've repeated about lenses over the years. I do believe that lenses are less important now than they used to be. Digital imaging isn't quite as much about the lens image as film photography was.

The First Law merely acknowledges that lenses are individual and not interchangeable. I once had a friend who loved an old lens that had a cracked front element; it showed distinctive flaws that suited his work. It was stolen from his car (along with a similarly useful broken camera he had also learned how to use to good effect), and it took his photography many months to recover from the loss. The best lens I ever used I sold, and I tried to replace it twice, with no success. The second and third just didn't quite have the magic of the first. Lest you think I was imagining the look of the first, a year or so after I sold my lens I saw some unlabeled photographs on the wall of a local gallery, and just loved the look of one photograph made by one particular photographer. I decided to try to find out what lens he or she used, and asked the gallerist whose picture it was. It turned out to be the very same guy I had sold my favorite lens to a year earlier. I had recognized my old lens from an anonymous picture on the wall. Never sell a good lens.



The Third Law and its Corollary merely exposes the bankruptcy of the "online project" of manic, obsessive testing of lenses for technical perfection. It might be an engaging pastime, but it just doesn't matter. Some pictures need technically good lenses, others don't. Some need particular or peculiar bad characteristics in order for the picture to be good. What we do is: a.) learn our lens's characteristics, and b.) put them to appropriate use. There's absolutely no reason for a lens to be good in order for the picture to be good. Great photographs have been taken with plastic Holga cameras, camera phones, toy cameras, damaged lenses, simple lenses, very old lenses, and on and on.

Ctein's Axiom indicates that you can detect differences in testing that you cannot see in photographs, and, if you can't see them in photographs, then the differences don't make a lens "better" than another.

Although it may in most cases not matter, you never get the chance to take the same picture over again. So the Fifth Law advises you to use the lens you want to. A lens you like and have confidence in and trust. It doesn't matter what it is. If you're fine with a kit zoom, use that. If you have your heart set on a Leica lens, get it. Whatever you want, whatever you need, you will do better if you just do what you have to do and get it. It only hurts once.

The Sixth Law acknowledges that most of us do better with lenses we've learned thoroughly and know well, rather than with infinite plasticity and limitless options. Your mileage may vary; we're all different. I started teaching photography in 1984 and I've been at it in one form or another ever since, and my observation of many people over many years is that most people (not all, most) do better with a practical minimum of equipment rather than having too many options. But that's not set in stone. These are just my laws, not immutable laws of the Universe. :-)

The Seventh Law says that no matter what lens you use, you're going to take some good pictures with it. Photography's like fishing: if you keep at it, sometimes you catch one. Even with a bad or strange lens, sooner or later you'll find the picture you were meant to take with it. All lenses yield their gifts.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2019 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

Here’s the situation

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)

Featured Comments from:

Ivan Paganacci: "When I realized Fourth, I started living by Third."

Andrew Lamb: "Eight law: the Arthur Kramer law. The sharpest lens in the world is a tripod. I first read that on CompuServe. It really helped improve my photography."

Peggy C.: "That First Law. How true! My first 35mm camera was the Pentax K1000. It came with a 50mm ƒ/2 lens. I loved that lens and the camera as well. I learned them inside and out. When I upgraded to the LX I kept that lens. When I finally upgraded to a DSLR, I kept that lens. Used it more than any other lens I've ever owned. And then I stupidly sold it when I upgraded to my Pentax K200 because I bought a Pentax zoom lens when the kit lens turned out to be a piece of, well, you know. Figured, I no longer needed the 50mm. Stupid, stupid, stupid!! So many times I've wished I had it back. I even bought a new digital 50mm. It's a good lens. It's a very nice lens, but, it just doesn't feel the same. The person I sold my lens to no longer has it. She can't remember who she sold it to. Every so often I hunt online lists and even eBay for that lens. I'll know it when I see it. I used silver paint to mark in focus lines for my astro-photography. It was always spot on. Dang how I miss it. I still hope to find it...someday."

Mike replies: And you know the really sad thing is that it's sitting in the back of somebody's closet and never gets used. May you be reunited!

Bruce Alan Greene: "Mike, a very good column! As a professional cinematographer, we usually go out with what ever lenses we need for a project and then some. And these usually cost between $30,000 and $200,000 for the set. (We just rent them:).

"But I'm also a still photography hobbyist, like most of the readers here. And for that work, I only have a few older, cheaper prime lenses. For 35mm digital work, just 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 100mm. And I usually just take one or two lenses with me. This fits my 'style' if you will and I don't think the final image will change much, or in any significant way, if I used a $2,500 lens vs. my $300 lens. Yes, my photos have lens imperfections. They are not sharp in the far corners often. There's chromatic aberrations. The 50mm at ƒ/1.4 is imperfect in every way!

"And in the cinematography world these days, as the digital cameras have become ever more perfect, the trend today is to use older, imperfect lenses! Cinematographers are often looking for the 'worst' old lenses they can find! On my last project, we used a set of lenses that could not focus, wide open, on a flat wall evenly. And then we added frosted filters in front of them to boot. And we had some pretty good chromatic aberration as well.

"But really, in the end, the choice of lenses equaled only about 5% of the look of the image at best. It's really about what is in front of the lens, and what is behind the camera.

"If anyone is interested in what the movie looked like with these lenses and filters, I've cut together a few clips here.

"But I doubt you'll look at this and think about the lenses used...."

Don B: "I have to take issue with your 5th rule in this new world of electronics. My favourite, and best, and most expensive lens was the Olympus 150mm ƒ/2. A year ago, focus stopped. Nowhere in the world could the electronics be fixed, and Olympus no longer supplies the parts. The best-built lens ever, but its life support has gone. Like a dead revered friend. It is now landfill."