Hang Gliding. Lookout Mountain, GA. Vivitar Series One zoom.
This is pretty much a dead issue these days, but when I began in serious photography in 1969, zoom lenses did not have a good reputation. They were slow, and not very sharp. I did not have a zoom lens for my Nikon cameras, and when I dumped the Nikons and bought into the Olympus OM system, I bought a complete set of prime lenses ranging from 21mm to 135mm, but only one zoom, a 36-70, which was handy, but not especially good.
My first good zoom was a Vivitar Series One 70-210mm f3.5, which I used on my Olympus cameras to photograph the World Cup International Hang Gliding competition on Lookout Mountain for Glider Rider magazine in the early '80s.
A man of Mayalan, Guatemala. Early morning. 80-200mm Vivitar zoom.
Time passed, and zoom lenses continued to improve. In 1989 I used another Vivitar, an 80-200 f4, extensively in my documentation of the remote mountain village of Mayalan in Guatemala.
I later had a Tokina 100-300 mm f4, which I used in my documentations of several African countries and in Eastern Europe in 1990. It was a very fine lens, but large and heavy. When I went to India and other Asian countries in 1992, I took only four prime lenses -- 24, 35, 85, and 180.
In 1993, when I moved from Olympus to Canon, I began to use zoom lenses most of the time. A particular favorite was the 80-200mm f2.8L, known as "The Magic Drainpipe." A great lens, but when it developed a mechanical problem, I switched to the light and very sharp 70-200 f4L. For mid-range zooms, I mostly carried the Canon EF 24-85 f3.5-4.5 or the EF 28-105 f3.5-4.5, a lens not highly rated by some, but which was used for at least half the pictures in my Rock City Barns book. No one ever said the pictures were not sharp enough.
As the couple kissed, the priest grabbed the bouquet and waved it around.
This is my all-time favorite wedding photo. It was made in a cathedral in Atlanta, using the Canon EF 70-200mm f4L zoom lens on my old Canon EOS 5D Classic camera.
When I switched to Fuji in 2017 I tried several different combinations of lenses before settling on a kit of two primes and three zooms. The 27mm mostly stays glued to my X-Pro1 for casual walking-around photography, and the other prime is a 60mm f2.4 macro, which is a special lens for close-up work. The 16-80mm f4 is the lens that stays on my X-T3. and my telephoto zoom is the 55-200mm f3.5-4.5. A 16-50mm f3.5-5.6 stays on my X-T20 as a backup or when I don't want to carry anything heavier.
Zooms nowadays are plenty sharp, at least for the kind of photography I do, and it's much easier to carry a pair of zooms than a selection of prime lenses in various focal lengths. Also, I find the ability to zoom very important in framing each photo exactly as I want it. I could always change perspective by moving closer or backing away (what some call zooming with the feet), but I often find that only a zoom will give me the exact perspective I want.
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Photography and text copyright 1980-2025 David B.Jenkins.
I post Monday, Wednesday, and Friday unless life gets in the way.
