Good glass on a cheap SLR?

That canon is refreshing the designs of sime lenses still doesnt make lenses a consumable on the level of a body. The 100-400 mentioned above has been out more than 15 year, the rebel line gets updated every 2 years and slightly longer for top bodies.

There are only so many new tricks one can pull to bend light in new ways. So there is lots of room for improvement in a lens system, but the jumps involved are unlikely to be massively huge even after a decade or more.

Good glass tends to go from awesome to just a little more awesome and refined. I know several people working with lenses from the 70's to produce stuff that you would be hard pressed to guess were done with gear that old.

Digital sensors however... Get trumped by leaps and bounds every few years. We are getting to the spacial resolution point where the relative effective changes are slowing greatly. (Differences we can expect between the 5D2 and the 5D4 aren't likely to be nearly as huge as the differences between the 5D1 and 5D3 were.) I buy glass expecting to happily use it for 10-30 years at least, but I assumed I'm going to upgrade my digital sensors every 4-5 years, and then ended up replacing my first digital camera even sooner than that.

Luckless wrote in post #17297359
Good glass tends to go from awesome to just a little more awesome and refined. I know several people working with lenses from the 70's to produce stuff that you would be hard pressed to guess were done with gear that old.

This is very true.

I have several lenses from the 70's and 80's that are wicked sharp wide open at F1.4 and F2. Optically they are superb. But they do not have the multi-coats of today so they don't quite handle flare and contrast the way a modern lens does. I still use them though. I don't have a modern 50mm of the 6 I have.

Very best,

When was the last real big jump in technological refinements that were commonly applied to optical systems anyway? Seems like the late 80's, mid 90's, brought in the expectation of durable multi-coated lens elements, and since then about all we've gotten has been minor improvements on that theme.

Kind of feels like much of the development in lenses has been centred on the idea of improving them economics wise, rather than a focus on improving optics themselves.

My take is that the classic "glass before bodies" received wisdom was born of the film era and most directly applied to that. Since all cameras could use the same film, lenses mattered more.

For a while in the dSLR earliest days, you could almost argue that bodies mattered more than glass. Each successive release brought significant improvements in image quality, and the OEM's stratified features between the bottom and top of the line quite strongly.

Now....perhaps even or moving back to a 'glass before bodies' system. New cameras keep coming along, but to me the sensors are stagnant and the feature sets are distributed pretty well down the line.

Luckless wrote in post #17297359
Good glass tends to go from awesome to just a little more awesome and refined. I know several people working with lenses from the 70's to produce stuff that you would be hard pressed to guess were done with gear that old.

A lot of good glass in the 70s was awesome until digital sensors came out. Only a few "more awesome" lenses from that era can outresolve a 36 MP sensor, and they are now called "surprisingly super awesome"

Canon is coming up with new versions of many lenses (mostly zooms) before releasing a 40+ MP camera, and my educated guess is that they perfectly know these lenses are not able to run the MP race.

I think that "glass before sensor" is the new wisdom

Lenses back in the 1970s are still legendary today for their quality but some that I have experience with were crap compared to lenses of today. For instance, the SMC Takumar 500mm f/4.5 was so expensive it was out of reach of most. But it only had 4 elements and the CA was so bad you could see it in the viewfinder. I also had the SMC Takumar 100mm macro. It was not bad, but my Canon 70-300mm non-L with the 500D closeup lens was sharper.

The improvements in lenses has been slower than in bodies, agreed, but nevertheless has been amazing. The biggest development IMO was multicoating. That allowed assembling very complex lenses with more and more elements. Aspherical elements and elements made of special glasses like fluorite also have made big strides.

Most of my lens collection will be changed out this year, reason enough for me to feel that glass being forever is wrong, certainly for me.

I'd take a 5D (ii or iii) with a 40/2.8, 50/1.4, 85/1.8 or 100/2 before I'd take a crop with an L lens.

tough question. given the same lenses a camera like the 6d will be a marked improvement over any cropper especially noticeable at ISOs above, say, 400.

i'll shoot my 5d III at iso 6400 without hesitation. if I'm in a situation where i must shoot my SL1 over ISO 800 I figure I'm using the wrong camera.

CheshireCat wrote in post #17297502
A lot of good glass in the 70s was awesome until digital sensors came out. Only a few "more awesome" lenses from that era can outresolve a 36 MP sensor, and they are now called "surprisingly super awesome"

Canon is coming up with new versions of many lenses (mostly zooms) before releasing a 40+ MP camera, and my educated guess is that they perfectly know these lenses are not able to run the MP race.

I think that "glass before sensor" is the new wisdom

exactly. of course the same guys who bag on canon's new zooms will also criticize the quantum leap in sensor technology (45mp) when it arrives.

Well, I ended up getting a 6D with the 24-105mm lens, and I love it. I can already see the improvements I was hoping for. Cant wait to take it for a walk tomorrow while the family while we (possibly) go christmas tree chopping tomorrow.

DreDaze wrote in post #17297102
yeah the 100-400L MK II is coming out...but the 100-400L is still a good lens, and has been around for a long time...

The problem is the old lens will hardly be able to resolve the new sensors.
I don't think that buying a used 100-400 now makes sense, if you plan to upgrade to a 40+ MP body in a couple of years.

CheshireCat wrote in post #17300373
The problem is the old lens will hardly be able to resolve the new sensors.
I don't think that buying a used 100-400 now makes sense, if you plan to upgrade to a 40+ MP body in a couple of years.

i don't see the sense in not buying a lens, because it might not resolve well on a new sensor for a camera that hasn't even been introduced...

let me know when canon comes out with a 40mp camera...and then we'll see how it performs on the camera

Davevw3 wrote in post #17300327
Well, I ended up getting a 6D with the 24-105mm lens, and I love it. I can already see the improvements I was hoping for. Cant wait to take it for a walk tomorrow while the family while we (possibly) go christmas tree chopping tomorrow.

Glad you're enjoying it! I do find it funny you still didn't say what lenses you had, though.

40+ mp sensor has already been produced. I'm told 45mp body will be out soon. I probably won't be an early adopter but I will adopt