The Best APS-C Lenses Are For Full Frame

Image quality of a lens is best in the center and worse in the edges and corners of frame, right? When using a lens on a smaller sensor camera body, these worse areas of the image are cropped away? This could be a benefit in some cases?

Using samyamg 35mm f2.8 in my zv e10 and it works great! Works like a 50mm in a smaller package 😂

No other camera manufacturer than SONY offers lenses for an identical mount for different format sizes! That's no problem if you have the appropriate crop factor in head. The "equivalent" focal length (with full frame) is in each case printed an the Lens. You only have to multiplicate by the 1.5 or 1.6 crop factor and get the ("eqivalent") focal length with APS-C, that simple. APS-C user will see soon that 50 mm and 60 mm will bee much too long for "normal" photography like street, landscape, architecture and then switch to a focal length like 17, 15, or 12 mm. By the way: A zoom lens would not be the worst choice for travel purposes.

Well if you have both FF and APSc of course it s better to buy lenses made for full frame and mount them on smaller sensor. If you only have APSC only it s probably better to buy dedicated apsc lenses which are far less expensive (3rd party are at more reasonnable prices than the G pure aperture serie you are using here particularly sigma DG DN serie). All you Sony G are at around 600€/piece which is the double of what Nikon did on its economic Line (40mm f2 at 300€). Using FF lenses is like using a big car build for long travel to buy your bread and ham in your local good shop… it works but perhaps a little unnecessary :). So your title should perhaps be “the best apsc lenses are for full frame … when you have a full frame ;)”. If not it s probably wrong at least on a quality/price ratio.

Hi Matti, I don't have any of those lenses as I have APSC lenses. I do trust your judgement Matti. I think that Chopper might be about the Chinese Lunar New Year. Always nice to watch your videos. Thank you. 😊

When I began my transition to full frame, I purchased a sigma 35mm f/1.4 Art lens. It performed so well, I moved my transition forward.

Hey Matti! Hope everything is going well in Melbourne.
Regarding your video, I used to do that before I changed for a Fujifilm mirrorless system. My first digital camera was a Nikon APSC DSLR, when I got more involved and technically surpassed the kit zoom lenses I bought a few FF Nikkor prime lenses, I allways tought of it as a good investment, because when I later upgraded the camera body to a Nikon FF DSLR, I made good use of them. By the way I never sold my first camera a Nikon D3100, for that matter, and I kept 4 lenses for it the Nikon classic 50mm f1.8, a sigma 10-20mm (15-30 equiv in my D3100) the Sigma Art 30mm f1.4 (that I simply love) and one 40mm DX macro lens.
All the best my friend!

If you have both APSc and full frame in one system, this makes perfectly sense. I had the G 24mm and 50mm and these Sony lenses are simply amazing!
But if you start out and get an APSc camera, usually it doesn't make sense to get FF glas, simply because of the price. All the Sigma APSc primes are significantly cheaper, specially when shopping used.
Thanks for sharing Matti! :)

Hi Matti, you're looking very relaxed in Melbourne, must be enjoying yourself. I've long used my Pentax film lenses for double duty on my Pentax apsc digital body. The bodies are similar sizes and it works very well. I also occasionally use a full frame Canon EF 50mm lens on my apsc Canon M6 to give me an 80mm medium tele for night shooting. The lens plus necessary adapter combo is far to large for normal use on the smaller M body but as it's only for occasional use I'm happy with it.

Not quite 60mm, but a number of manufacturers used to have 58mm standard lenses on 35mm cameras. 28mm on aps-c is 42mm, which is close to the traditional most neutral (43.3mm) image diagonal. Compact film cameras often came with a 38mm lens, similar to 24mm on a Canon aps-c camera (x1.6 crop) of 38.4mm. I swap manual focus lenses between m43, aps-c (x1.5 and x1.6 crop), and full frame cameras. Anything around 40mm works for me.

I don’t have an APSC camera, but I recently got a Sony A7C,(1st gen), as a 2nd full frame to go with my Sony A7 IV. I got a great deal with the kit lens. Part of my calculus was that I could get more milage out of my existing Sony lens investment by sharing them across the two cameras, same as what you are describing, and I’d take my A7C places where I’d otherwise leave my A7 IV at home. I do. I’m shooting more, experimenting more, and I have gotten a ton more enjoyment out of my lenses.

Well the Lens Police will be on to me now...😂 I use the Sony E 10-18mm f4 OSS on my full frame as well 😅. Works fabulous from 13-18mm.

Thanks Matti, I still use MFT & really like the Sigma f1.4 trinity originally made for APSC: 16mm, 30mm, & 56mm. The 56mm is my favorite as the 16mm is big, for a crop sensor lens, & the 30mm provides an odd, in between field of view but is amazingly sharp.

I've been using vintage full frame lenses on my crop sensor cameras for years. It's a center cropped image of the full frame image. If anything, you get more pixel density on the image you get from the center of the full frame image. <-- that's the "so-called extra reach" you get using crop sensor cameras for wildlife. The only difference is in the composition. Full frame sensors let you get more things "around the edges" than crop sensor cameras, with the same full frame lens. We all know about vignetting with crop sensor lenses.

Thank you Matti.

The Sony 35mm 1.8 and the Zeiss 55 mm 1.8 have excellent performance in apcs

Full Frame lenses on APS-C are a marketing ploy when they're supplied by a manufacturer of Full Frame cameras.
Here's a cheap camera we've made it APS-C to save costs, we're not going to invest in developing APS-C lenses to deliver a professional range of APS-C Lens, so you'll have to pay top dollar for Full Frame lenses.
Then we'll produce lots of sponsored influencer copy highlighting how much better Full Frame cameras are..
It becomes a self-fulfilling truism, even if it is based on falsehoods.

Example
"~Two lens" Canon M, and other M__,

(not very quick to use but possible)

Manual lensens
1.with cheap adapter M42- EFM = crop,
2. (M42 EF)+ EF speed booster x0.71 -- efm

Of course, instead of M42 you can use any manual system that has adapters for E-FM and EF .

Similarly in every system that has a speed booster.

The down sides of full frame lenses on crop cameras: Full frame lenses are more expensive than crop lenses on average. Full frame lenses have an image circle quite a bit larger than the sensor, so stray light is introduced inside the camera body, possibly reducing contrast. The full frame lenses are larger and heavier than needed. The up sides of using full frame lenses on crop cameras: First, the double duty you mentioned, especially if you already have the full frame lenses. Second, the quality of the full frame lenses is often superior. Canon does not make L glass for crop sensor cameras, only for full frame. You are using the center of the lens which can have two benefits. First, there is less vignette than the full frame case. Second there may be less distortion from using only the center of the lens, if that lens has corner sharpness problems on full frame. I have both Nikon and Canon full frame cameras and I used to use the full frame lenses on my crop sensor cameras, but I gave away all of my APS-c crop sensor Canon and Nikon cameras. Currently, I use only full frame and micro four thirds. APS-c is not as small and light as MFT and it's not as capable as full frame. So I don't shoot APS-c any more. I do use full frame lenses on MFT (occasionally) using a speed booster.

I have a Sony a7r3, A7 and an a6600. While I do have APS-C lenses I will use full frame lenses on the a6600 just because they fit and work well. It's convenient when I'm packing the a6600 as a backup camera. I would also recommend the Sony 20mm f2.8 pancake lens for APS-C if your looking for as small a setup as can be had.

You have been a long time to change your mind Matti 🙂I have for several years used full frame Lenses on Canon APSC Cameras and now I often use my full frame Lenses in APSC mode on my Sony Cameras (61 megapixels in full frame, 26 megapixels in APSC mode). There are many more very good to excellent Lenses in full frame than there are for APSC format and there is now a lot of compact full frame Lenses you can use on APSC, so you can find a compact combo. I often advice both beginers and advanced photographers to fid full frame Lenses for their APSC Camera. For Sony there is unfortunately only few very good to excellent Lenses for the APSC format. When I started digital photography in 2007 with Canon DSLR APSC Cameras I used in the beginning only old analog adapted Lenses like Canon FDn, Leica R and Tamron SP Adaptall-2 which worked very well. My two Sony full frame Camera becomes to "four" Cameras because I also use them in APSC mode and my 10 most Lenses becomes to "20" Lenses 😊

Hi Matti. I’ve been doubling up on lenses for a while, using vintage lenses on my MFT & Sony a6500. I’ve now sold the MFT and bought an a7 mkii, so I’ll be doubling up some Sony lenses also now, specifically the Tamron 24 & 35mm FE & the Sony 28-70 FE. It’s a great way of saving money 😂.

I use Nikon FX zoom lens 70-300 mm on DX body with great results!

I have an Olympus EM5 and unfortunately it is no longer marketed in Pakistan. I recently got good deals on a Canon 75-300 and a Yongnou 50mm F2.0 also for Canon EF mount, which I am using with an adapter. They are not the best, but I couldn't have gotten one lense for twice the amount I spent on them otherwise, so I am happy. I suspect a batch of used lenses landed here and suddenly there the market had a lot of cheap options. Olympus doesn't come here anymore, so as they say "beggars can't be choosers". I am now in search of a 25mm bright lense, maybe I'll buy an Olympus and get it delivered to some friend abroad, if they are travelly to my country soon.

Nikon Z5 with Leica M 35/50/75/135 and a Brightin Star 28m also for my GX8 , adapters work well and I get to recycle my legacy gear. I just received the Viltrox, its lovely.

You nailed it; if given the choice, carrying a lens bigger than necessary is dumb.

It is ok when you are working on a budget, for example. Like adapting EF lenses to MFT cameras because you don’t have money for the MFT lenses. I get that.

But the entire point of smaller sensors is to exploit either smaller bodies, or the smaller lenses. Smaller bodies with big lenses is wacky.