I like metal mounts too, but with modern plastics I would not worry about wear. From a practical perspective, a lot of parts that needed to be metal 20 years ago can now be replaced with appropriate plastic without any downsides, but the benefit of smaller size and cost.
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Yeah, that matches my experience with the Nikon DX kit lenses that I used. I didn’t see much wear after about 4 years of usage and frequent swaps. Assuming one is gentle during swaps, it will last for a long time.
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I would only be concerned if the lens was really heavy, and you left it unsupported for most of the day. I think that scenario would led to a damaged lens mount within a year or 2 of heavy use.
On that note, I got the Tamron 50-400 yesterday, and it’s… weighty. I’m defo getting a collar for this one, I really don’t feel comfortable mounting this on a tripod through the camera.
Tamron 100-400 that I was eyeing some time ago is pretty similar, but there’s an extra 150-ish grams of the FTZ, which makes it hard to justify considering the quality of the optics based on some tests
There’s an interesting new lens coming up for budget/travel full-frame shooters - a variable aperture 4.4x zoom that weighs only 305g
Slightly slower counterpart to the DX 18-70mm?
Could be… Well, we still don’t have a DX 18-70mm for Z mount, maybe we’ll see that later. Might not be that soon though, since a 16-50mm f/2.8 released not long ago
I feel like they should have brought back the 24-85 F3.5-4.5 as a cheaper kit lens like they had with the D610.
The thing is, there’s already the 24-70mm f/4 S, which is marginally shorter on the long end and basically the same aperture
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I feel like that should have been the 24-85 successor , I don’t really understand why they released a F4 version.
It’s an interesting choice to have a kit lens with a constant aperture - I haven’t seen any other brand’s kit be like that, but I like it. The only annoying thing is the collapsible design where you have to extend the lens to start shooting.
Constant aperture always seems like a compromise. Surely the lens is being artificially limited at the short lens for a given front element size.
Well, that’s basically how constant aperture works. It’s pretty cool to see how the aperture gradually opens when you’re zooming in. I’m personally not sure how well would the lens perform at something like f/2.8 on 24mm if it was not limited, but I’d image it would start to go a bit poorly on the image quality
I’m curious if any of these lenses could be software hacked to remove the limits.
I feel like that is a hardware thing not a software…?
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Yeah, I also think there’s a hardware contraption inside that changes the aperture when zooming. I don’t have the lens with me at the moment, but if it happens with the lens detached, it’s definitely hardware.
I got Sony A7IV with 24-105 F4 as kit lens.
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Oh yeah, forgot about that one
In a sense yes, but it is a design choice. It allows the lens designers not to optimize image quality in the range which is excluded.
Also, the iris blades are not necessarily at the very front. They can be farther back, in which case the “aperture” is a mathematical fiction calculated as if they were in front.