Every Photographer knows about the importance of lenses.
A little is know or said about lenses in low light situations, except of aperture.
The aspect I want to enlighten is about how the light breaks through the lenses and how this affect colors and color volume.
For this I differ simplified between light lenses like the nikon D50mm and heavy lenses like G16-35mm or G70-200mm from nikon as sample.
Thin glasses in the D50mm that let pass a lot of light, thick glasses inside the other said lenses that let pass much less light. So the D50mm might is a great lens for night photography like events, because you can work with lesser ISO. But not a good lens for low light long exposure photography that you want abundant and well rounded colors, in twilight, sunrise/sunset and other color important situations. For this moments you want the fat, havy and bulky lenses.
Why is it like this? Its about how the different kind of lenses breaks the light.
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Just remember a glass primsa break the light in the rainbow colors
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One point is clear thinner light absorb less light than a thick lens
But the real magic happen when you analyse how the think and not so rounded lens break the light versus a thick, in comparison much rounder lens. I put a visualization of it in the next graphic;
This will even happen more times with heavy telezoom that have much more lens elements inside.
Now definitely the thinner glass let pass less light and more important what will happen to the light when I pass through the lens, the way it let pass the light through the lens and how is diffraction of the light. Its clear why the heavy lens let pass less light. thicker, rounder and break (im not sure if its the correct scientific term) much more colors comes out with much more abundance, deepness and smooth.
As sample I have a shoot here to illustrate the difference between a light and heavy lens, on the same time and same camera settings except, difference in exposuree. And important no filter is used .
Try it and see the difference, then use what you feel is best for it. Thats what I belive, work what you think is best for you.
The left picture was what you saw in sky and the fat lens while the right picture was a thin less that I just made for illustration reason.
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Dont ask me about the mirrorless. I dont tried it yet in such light situations and if ever I would switch, im sure about what will happen or if I can still use my old heavy fat lenses.
