camera systems - How much do lens lineups vary across DSLR platforms?

I was reading this question and recalled how often I hear the advice "choose your lenses and then choose the body that matches" in the context of deciding on a camera platform (Nikon/Canon/Pentax/Sony, etc).

I shoot Nikon and so I study a lot about Nikon-compatible lenses. From what I see though, Canon seems to have an equivalent lens for most Nikon lenses. For example, there's the nifty fifties and the pro midrange zooms. On top of that, there's lots of lenses from 3rd-party manufacturers that come in versions for each system/mount.

I agree that lenses are a more important investment than a body; they have a huge impact on image quality and a longer product life cycle. And there's lots of variation between lenses within a platform's offering.

My question is: how much lens difference is there between the different platforms? Do you really pick the lens first and then pick the body that goes with it?

Answer

The lineups have a lot of overlap but there are considerable differences as well:

• Canon and Nikon have the most lenses by far, followed by Pentax, Sony, Olympus and Panasonic, in this order.



• Canon has the largest range of focal-lengths, from 8 to 800mm with Nikon a close second, going from 10 to 800mm. This is followed by Pentax with from 10 to 560mm and then Sony with from 10mm to 500mm. Olympus has the shortest lineup, covering 7 to 300mm only.


• Canon has the most weather-sealed lenses, the most stabilized primes and the most weather-sealed primes. Pentax has the most affordable weather-sealed lenses. Sony and Panasonic have both exactly two weather-sealed lenses, everyone else has more.


• Pentax has most of the smallest lenses and most of those are of extremely high-quality. Pentax lenses can save size and weight since they only need to be designed for cropped-sensors, although legacy lenses have full-frame coverage.

Specialty lenses:

Keep in mind that only Canon, Nikon and Panasonic need stabilized versions of their lenses, everyone else gets stabilization from the camera body.