I have written often about my deep respect, love even, for my 75mm f1.8.

My Bokeh king, low light champion and portrait master, this lens is one of the core 4 lenses* I use daily.

But……

This winter I am having regular and annoying issues mounting the often cold lens onto a warm camera body. My day usually consists of moving from a warm space, through a cold one, then back to a warm one, and sometimes, such as a recent shoot of the school production, a humid one.

The 75mm invariably stays colder than the other lenses, being all metal, and lacking weather proofing, it fogs up on the rear element more often than not. I dismount it, let it clear, remount it and within seconds, fogged up again. It is quite nice “70’s” style soft focus, but not practical.

The pro lenses are sealed and most of my other primes are either plastic bodied or not employed in these situations, so no issue. I have started replacing it with a 45mm in the winter months. The plastic barrelled lenses do not seem to suffer as much from this issue.

If I do need to use the 75mm, I will endeavour to temperature stabilise it, but that is not always possible.

*Core kit is the 12-40 and 40-150 Pro with 25 and 75 “fast” lenses. Sometimes the 12-40 is replaced by the 8-18, but only if the light is predictable or the space restricted. In bright light, I may also switch to the 75-300 kit over the pro lens to save weight.