So Ive been shooting on a Sony a6400 for a few months now mostly just walking around downtown Chicago and taking random street shots and family stuff on the weekends. The kit lens is officially driving me nuts in low light and I need a proper daily driver prime or zoom before a trip to Seattle next month. Budget is around 600 bucks max. Ive watched like ten different YouTube videos and read all these Reddit threads saying the Sigma 30mm f1.4 is the ultimate budget king because of that sweet background blur. But then other people swear by the Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 for the versatility even though its way heavier and blows past what I wanted to spend. Im so torn between wanting that super blurry bokeh from a prime and just being lazy and wanting to zoom in when a dog does something cute across the street. If you had about 600 bucks and needed one lens to live on your camera 90 percent of the time for travel and street stuff what are you actually picking
TL;DR: Grab the Sigma 30mm f1.4 DC DN Contemporary and dont look back. Honestly, switching from the kit lens to that thing felt like night and day for me downtown. I was stressing over zooms too before a big trip last year, but lugging a heavy lens around Seattle all day gets old fast. My shoulders were killing me after day two with my older setup. That little prime lives on my body now and never leaves. It just works well in dark alleys and restaurants without cranking ISO into garbage territory. You wont regret the low light upgrade.