DSLR Lenses
Which lenses are best for which types of photography?
Lenses - All SLR/DSLR users, film or digital, will usually fall into one of two camps when deciding which glass to buy for our cameras;
Whatever budget you have, think about what you want to achieve both now and in the future. Get the best lens that you can afford long before looking at any other accessories like tripods, fancy filters or second cameras.
See your camera as a current working tool and the lens/s as an investment. A decent, quality lens will last a lifetime if looked after. You will upgrade your camera many times over before needing to update your lens collection. That is assuming that you stay with the same brand of camera.
Buy cheap, buy twice
Give me a cheap, old and battered but still useable film SLR camera with a well looked after and top quality lens. The chances are I could produce a pretty good an image. Maybe close to that taken with a Canon 1 series camera (within the confines of enlarging each image equally).
Alternatively, give me a Canon EOS 5Ds and a cheap, poor quality lens and I may as well use a disposable camera.
My point is that it is the lens that all your images pass through, the camera simply records that image. If the images get battered and distorted on their journey through the lens due to poor quality, you are fighting a losing battle from the minute you press the shutter.
If you haven't done so already, when buying a digital SLR, don't necessarily buy it with the kit lens. They can sometimes be sub-standard quality, even from my beloved Canon Corporation. Use the money to put towards a better lens; you will thank me for it one day!
Beginners/Amateurs
Anyone interested in SLR photography has to start somewhere. Buying your first camera kit can be both exciting and overwhelming, where do you start? What manufacturer do you go with?
Choose wisely.
Read the photography forums, buy a few magazines. You will see that the industry leaders such as Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Sony, Panasonic, Leica etc have always maintained stability. They've kept up to date with technology all the while. It is my reckoning that they will be around for a long time.
Do some research, choose your favourite (if you haven’t already) and try to buy their own brand of lenses if your pocket allows it.
Third party lenses
If your budget doesn’t stretch to that, don’t panic. There are a few good third party companies that produce extremely high quality glass for a much lower price.
In my opinion, Sigma is one of the best and they make their lenses to fit most major brands of DSLR. The past few years has seen their technology progress at a mighty rate and are fast becoming many people's choice.
Their top-of-the-range glass has HSM (Hyper Sonic Movement) technology. This allows fast, accurate and silent focussing, with high quality glass elements. They also come in a variety of sizes and prices, although I would recommend that you stay away from their earlier models that were made before their advanced research and development really kicked in.
Tamron are also fast becoming a contender and produce very reasonable quality at excellent prices. If you get the opportunity, take your camera to the shop, try the lens out and take a few shots. Take them home and process to see if they fit the bill.
The whole point of my rambling about quality lenses, is that all too often people are put off by incorrectly thinking that it is their photography technique that is poor when it is actually just the lens.
The more you progress and the better you become. Then the more you will scrutinize and criticize the quality of your own work. Give yourself a head start from the off.
Serious amateurs/Pros etc.
As you probably know, anyone falling into this category or aspiring to, should never compromise the quality of paid work with poor equipment.
Designers, publishers, wedding couples and basically anyone paying you for your time are all looking for the best quality they can get. Especially the higher paid jobs such as weddings.
An extremely important event for which you are 100% reliable for the quality you produce and are usually being paid well for. You need;
Commercial
The chances are that commercial shots will be produced for anything from glossy magazines or brochures right up to 6 metre billboards. The quality must be spot on.
Any business that has taken the time and expense to produce quality goods and products will only want to portray them in their best light. That means quality images.
It isn’t just the sharpness and clarity that a quality lens will enhance, it is also the colour rendition. This may be critical to certain products, and that can also determined by the quality of your lens.
I would recommend high quality prime lenses for any commercial work. If this is where you want your photography career to head, go for primes rather than zoom lenses.
You may well at some point wish to start uploading and selling your work on stock libraries. Even the smaller, yet fast-growing micro stock libraries are now asking for higher quality images.
The larger stock photography companies like Getty, Corbis and Alamy all need high resolution, high quality images with a minimum file size of 48-50MB. Files this big need to be clean and clear right up to the edges.
The reputation of any image library is entirely dependent on the quality of work they accept and showcase. Subsequently, any work that is not up to scratch will be refused.
Rejection of your hard work hurts so again, give yourself a head start with the best quality you can afford.
Types of Lenses
Prime Lenses
By far the highest quality producing lenses around, the prime lens is a fixed lens of any focal length from 6mm to 2000mm. The most popular primes are;
So what makes them better?
There are two main factors to take into account when judging the quality or sharpness of an image. Resolution and contrast.
A zoom lens naturally has more elements of glass than a prime. Therefore making it more prone to the internal light scattering and bouncing from these elements before reaching your camera’s sensor. This can have a direct effect on the contrast within the final image.
It may also cause a slight degradation of "Pizzazz" and clarity in your pictures. Even from the more expensive and professional zooms. Most quality prime lenses simply give better contrast resulting in a cleaner and crisper image.
Whether or not this minor difference is important to most photographers is a matter of personal taste. In my opinion, if you have the time and ability as well as a decent prime lens, use it where you can.
Pros and Cons of a Prime Lens
Pros
Cons
Zoom Lenses
You will see many professional photographers using zoom lenses for one reason alone, convenience! Popular zoom lenses are;
Sports, press and wedding photographers may all prefer to use a decent zoom lens. The nature of their profession means quick, on the spot thinking and just moments to get the shot. A quality zoom is invaluable for quick composition in such situations.
For any subject you photograph that doesn’t give you time or the ability to move about and compose the shot carefully, a good quality zoom lens will do the job producing perfectly acceptable and sometimes extremely high quality images.
Take landscape photography and a situation where you want to isolate a certain feature of the scene. Maybe you are unable to get any closer (and of course you can’t afford or don't have a quality 200mm or 400mm prime lens). A zoom will suffice.
Also, nature photography where a fixed telephoto lens may get you too close or not close enough. Perhaps you are unable to move from the confinements of your transport, hide or viewing area. A zoom again is invaluable.
Pros and Cons of a Zoom Lens
Pros
Cons
70-200mm F3.5-F5.6
This means that the maximum aperture at 70mm is F3.5 and the maximum at 200mm is F5.6. This is something to remember when using these lenses as your shutter speed will change as you zoom in or out to compensate for the change in aperture.
The more expensive zooms have a fixed aperture throughout the range so as you zoom in and out, the aperture will not fluctuate. This gives you more peace of mind knowing that the aperture you set is the one you use after composing the shot.
There may be other pros and cons for each that I haven’t mentioned, but these are the more obvious. My personal (and expensive) recommendation if you are serious about photography, is to slowly start to build an arsenal of quality lenses including the following;
Over time, if you end up with these quality lenses or near equivalents in your kit, you pretty much have any scenario covered unless you become a serious nature or sports photographer in which case a £5,000 - £10,000, 600mm prime lens is in order!
Lenses before bodies
As I have said before, concentrate on building up your lens collection rather than falling for all the camera upgrades that hit the market.
16mm Lens Photographs - By using a 16mm wide angle lens, I am able to point the camera downwards. This is to include a lot of foreground interest whilst keeping the entire background not only in the frame, but in focus too. Always remember to include foreground interest otherwise shots taken with wide-angle lenses can appear a little "featureless".
Telephoto Lens Photographs - Using a telephoto lens allows you to focus on a single aspect of any scene you may come across. Learn to look at landscapes differently by picking out different points of interest with a telephoto lens.
Zoom Lens Photographs - If you are unable to physically move to and from any subject, a zoom lens can be extremely handy. These shots were taken from my car window which I seem to do quite a lot with my zoom lenses.
