That way the scene looks more true to real life. With this in mind, you could read and compare different lenses and their distortion for the rest of your life. One of the biggest factors in what makes a good camera lens comes down to chromatic aberration. Every ray of light that enters your camera is made up of a series of colors.
As light passes through the glass elements in your lens, the camera focuses the light to a single point on your sensor. With some lenses, they can have a hard time focusing all the colors of light leaving a certain color range out of focus. Chromatic aberration is a telltale sign of a low-quality lens. Many modern lenses have gotten better at dealing with chromatic aberration, but higher-end lenses tend to do a better job of eliminating it completely.
If you were like me, the first camera you bought came with a kit lens. What lens should you buy after your kit lens? A wide-angle zoom lens offers a little more versatility than a kit lens with a longer focal range and usually a faster aperture.
With better zoom capabilities and enhanced performance in low light, this is a no-brainer to fully replace your kit lens. In terms of overall value and enhanced shooting performance, a wide-angle zoom is a great lens to buy after your kit lens. To give you some extra lens ideas, here are other great options to consider at a reasonable price tag:.
Instead, a telephoto only covers longer focal lengths, often above 70mm. If you feel content with what your kit lens does for you, a telephoto lens is a great way to expand what you can capture. Rather than being physically close to the action, a telephoto allows you to zoom in from far away.
By adding this lens to your camera bag, you can now shoot everything from a wide-angle scene with a kit lens, to the moon rising over the horizon with a telephoto. Trying to figure out what lens to buy first is an exciting time in your photography. Using the tips outlined here, I hope you can make a more confident decision in your buying process!
Hey, I'm Brendan! I'm a professional photographer and photo retoucher who prefers dogs over cats. Around here my mission is to help you improve your photography, photo editing, and graphic design through easy-to-understand tutorials that maximize your creativity.
Versatile Focal Lengths Focal length is essentially the zoom capabilities of a lens. A Wider Aperture The aperture is a small hole inside of your lens that can adjust in size to change the effect on your images.
Has Image Stabilization Image stabilization is a feature some lenses will have that helps to keep the image sharp, even with a slow shutter speed. Limited Amount Of Chromatic Abberation One of the biggest factors in what makes a good camera lens comes down to chromatic aberration. I would narrow it down to one of two options: the wide-angle zoom or a telephoto lens. About The Author. View 30 Images. A normal prime and a telephoto zoom are two of the most common lenses to be bought after a kit lens.
Telephoto zooms are good for focusing in on specific details or distant subjects. Telephoto lenses offer a normalization of relative size which can be used to give a sense of scale. The difference between various focal lengths, taken on a full frame 35 mm-format camera. Wide angles lenses suffer less distortion than their ultra wide counterparts, but you still get an exaggeration of lines and curves.
Telephoto lenses enable you to capture subjects without having to get too close. Telephoto lenses are good for focusing in on specific details or distant subjects.
Typical uses of ultra wide angle lenses include landscape, architecture and interior photography. Wide angle lenses can still be used for portraits, just be careful not to distort faces unflatteringly by shooting too close. Because of their typical sharpness, macro lenses often make good portrait lenses too. Telephoto lenses are those with a focal length in excess of 70 mm, though many people would argue that "true" telephoto lenses are ones which exceed mm.
Marco lenses are technically those which are capable of reproduction ratios greater than Though normally used for close-up photography at which they excel , macro lenses can also be great for portraits. When working at close distances, macro lenses have a tiny depth of field. Many photographers consider a 50 mm prime as a normal lens, as it's said to reproduce an image which feels "natural" and similar to what you see with your eyes.
Wide angle lenses aren't just for buildings and large groups of people. Because different cameras use different sized sensors, there are a variety of lens formats. Superzooms are do-it-all lenses which cover focal lengths from wide to telephoto. Image stabilization allows for use of slower shutter speeds without suffering camera shake.
Extreme focal lengths and larger apertures mean bigger and heavier lenses, along with bigger price-tags. A larger maximum aperture means lens can gather more light, but it also produces a shallower depth of field. A 50 mm F1. Superzooms make good travel lenses as they mean you don't have to carry all of your gear around with you.
You'll only be able to capture some landscapes if you have got an ultra wide angle lens which can take it all in. Any lens can be used for street photography, but a focal range of around mm is often favored. You might need more focal length reach and a larger maximum aperture to keep up with the kids. Which lens should I buy next? Simon Crisp. Simon is a journalist and photographer who has spent the last ten years working for national UK newspapers - but has never hacked a mobile phone - and specializes in writing about weird products and photography technology.
Popular Stories. Load More. Sign in to post a comment. Please keep comments to less than words. No abusive material or spam will be published. Rusty Harris October 1, PM. I've got three in my bag at the moment.
CheekyChex October 2, AM. Very nice article, thank you. I only carry 2 lenses as budget is tight, Sigma tele OS, and Canon 50mm f1.
The fast 50mm lens is such a bargain everyone should have one! Australian October 2, AM. I'm no pro, but can recommend a few pieces of glass. I'm in the Canon camp but Nikkor Nikon lenses are probably available in similar specs. There are even some good third-party lenses that are also similar and may be some-what cheaper. Provides clear images ideal for daily photography. Also brilliant and fun for low light work. Given the small price you will never regret this buy.
This lense also manages my sports photography. WIth the camera set to high resolution it's easy to use digital zoom to get more out of this lens. This means I don't need a longer bigger zoom lens. Another thing to keep in mind - any quality super zoom will cost a lot, be heavy, bulky and unless you are photographing a lot of sports or nature like birds, won't get much use.
Most people won't find much benefit from these lenses. Many buy them only to regret the purchase as the money would have been better spent on a quality general-purpose lens. Happy photographing! Strauski October 2, AM. You should say greater or less depth of field compared to If composing the same image in the viewfinder, the DOF is the same with all lenses. Nahidul Islam October 2, PM.
Christopher Marshall October 2, PM. Excellent article. I'm new to the craft and art of photography and your article made the daunting task of understanding lenses very digestible and easy to understand. Thank you Simon. Atlantide October 3, AM. W Young October 14, PM. Jacob Wadsworth October 16, AM. When choosing lenses, it is important to know what kind of pictures you want to take whether it be portraits, landscapes, action shots, etc.
Different lenses have different effects based on their features. Mapleleaf November 13, AM. Being new in the world of photography I love articles like yours.
Make sure you check that backward compatibility before you purchase. Crop sensor frames are generally 1. Note therefore that at wide angle focal lengths the crop sensor is quite a big disadvantage as you may need to purchase something like a Sigma mm to get the equivalent of a full frame sensor focal length of mm.
At the other end of the focal range, the cropped sensor focal length has the advantage theoretically of extra zoom - this is debatable as to whether this is an advantage when it comes to pixel quality and sharpness but it certainly will give you the field of view of 1. Full frame lenses will cost considerably more than crop sensor lens - they optically far superior to crop sensor lenses, come in generally less smaller focal ranges, are made with higher quality materials, generally weather sealed and because of build quality can weigh a lot more.
It obviously depends on what subjects you are likely to photograph more often than others. It's very easy to kid yourself into thinking you need a case full of lenses for all eventualities and if budget is not a constraint, or the weight and size of camera bag you have to hump around then yes, sure buy them all.
However, from personal experience and talking to others you will find that over time you probably only use a couple of lenses on a regular basis. Personally, I would advise in purchasing just what you need but buying the best you can afford, thinking long term, and for those rare occasions you need a specialist or specific lens then hire it.
There are many places online now that offer affordable lens hire packages. If you use Lightroom then you may not know this but you can view all your focal lengths used across your whole library over time or selectively filter years, apertures or whatever other pointy-horned, forked-tail geeky analysis you want. Just go to the top level of the catalogue or drive your photo's are stored on. Make sure you select "show photos in subfolders" is checked in the library menu top navigation.
Switch to Grid View and then across the top you will see a tab to select Metadata. You will then see 4 tabs - you can select any value you want to filter by across all four tabs. Example: Lens : Focal Length : Aperture. As you can see, it's now possible to see a count of how many photos I have taken at any given focal length and aperture - and more besides if I want to get really geeky! Carl Zeiss are recognised throughout the industry as one of the leading optics producers.
They have an exclusive deal with Sony to only produce "zoom" lenses for Sony so whilst you can buy Carl Zeiss for a Nikon or Canon and so on they will only be prime lenses. I also have the lens extender x2 which is useful on the mm when I occasionally need more reach, however it will undoubtedly dilute the optical quality when fully extended to mm. These two lenses work for me as they give me wide angle when I need it and more often for me the ability to isolate and frame with more consideration and precision using the mm.
The downside of these two lenses is weight and cost. They are not light given the F2. Given my business is about tutoring mainly beginners in photography I am naturally asked by that group of people what's the next lens after realising the kit lens that comes with camera's these days mm really is poor quality and disappointingly soft.
My general advice is until you know which specific genres you really want to specialise in then an all-rounder lens suits most people needs. Most people meaning a bit of everything from sight seeing, portraits, landscapes, architecture, wildlife to sports.
I'm am sure you can already see the weakness in a lens that can cope with that amount of variation. Firstly it would need to cover a focal range from around 18mm to mm and an aperture from F4 as a minimum. A lens cannot be optically at it's best when it has to cover such a vast focal range so you will notice that the ALL-IN-ONE lenses that boast huge focal ranges tend to also have poor reviews in optical sharpness and other lens distortion attributes.
I would suggest something that was a compromise between the two - cost and quality. The focal ranges of 24mm to mm or there abouts are generally ok. Whilst it won't get you to that rare bird perched on a stick meters away it will give you a wide range of focal lengths and angle of views to accommodate most of your scenarios.
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