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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
08/06/09
08/06/09
If you take portraits by natural light I would agree that a 50mm f1.8 or 1.4 is the best thing for the money. If you take more environmental photos, interiors of museums and churches, etc., a fast 35mm or wider might be better although much more expensive. The Sigma 20, 24 and 28mm f1.8 lenses have always been very tempting to me although they are a bit pricey and heavy.
08/06/09
08/06/09
You should own just one lens: the plastic fantastic 50 f1.8, until you can drop some money for some better ones.
08/06/09
Can't wait for the new 35 and 85mm 1.4s to come out net month. Although my checkbook certainly could stand to wait....
08/06/09
My only contention is on the small point the 50mm f/1.4 is better than the 50mm f/1.8. I won't deny that build quality is far superior, but optical quality is not. At f/2.0 and higher, they are both unbelievably sharp, and nearly impossible to get a whole subject in focus at wider apertures. I agree that you get what you pay for, but I think you picked a bad example.
I would compare the kit EF-S 18-55mm to the EF-S 17-55mm(which i will get after the wide and macro lenses) They are like night and day.
08/06/09
I've owned both the f1.8 and f1.4.
You nailed that the F1.4 has a better build quality.
It also has ringtype USM, for FTM Focus.
Additionally it has 8 blade aperture for much smoother bokeh. The F1.8 has a 5 blade aperture, and the bokeh looks pretty bad.
It's hard to fault the 1.8 though, its only $70, and the images are fantastic. But, the F1.4 is a better lens.
08/07/09
08/06/09
So where does the focal length multiplier (This is actually 1.4, not 1.5 as you said) come from? This is the way to compare the effective field of view of a DX sensor with a lens against a full frame 35mm sensor. The reason photographers like using the effective focal length is because they are generally familiar with how the focal length equates to the view they want to capture. Getting to a 35mm equivalent number is an easy way to do this.
So, if you put a 18-200mm lens on your camera, be it a DX lens or not, it has a focal length of 18-200mm. Now, at 200mm with a DX sensor, the 35mm equivalent "effective focal length" will be 280mm. So, the image you get would have the same field of view as a 280mm lens on a 35mm sensor/film camera.
So why designate the lens "DX"? The only thing that really means is that is only designed to expose an area the size of a DX sensor. When placed on a camera with a full frame sensor, DX lenses will work but may have vignetting or other image aberration beyond the DX sensor size. Since they don't have to expose as large an image at the film plane, the optics don't have to be as large or complex, thus making the lenses less expensive.
So what about "zoom factor" or what does a point and shoot with a "10x" zoom mean? The "X" number is actually the range of the lens in terms of maximum focal length divided by minimum focal length. So, if at the widest field of view your point and shoot 10x lens has a 6mm focal length, then at the narrowest it will zoom to a 60mm. Since these cameras have a tiny sensor, that ends up being the 35mm equivalent of, say, a 35-350mm lens. So back to a DX camera, if you want to "zoom in" as far as your "10x" point and shoot, you'd need a lens with at least a 350/1.4 = 250mm focal length. If you want to take a shot that is as wide as your point and shoot, you'd need a 35/1.4=25mm focal length.
Now you see why the Nikon 18-200mm AF-S VR zoom is such a nice, versatile lens, huh?
08/06/09
@John Laur: I love my 18-200. Picked it up used in Japan on vacation two years ago and haven't had a single issue with it since. Well, except for tripod failure (thanks manfrotto!) that resulted in scrambling the secondary focusing assembly. -_- Luckily, no glass was harmed during the 4ft skydiving session it took to the tarmac.
08/06/09
One thing i might add to the article that's worth investing in for lenses is a PROPER CAMERA BAG. spend the $100 on a bag that holds everything down tight and keeps your gear safe. No good spending money on lenses and not a proper place to keep them.
One of my absolute favorite lenses right now is my Nikon 28mm f/2.8. Its fast enough for most dim rooms and not so wide to be unnecessary (e.g. 18mm is sometimes a bit much in my opinion), but gives you a really great perspective. Same goes for the 35mm, but I don't have one (yet)
For beginners with a little bit more money to spend I would recommend the 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6. its a little slow for dim indoor stuff, but is really good quality, solid build, VR, and beats the hell out of the max 55mm on most kits. Only thing is it runs almost $600, but I think its well worth it. When I can only bring one lens with me that is always the one I grab.
I also have a 50mm f/1.4mm which I adore, but only use for still life, nature, and portraits. I don't take it out on the town with me too often.
Next on the list of lenses to get is a 10.5mm (so wide it's fun) and a 70-200mm
08/06/09
08/06/09
yup, a B+W UV filter is the standard for just having something in front of the glass. I'd rather crack my $20 filters than chip the lens itself.
I cant count how many times those have saved me. I used to be the Photo Editor for my college paper and we changed a UV filter once every 2 weeks almost!
08/06/09
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08/06/09
I'm looking for a d60 and was wondering what lenses to start up with. Besides from the 18-55 VR kit lense, I was looking at the 55-200 VR and maybe a sigma 10-20 for wide angle. I neglected the portrait lense, but this article reminded me.
08/06/09
08/06/09
08/06/09
This lens plus the 50mm 1.8 (cheap!) as a short tele on DX for portraits and night shots are the two lenses I own, and I recommend them heartily. I'm not even lusting after the 35mm 1.8 as much as I once was, because most of the time that I care about the bigger aperture, I find a want a short tele anyway.
I just spent a week in Hawaii with these two lenses, and I didn't even really need a camera bag. Actually I used the camera bag, but I left the charger in the hotel room and had plenty of room to stick a sandwich in there. :)
08/06/09
That said, I'm kicking myself for having bought any DX lenses. They are cheap, but I like being able to interchange my lenses with a film camera and you never know when you might upgrade to an FX sensor, like I did. I now have an 18-200, a 10.5, and the 17-55 f/2.8 that are sort of useless. Maybe if I sell 'em all I can get the 24-70 f/2.8.
08/06/09
I have looked at TONS of sample images and its almost impossible to tell a picture with this lens vs the Canon 24-70mm side-by-side. I know there are people out there who swear by "L" glass, but I would definitely give this lens a look over at least since the price is definitely right and the IQ is outstanding.
[www.tamron.com]
08/06/09
1) who are the 'most experts' that agree that 18-55 is the best range? And honestly, not all kit lenses are 18-55. The D90 comes with an 18-105. The FACT is that purchasers of kit cameras tend to shoot pictures of people, and they want a portrait lens, and a group-photo lens. So 18-55 gets you the wide group shot (18mm) and the close face shot (55mm).
2) the focal length is NOT "how close the subject appears, in mm". It is, instead, how close the center of the optical system is to the image plane. (At least, this is a more accurate description. a 200mm lens doesn't make things look like they're 200mm away. Oy. It's that a 200mm lens has elements whose distance from the image plane (or sensor, or film, or etc) is effectively 200mm when the thing is focused to infinity.
3) APS-C and APS are meaningless except when talking about film. Canon uses that label, Nikon uses FX and DX (which is similarly confusing, since DX cameras surely don't shoot DX film, any more than APS-C cameras shoot APS film). While it is true that most digital SLRs have smaller CCDs that approximate the size of an APS-C negative, bandying the terms about blithely doesn't help teach people anything.
4) Don't think "Focal Length" when discussing crop factors. Your 200mm lens isn't suddenly resolving at 300mm. You're not gaining visual acuity. It's just that the image it displays is cropped by the sensor. Say "crop factor".
5) You could explain what good uses for aperture would be. "good for some" doesn't cut it. For portraits, you want a larger aperture (lower f-number), to blur the distance and "isolate" the subject. It's not about indoors and outdoors. It's about whether the subject is moving or not, and whether you want deep or shallow focus.
6) Damnit man, don't be an idiot. A "normal" lens (50mm on a 35mm DSLR) is called "normal" because it closely approximates the apparent size of subject when seen with the human eye. You can see this by looking through your viewfinder, then looking peeking over the top. It doesn't enlarge or shrink the apparent image. A 35mm lens actually makes things smaller, but provides the angle of view on a DX/APS-C sensor that a 50mm lens provides on a full-frame sensor.
7) Your ultra-wide-angle thing is complete and utter bullshit. Just... complete. The difference is that since the CCD is smaller, things coming in from the edges of a full-frame wide-angle lens get focused perfectly well, just OUTSIDE THE EDGE OF THE SENSOR. The lenses are so expensive because to replicate the field of view of an 18mm full-frame lens, you need about a 12mm lens. These are expensive because, as you bend the light way off to the side like that, the glass tends to spread the spectrum out, so you get color fringing. It takes meticulously ground aspherical elements to correct that. Those ain't cheap.
What you've also done is conflate the problem with the fact that, on a Digital sensor, there is an array of tiny lenses over the sensor that focus the light onto a wee little photodetector. What happens at the edge of the fram (not just for wide-angle lenses, but any lens) is that, if the microlens is directly in FRONT of the detector, the incoming light gets sent off slightly to the side. So they're designed to be ever-so-slightly offset to allow a more direct path.
8) Macro lenses are pretty much entirely dependent on the front focus distance. Most zoom lenses these days can get pretty damn close to a subject, but they're not very sharp.
Why even write this? It's pointless. You could've just posted a link to dpreview.com or bythom.com or... god, anywhere. The wikipedia, maybe. Hell, you should've USED it, instead of calling these nebulous experts and then writing whatever college-freshman grade pabulum you thought sounded about right.
08/06/09
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I have been planning to buy my first DSLR in the next couple weeks... Now, if only someone could help me decide between the D90 and the 50D... :)
08/06/09