Buying your first lense - how do you go about it?

[CourtJester]

Hello all - In my process of deciding which camera body will be my first dSLR (debating the D90), one thing is for sure and that is I will purchase the body only. I am wondering how someone in my position should go about researching and subsequently purchasing his first lense for a new system. Quickly browsing popular lenses, there is a lot of confusing terminology for someone in my position. I can narrow down my favorite scenes to shoot which are landscape, macro, and I want to get involved with HDR. So, using that info, how should I go about this?

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by CourtJester

HI can narrow down my favorite scenes to shoot which are landscape, macro, and I want to get involved with HDR. So, using that info, how should I go about this?

Landscape begets wide-angle
macro begets macro lens
HDR is processing: you can safely ignore it for lenses.

As a single-lens, I'd recommend the Nikon 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 VR. It'll give you a good working range, great image quality and excellent versatility. It's got both the wide end (24mm equiv) and the long end (130mm equiv) all in one lens.

If youre gonna go the D90 route, I'd also suggest getting the 50mm f/1.8D at the same time (budget permitting).

[Mr Guy]

Well, generally speaking, there's three basic schools of thought that I've noticed on how to build your lens collection. All three are built around slightly different ways of learning, and involve more or less artificially restricting yourself in order to identify your real needs. For example, if you spend too much money too quickly, you may end up with a bunch of lenses that do what you want only sorta well, and never really learn what makes one better than another, so the idea is to impose restrictions that eventually help you finish the following statement:

Dang it, I keep finding that I need a lens that can _________________________.

You don't want to buy a lens EVERY time you run into a restriction, because if you're really serious about learning, you want to know how to overcome some of those restrictions in different creative ways. Those limitations can be excellent teachers, until you keep running into the same limitations that drive you nuts and eventually prompt a lens purchase.


The three main recommendations I generally see are in one of these categories:

1. Just get the kit lens. It's cheap, it's flexible, and it has well known limitations. Eventually, once you see the pattern emerge in your shooting, you should have a good grasp of what you want to accomplish.

2. Get a nifty fifty, ie a relatively inexpensive prime lens. While it's not flexible in terms of zoom, fast prime lenses are extremely versatile for lighting conditions and encourage you to really think about composition. The 50mm is the one people recommend because they used to be the standard walk around lens that came with film SLR. Now, 50mm is more of a portrait length on crop body cameras, which doesn't diminish their appeal. Plus, they are still cheap (on Nikon, the kind with an autofocus motor is more expensive, so you need to know whether your body requires that to autofocus). Once you get hooked on primes you'll find you want more and more of them, rather than one really nice zoom.

3. Get a very flexible all in one super zoom, and then one really good lens that is specific for what you already know you want to do. That's something like an 18mm-200mm zoom along side a very high quality wide angle or macro for those landscapes and macro work you talked about, whichever you think you'll do more of. That lets you see for yourself the difference in lens quality, and decide what's really worth it to you.


I also, by the way, highly recommend renting expensive lenses before buying them. Spending a hundred bucks to rent a lens for a week is cheap compared to regretting a thousand dollar decision.

[inkista]

Yup. What Mr. Guy said.

The problem with a first lens is there's a sort of chicken-and-the-egg thing going on. Until you've shot with a lens, it's hard to know what you want from a lens. The folks who say "just buy the body and choose the best lens..." are typically people who already have experience with SLRs and know about lenses, and probably own more than a few.

But if you don't want to go the cheap-training-wheels route, there are three sites I'd recommend taking a look at. The first one is a lens primer: gives you the low down on the basic considerations that go into purchasing a lens: focal length, max. aperture, prime or zoom, third-party or on-brand, etc.

How to Choose the Best Digital SLR Lens

The second site would be Fred Miranda's review sections. You'll get a ton of reviews from differing viewpoints about any lens. From all the differing opinions, you'll get a good idea of the individual "character" of a lens.

FM Reviews - Main Index

Thirdly, there's a site that harvests through Flickr's lens-tagged photos, and offers up samples by lens. Remember that the lenses are often used with a variety of different camera bodies and with differing levels of skill and post-processing, but you can specify a specific camera body to narrow down the choices. pbase.com/cameras will also show lens samples by lens, but pixel-peeper.com tends to be easier to use for the more common lenses. Just keep in mind that folks will tag both pics of and pics taken with a lens with the lens name

Pixel-Peeper -- Over a million full-size sample photos from lenses, SLR cameras and digicams.

[CourtJester]

As usual you have all been more than helpful, I thank you. I will take all of these recommendations into consideration and check out those links as well. This seems to be a great community!

[CourtJester]

Originally Posted by inkista

How to Choose the Best Digital SLR Lens

Thank you so much for this link. I have to admit, this was probably the best walkthrough/tutorial on any topic I have had the pleasure to read. Really made sense putting things into layman's terms.

I am now thinking about the 35mm f/1.8, Ken Rockwell is in love with this lens and lists it as 1/3 of his "dream team," and/or the 50mm f/1.8. Would it be a waste getting both? Am I overlapping features of these lenses?

Additionally, am I at any disadvantage buying a prime lens as compared to a zoom lens? Everything I read states using a prime lens involves "moving your feet" to get the shot you want, but how much does this matter? Thanks!

[radityopradipto]

Personally, I think 35 and 50 serve different purposes... 35 is a bit too wide for me for shooting portrait, that's why I prefer 50 for portrait. But that's really depends on what you're shooting anyway... Having both are a privilege, and you can do it if your budget will allow you to.

I love prime lens. They are really sharp and the "feet factor" is not a problem to me.. But sometimes I missed zoom lenses because they provide VR/IS/VC or whatever they called it... It's really helpful..

[CourtJester]

Well, what I like to shoot is landscape/buildings (wide angle shots), macro shots (would the 50mm handle this well or would I need a designated macro lens as well?), and portraits. I just want to make sure I'm targeting the correct lens for what I like to shoot!

[Mr Guy]

That's exactly the sort of question a kit lens helps you answer for less than $100 when bundled with a new body. My hunch, based on my 35 prime, is that you'll find 35mm on a DSLR to be not as wide angle as you might prefer. Of course, if you're attracted to primes, I'd really strongly consider you take a look at Pentax, which is the only manufacturer currently producing new prime designs (Canon and Nikon both used film optic formulas for their digital prime lenses) for DSLRs. Pentax's primes are extremely good, and there's a WEALTH of variety available, particularly if you are willing to get older used glass. You can also get Canon and shoot Pentax glass through the use of adapters.

[CourtJester]

Originally Posted by Mr Guy

That's exactly the sort of question a kit lens helps you answer for less than $100 when bundled with a new body. My hunch, based on my 35 prime, is that you'll find 35mm on a DSLR to be not as wide angle as you might prefer. Of course, if you're attracted to primes, I'd really strongly consider you take a look at Pentax, which is the only manufacturer currently producing new prime designs (Canon and Nikon both used film optic formulas for their digital prime lenses) for DSLRs. Pentax's primes are extremely good, and there's a WEALTH of variety available, particularly if you are willing to get older used glass. You can also get Canon and shoot Pentax glass through the use of adapters.

This is part of my question...I feel as though a prime lens makes things more difficult, but I could very well be making this up. Without experience, I don't truly understand the disadvantage of not having the zoom.