please help - whats the significant difference!?

[twistedclocks]

Deleted by user.

[dcclark]

Originally Posted by twistedclocks

i need help with my lenses :/
i'm not sure what i should be looking for in a lens, i have the lens that came with my nikon d3000 but im wanting to upgrade. maybe more zoom quality and focus power except one that doesnt require me to take out a small loan. ??

would it be the 55-200mm or 18-200mm?? would there be much difference??

thanks guys.

What do you mean by "focus power"?

The 18-200 is a very convenient lens. It's not the best quality ever, but no superzoom is. It's extremely nice to have as a "walk around" lens though.

The 55-200 is also very good. It's a bit better image quality (just a bit), but perhaps slightly poorer build.

But, overall, why do you need a new lens? Do you really need to zoom more? A good old 50mm lens is an excellent choice, usually with tack-sharp quality. You can zoom quite easily with your feet, unless you have specific needs (such as, wildlife photos).

[TFord.LTTP]

The 18-200 is convenient but you'll see distortion at both ends, it's also significantly heavier but saves you from swapping lens. For a third of the price I would go with the 55-200 since, in my time owning a similar lens, you either shoot each scene at one end or the other and usually won't go back and forth. Honestly I think the 18-55 end of that lens isn't much better than the kit lens.

If it's me I'd probably lean more towards the 55-200 VR, spend the extra $50 or less for the VR model, and try to pick up something else with the rest of the money. Unfortunately there isn't really much in options around $400 or so for that sort of lens that's a zoom that won't be too similar to what you already have. You can get great value and an outstanding lens for $200 with the 35mm 1.8 if you don't necessarily need a zoom.

A lot of it comes down to what you want to shoot of course because all these might be terrible ideas if you want to do something particular. What are you looking to spend right now as well?

Oh and I might steer you away from the 50mm since you have to spend close to $500 to get one that will auto focus on your camera and if you're going to buy a zoom lens as well then that's not the best idea.

[inkista]

Here's a basic guide to lens features and what they mean in practical shooting terms.

There are a couple of questions you want to ask yourself before you go hunting up a new lens.

1) How much do you want to spend? (Cost is usually the single most important determining factor on which lenses you can look at. And "expensive" means different things to different people, so coming up with a ballpark figure helps when it comes to giving recommendations.)

2) What is it about my current lens that frustrates me THE MOST?

3) What is it I cannot shoot with my current lens that I want to be able to with the new one?

4) Under what circumstances will I likely be using this new lens? (I.e., handheld, with or without flash. Indoors/outdoors).

These questions will help to lead you to which lens it is you really want.

There is also, of course, a question 0 you also need to ask before you even get to these, which is "Is it the lens, or is it me?" Newbies to dSLRs read a lot about the mysterious world of lenses, how some are magic, and the 18-55 kit lens is a piece of crap, etc. etc. And nearly everyone eventually falls into the trap of thinking that all they need a "better" lens.

"My pictures are fuzzy--I need a sharper lens!" is a recurring theme. It's decent logic, coming from a P&S frame of mind. But what could be at fault here is the photographer's technique, as much as the equipment. So things you want to run down on this checklist would include:

• Knowing how to hold the camera.
• Knowing how to stop down the aperture for sharpness.
• Knownig how aperture and depth of field affect focus.
• Knowing what shutter speeds eliminate camera shake blur. (1/focal_length rule).
• Knowing what shutter speeds eliminate subject motion blur.
• Knowing how to use the autofocus system to focus on a specific spot in the picture.
• Knowing how iso and noise are interrelated.
• Knowing how to sharpen in post-processing.

The 18-55 kit lens CAN be sharp. But you do have to know how to use it to get sharpness out of it.

[TFord.LTTP]

Originally Posted by inkista

The 18-55 kit lens CAN be sharp. But you do have to know how to use it to get sharpness out of it.

Absolutely, towards the end of my time with my D50 I was using that almost exclusively because the results were so consistent.

[Shokinen]

Originally Posted by twistedclocks

..moon photos are gonna have to wait :P

Actually, shooting the moon can be quite tricky. You subject is very bright compare to your background so it take practice and you must know how to work with your exposure.

[TFord.LTTP]

Originally Posted by Shokinen

Actually, shooting the moon can be quite tricky. You subject is very bright compare to your background so it take practice and you must know how to work with your exposure.

And it's moving much quicker then you realize until you go to take pictures of it!

[dcclark]

I've tried shooting the moon many times with my 18-200 -- it's ok, but 200 just isn't quite long enough to get a real close look at the moon. Even at 200mm, the moon only takes up a medium-sized part of the frame (and the 18-200 is rather soft at the long end, so that doesn't help with the clarity).

[inkista]

Sadly, I wasn't happy with the moon shots I got with a cheap 75-300, either. It wasn't until I got a 400mm prime that I started being happy with my moon shots.

twistedclocks, to go back to your original question about the difference between the 18-200 and the 55-200, yes there are differences.

The 18-200 is what's called a "superzoom". It has a very very large zoom range, and is therefore more versatile and better for travelling light. Instead of having an 18-55 and 55-200, you can use the single lens without having to change in the middle.

However. It costs about three times as much as the 55-200. It's not particularly sharp at either end of the range, and at the wide end exhibits "mustache" distortion, which is a complex distortion of both pincushion and barrel distortion combined. This is much harder to correct for in post-processing than typical wide-angle barrel distortion, or telephoto pincushion distortion (which this lens also shows). You're paying all that money for the versatility of the zoom range, not for better optical quality than what you have with your 18-55. That's not to say the 18-200 is a bad lens--for what is an extremely ambitious design, it's better than anybody expected it to be. But physics.optics do come into play when you're trying to cover that large a zoom range.

Most lenses work better as special-purpose tools. It's very hard to build a good general purpose one.

The 55-200 is probably going to give you slightly better image quality than the 18-200 for a lot less money, but you'll have to swap lenses.

Both lenses are AF-S and have VR, but are slow consumer zooms with max. apertures of f/5.6 @200mm. So, low-light and a moving subject probably isn't something this lens can handle well (such as indoor sports, or performance photography).