guide for buying a lens that will be helpful for you to choose the perfect lens

guide for buying a lens that will be helpful for you to choose the perfect lens

If you are passionate about photography, then you must know the importance of lenses. In every type of photography, the most essential part of the camera is to use the right lenses. It is important to achieve the perfect shot. Also, you can maximize the use of your camera by the interchangeable lenses, and you can turn your photography skill to amateurish to professional. Hence, you have to choose your lens wisely. If you are shooting from a Nikon DSLR or Canon DSLR, you have to buy the lens carefully to get some masterpieces. Now, in this article, we will provide the ultimate guide for buying a lens that will be helpful for you to choose the perfect lens.

Step 1- Consider the Focal length-

The focal length is the distance, measured in millimetres. This distance is measured from the centre of the lens to the sensor when you keep the subject in focus. Just keep in mind that the lower the number, the wider the shot. On the other hand, the higher focal length offers a longer zoom.

For buying the perfect lens, you have to consider the focal length. Keep in mind that the higher focal length, the more zoomed lens. Different focal lengths have different situations. It is all about buying the right lens for photography. Buy the lens by depending on what kind of photography you want.

You have to focus on the various focal lengths to choose the perfect lens. If you want to get fit into your frame, you can look for the wide-angle focal lengths such as; 14 mm, 20 mm, 24 mm, 28 mm, and 35mm. If you want to get close to your subject, you can go for a telephoto lens that comes with the focal lengths from 50 mm to 100mm.

Step 2- Consider the type of lenses-

As there are different types of lenses available in the market, you have to get proper knowledge about the different types of lenses.

Ultra Wide Angle 14-24mm- The ultra wide lenses are considered as speciality items. The range of these lenses is not get included as part of the kit lens. These lenses can create such a wide angle of view while you are capturing an image with an ultra wide angle lens. With a wide and ultra wide lens you, not only you will get the complete view of the scene; instead, you can put yourself in the centre of it. If you want to click some portraits, then you should not go for such lenses as these lenses enhance the perspective too much that the facial features appear unnatural.

You can use these ultra wide lenses for street photography, travel photography, architecture and real estate photography, landscape photography, and for photojournalism.

Wide Angle lens 24-35 mm- Here, you will get most kit lenses for full frame cameras. A wide angle lens is a point where the movement that appears to stretch the side of the picture doesn’t seem unnatural. Photojournalists use these lenses for making documentation purposes. These lenses are wide enough where you can include a lot of contexts and can maintain a realistic look in the pictures.

These lenses are recommended if you want to capture a building, landscapes, group photos, and interiors.

Standard lens 35-70mm- When you will do any shooting on the street, you can go for these lenses. These lenses are also suitable for indoor shooting. While you purchase a DSLR camera, a standard lens of 50 mm lens with f1.8 aperture will be an inexpensive and excellent addition to your package. Surely these lenses will offer excellent results. As these lenses come with a fixed focal length, these lenses can’t zoom. These standard lenses provide better results than your kit lens.

You can use such lenses when you are stepping in the world of photography for clicking general photos and portraits.

Short Telephoto 70-105mm- Here, you are stepping in the range of telephoto lenses and portrait prime lenses. It is considered a good range for portrait lenses. During photography, if you want to separate the face from the background without isolating it, you can go for such lenses.

You may use the short Telephoto lenses for shooting portraits and candid shots.

Telephoto lenses 105-300mm- The length of these particular lenses depends on the type of your camera. Most of the camera users have a crop sensor camera. It means the size of the sensor is the same for cropping the picture. If you take a photo on a crop sensor at 50mm, it will look similar to the photograph captured with a 75 mm lens. On a crop sensor lens, kit lenses range from 18-55mm. So, these lenses won’t fit on full frame cameras. If you are thinking of upgrading to professional quality gear, you will find a focal length. So, when you choose a lens up to 24mm, it will result in the loss of wider angles.

Telephoto lenses are recommended if you want to capture portraits, wildlife, landscapes, or sporting events.

Fish-eye lens- It is a variation of a wide-angle lens. These lenses offer the effect of a cross between a spherical and panoramic perspective. These lenses curve the image for extremely wide panoramic shots.

Fisheye lenses are recommended if you want to capture interior architecture, artistic shots, and unique landscapes.

Macro lens- If you have seen a picture with tiny details, be sure that the image has been captured with a macro lens. These lenses allow extreme close-up photos. You can use this lens if you want to capture intricately detailed images.

You should go for a macro lens when you want to take detailed images of insects, flowers, jewellery, with fine details.

Step 3- The proper aperture-

When you have to buy the perfect lenses for your camera, then the aperture may confuse you. Therefore, you have to know to get knowledge about aperture. Just keep in mind that the lower the number, the aperture will be wider, and the lens will allow more light to get in. When you will buy a lens, you should choose a low numbered aperture so that you don’t have to sacrifice the focal length. For example, if you use a 24-70 mm lens, select the aperture of f/2.8. It will provide a good zoom and wide maximum aperture. It means the lens will allow loads of light to get in, and it will get a shallow depth of field. If you use a Canon camera, you can see the Canon kit lens has the marking of f/3.5 to f/5.6. It ensures the maximum aperture will be changed throughout the zoom range. The 18 mm lens stop at f/3.5, 24 mm lens stops at f/4, 39 mm lens stops at f/5, and the 47 mm lens stops at f/5.6. These aperture limitations allow less light into the lens with a complete difference of 1 1/3 stops. It means aperture f/5.6 allows less than half the amount of the light into the lens.

Step 4- What all the letters mean-

When you expect the crop sensor marking, every time you will get some extra letters. We all don’t understand what those letters actually mean. Here, we will define those letters so that you can understand those properly.

MF- It means manual focus only. You can see these letters on very cheap lenses or the older ones. You can see the same acronym on all brands.

Full Frame- You can fit these lenses on crop sensor cameras. With such lenses, you will end up with the crop factor. These lenses are particularly designed for full frame cameras.

II- These letters show the version of the lens that you are using. Some lenses that are available in the market for a long time and very popular, they are not replaced completely. Therefore, lens designers take the lens and find the way to improving it by launching the second version of the particular lenses and mark those lenses as ‘II’. Here, keep in mind, the higher the number, the better the lenses.

Silent wave motor- These motors are used for faster focus with some clear advantages. Here you don’t need to move the lens while focusing. These motors have the benefit of adding a filter at the end of the camera.

Image stabilization- It’s a way to stabilize the camera or lens to capture a steady picture at slower shutter speed.

Crop sensor- This has made for a smaller camera that comes with a smaller sensor. Here you will see that the focal length also has been adjusted. The crop sensor also means the projection is smaller than the lens, and it will not work on a full frame camera.

Pro lens- Every manufacturer produces lenses so that your kit lens will come with good quality. If you choose a pro lens, you will surely find a difference in picture quality.

Low dispersion glass- These glasses are used to reduce the nasty chromatic aberration, that cheap glass produces. You may have seen it before.

Conclusion-

If you want to improve the quality of your images, the best you can do to replace the kit lens as soon as possible. You can go for prime lenses that provide better image quality. These lenses are the best affordable alternatives for kit lenses. This complete guide will surely help you to choose the perfect lenses to enhance your photography skills and to capture the best quality images.