What Camera Lens Should I Buy?
Like a painter’s brush and paint, I would argue that a photographer’s two greatest tools are foremost your artistic human eye, and secondly, the exchangeable lenses on your DSLR (or mirrorless camera) that give you creative play. Like a girl in a Kate Spade shop, you might want ALL the options… but your wallet might want you to prioritize your purchases. So if you’re in the market to buy a new (or your first) camera lens, here are some questions to guide your search:
There are 3 main features that distinguish lenses from one another.
1. Whether they are Zoom or Prime
2. The focal length range they cover
3. Their lowest (widest) aperture setting
1. ZOOM vs. PRIME
Zoom - Offers a range of focal lengths - allows you to “zoom in and out” by turning the zoom ring on your lens. These lenses are heavier (because they contain more optical components)
Prime - Single (or “fixed”) focal length. These result in technically “better” image quality, but unless you’re a super nerd the difference is usually negligible.
One of my pet peeves is when people get snobby about prime lenses. While I do have prime lenses that I love and use, they’re not automatically the best tool for every situation. Zoom lenses give you flexibility. If you’re shooting an event or trying to photos at your kids at a soccer game, you don’t necessarily want a prime lens because you only have one focal length available to you, so if you want to get closer or further from your subject, in terms of how close you are in your image, you need to physically move yourself closer to the action to get a closer shot and that’s not always an option.
There are expensive and inexpensive versions of both of these types of lenses.
2. FOCAL LENGTH
The definition of focal length is the distance between the center of a convex lens or concave mirror…zzzzz... I sound like the teacher from Charlie Brown. Let’s put this in tangible terms.
Long focal length - a long focal length will have a zooming-in effect, think of a telescope, and bring objects that are far away from you closer to you in your image. “Long” usually refers to focal lengths larger than 70mm.
Short or wide focal length - (also called wide angle), lenses have the opposite effect. Your image will include a very wide take of your scene. Short/wide usually refers to focal lengths smaller than 50mm.
One quick note: cropped sensor cameras also have a zooming-in effect. Camera’s with an APS-C sized camera format, have a crop factor of 1.5x….which still sounds confusing. Basically, take any focal length, say 50mm, multiply it by 1.5, and the result is the functional focal length you would be seeing if you were shooting on a full-frame camera. In practice, this means that to achieve the classic look of a 50mm, a lot of folks with cropped sensors opt to buy a 35mm instead.
3. DISTORTION
A discussion about focal length wouldn’t technically be complete without a mention of distortion. Distortion is the result in which things that are supposed to be parallel in real life do not appear that way in the image. I’ll save the nitty-gritty of distortion for another day, because creating distortion on purpose can be a fun addition to your arsenal, but let’s leave it at this - super wide lenses will introduce distortion into your images, which may or may not be what you’re going for.
Any extremes on either end get expensive…. SUPER WIDE lenses (wider than 17mm) and SUPER LONG lenses (longer than 200mm) are going to cost you exponentially more money than their more moderate counterparts.
3. APERTURE OPTIONS
The lowest possible aperture that you can choose is actually a function of your lens, not your camera. Any lens can go as low as f/5.6, but anything smaller than that is somewhat of a luxury that will depend on which lens you purchase.
There are two reasons you would care about this feature - #1. You are frequently shooting in low-light situations, and you want to maximize the amount of light you can let into your camera. #2. You like the blurry background / bokeh effect (i.e. iPhone portrait mode), and therefore you want the narrowest depth of field possible. If you’re like me - both of these are things I care about! So this lens feature is super important to me. It’s also the one that really costs you $.
4. MIND YOUR MOUNTS
For Canon users, keep an eye on purchasing EF-S lenses. They were designed to be light and play well with cropped-sensor camera bodies and if you’re living there and you love it, carry on. If you think you’ll want to upgrade to a full frame sensor at some point, just know that any EF-S lenses you have can’t come with you. It’s like the “All squares are rectangles, but not all rectangles are squares” thing…. All EF lenses can be used on cropped sensors, with EF-S mount systems, but you cannot use an EF-S lens on an EF mount system.
Here are a few mainstays in my camera bag and how I use them:
“The Workhorse” 24-70mm (f/2.8)
It’s great for capturing a group of friends or the scope of a scene at its shortest focal length, but it’ll also give me a little zoom boost at the 70mm. If I was photographing candids of my kid zooming around my living room, I’d go for this one in case they come charging up close to me or if they run away from me and I want to get a closer shot (or a more flattering portrait).
“The Class Act” 50mm (f/1.2)
This lens has the lowest aperture of all the lenses in my camera bag, going down to f/1.2 (and costing upwards of $2k). You can get a 50mm lens that goes down to f/1.4 for around $300, so for the wide aperture, it’s a great buy. You need to be able to get close to your subject since this is a fixed focal length, but because I love a shallow depth of field for portraiture it’s a staple.
“My Right Hand” 70-200mm (f/2.8)
For this lens you actually have to make sure you’re not too close to your subject, it’s my telephoto that lets me get intimate photos of a wedding ceremony without being up in everybody’s business. An intense nature photographer might want something with a longer focal length, but this lens is already probably overkill for a lot of people. I do shoot a TON of my portraiture with this lens; the way it compresses space is flattering for the figure and creates a beautiful backdrop. For my pro purposes, my lens goes down to f/2.8 but beware that for both this and my 24-70mm, combining zooming power WITH a wide aperture will cost you a pretty Kate Spade penny.
Any place I can save $$$? Don’t forget to look into manufacturer refurbished options! Just like buying refurb from Apple, you can usually get your gear under a manufacturer warranty for a certain period of time but with a reduced sticker price! Remember, purchasing more gear is NOT the most important way to improve your photography. Getting back to that foremost tool that I mentioned at the top of this post... your eye and brain are your most powerful tools, and you can develop them using whatever lens you have in front of your camera. If fact, I’d love to send you my exclusive guide, 6 Ways to Start Taking Better Photos TODAY! For an in-depth photography crash course head over to NSP Photo Academy to find out about my online course, Camera Bootcamp: From AUTO to WOW or sign up for my newsletter to get even more exclusive resources sent straight to your inbox!