Which lens should i buy first

Most people purchase the camera as a kit. This means you buy the body and the kit lens that comes with it, normally a mm zoom lens. I recommend skipping the kit lens and buying the camera body only. This leaves the question, what lens should I buy first? There are so many lenses on the market and it can be quiet daunting to shift through them all to figure out which one will help you achieve the look you want.

Thanks in advance if you decide to purchase something and support Click it Up a Notch. I tell everyone the same thing my photography mentor told me, the 50mm 1. This lens does it all for an affordable cost. I still remember the day I got my 50mm 1. I fell madly in love with it. I was pretty sure that all my images from this lens were frame worthy. What a difference in the image quality in this lens and my kit lens I had been using. I still love my 50mm but I have since upgraded to the 50mm 1.

You can read more about the difference between the 50mm 1. I took this photo the first day I got my 50mm 1. What a difference I noticed right away in my images. Read more: Must-Have photography equipment for beginners. And if you are like me, I almost fell over when I first found out the price.

Why are lenses so expensive, I thought. Little did I know that now a normal conversation in my house is, can I get this lens? It has a lot of bang for the buck. This is one of the most important features when trying to learn manual mode. Nothing is more frustrating than when you get your settings correct and then you zoom a little on a variable lens.

Once you zoom the aperture typically changes depending on your focal point and then your settings are messed up again. I love being able to focus on one aspect of the image. Some people find that the 50mm 1. Remember this is a prime lens which means it does not zoom. The only focal length is 50mm. If you are worried about the 50mm being to tight then you may want to look into the 35mm 1.

I never had this lens but I know several friends loved it. It is a bit more than the 50mm 1. This lens has all the same features as the 50mm 1. If at all possible, I always suggest people go to their local camera store to see if they can play around with the lenses to see if they like the look and feel of the lens. If you shoot with a Nikon, the 50mm 1. Check out this post to find out if you need to purchase the 50mm 1.

We did a whole series on lenses last year. Be sure to check it out! Part 1: Understanding the writing on the lens Part 2: What lens should I buy next? Glad you found it helpful! With my limited experience, if I could only buy one lens, this is the one I would buy.

In fact, when I dropped my old camera and damaged this lens, I went right out and bought another one! The nifty fifty is a huge upgrade from the kit lens! My walls are in the way! I tell friends who are interested in a DSLR to budget in the cost of the 50mm with the camera, especially if you love bokeh.

Ha ha yes! Trying to explain prime lenses to people is fun. Yes, the 50mm can be tight indoors depending on your space. Thanks for letting me know about the affiliate links. That is what I get when I work on this while my 10 month old climbs on me : Thanks! That is good that you are a researcher before deciding what to buy. Let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for this great post. Thanks so much! I love your twitter handle! I have 3 daughters myself. Thanks for adding me to your RSS!

It was the 50 mm 1. Which both thankfully autofocus. Oh bummer! Sorry you bought the 50mm 1. Glad you were able to get one that did. Manual mode is hard enough at first without trying to do manual focus on top of it :.

Thanks for the post, I love seeing what photos can be produced with what lens. This photography is harder than it looks! I love my 50mm too, but have the same problem as Laura Jane when shooting indoors.

Can anyone who use 35 mm for portraits comment on this? Thank you!! But soon I came to the same conclusion — since I use it on a crop sensor body, sometimes theres simply not enough space indoors. An what can I say — it is a really great lens! I also take a lot of portraits of my doughter and the photos just look awesome. So I would recommend the 35mm also for shooting portraits. Although the bokeh is not as good as the one of the 50mm.. I know a lot of people who use the 35mm on the crop sensor for portraits and love it!

See if you can rent or go to a camera store to play with one. Good luck :. Is the lens supposed to be noisy? Just curious. Mine seems really loud when focusing. Thanks for the super timely post! Maybe you want to contact the company and see if has an issue. Good luck! I bought the 50 1.

Thanks for the post! The advantage to the compared to the zoom lens is that it has a wider aperture. The answer all depends on each of the aspects below. Focal length is essentially the zoom capabilities of a lens.

This is a huge advantage if you want to capture everything around you, even in a tight scene. Hence why having more focal length versatility with a zoom lens is a smart idea for beginner photographers. The aperture is a small hole inside of your lens that can adjust in size to change the effect on your images. However, when you use a wide aperture you also end up with a shallow depth of field, meaning less is in focus at once.

For most photographers, having the option for a wide aperture is always ideal. In an ideal world, the aperture on your lens will be the same between all focal lengths. For most photographers, this is a big deal-breaker when trying to figure out what makes a lens good or bad.

When you have to change your camera settings just because you zoomed in the lens, it starts to get old fast. If you want to learn more about aperture and its importance in your photography, be sure to check out this guide to aperture for beginners. Image stabilization is a feature some lenses will have that helps to keep the image sharp, even with a slow shutter speed.

When you start to use too slow of a shutter speed, that movement begins to translate into motion blur. However, IS image stabilization can help to counter these movements and eliminate any motion blur from your photos. You can find image stabilization technology in a lot of camera bodies as well as lenses.

As awesome as stabilization can be, lenses with IS will have a higher price tag than those without. Since it plays such a big role in the capabilities of a lens, especially in low light, IS is another big factor in deciding if a lens is good or not. With some lenses, the light can get bent too much to the point that the image begins to look distorted. This usually happens with wide-angle lenses where the edges of the frame might look slightly skewed compared to the middle.

To see this effect for yourself, try using your widest angle lens and look around the room with it. This is lens distortion at work. Although there are heaps of lenses out there, some of them have far less distortion than others.

Lens distortion can end up being slightly distracting from your photo and start to change the look of a scene. That way the scene looks more true to real life.

With this in mind, you could read and compare different lenses and their distortion for the rest of your life. One of the biggest factors in what makes a good camera lens comes down to chromatic aberration. Every ray of light that enters your camera is made up of a series of colors.

As light passes through the glass elements in your lens, the camera focuses the light to a single point on your sensor.

The image below shows how the angle of view varies with focal length. In this instance it shows the effect of these lenses mounted on a full-frame camera. The same focal length lenses, mounted on a smaller, APS-C sensor would give a narrower, more cropped-in angle of view , and an even narrower coverage if mounted on a Micro Four Thirds format camera.

The effect is as is as though you've 'zoomed' the lens, but instead you've only magnified a smaller portion of its projected image. As a result, the focal lengths that are useful on one sensor format will differ from those that you'd use for the same purpose on another sensor. For the sake of convenient comparison, lenses are often referred to by their ' 35mm equivalent ' focal length; for example a mm kit lens for APS-C may be described as a mm equivalent.

This means simply that an mm lens on an APS-C format camera covers the same angle of view as a mm lens does on a full-frame camera. The aperture specification of a lens describes how much light it is capable of gathering. Aperture simply means 'hole'; in this context, the hole that lets light pass through the lens and onto your camera's sensor. Confusingly, a smaller number means the lens has a larger maximum aperture — a bigger hole — and therefore can gather more light; an F2.

This table lists the common aperture values that are one 'stop' apart: each value lets in twice as much light as the one to its right. A lens with a larger maximum aperture allows you to shoot in lower light, and for example take pictures indoors without using flash. Wide apertures also give decreased depth of field i. Longer lenses give less depth of field for the same aperture, when focused at the same distance.

And, because you need a shorter focal length to get the same image framing on an APS-C or Micro Four Thirds camera, you'd need a larger aperture if you want to achieve the shallow depth of field you'd get on a full-frame camera. It's worth noting that lenses are usually described by their maximum aperture value.

When you see an aperture range written on the side of a lens e. You can usually reduce the size of the aperture if you need more of your image to be in focus. Image stabilization increases the amount of sharp images you get by correcting vibration caused usually by natural hand-shake when shooting without a tripod.

In-body stabilization where the camera's sensor moves to counteract accidental movement is increasingly common, but many lenses offer their own stabilization mechanisms to compensate for shake. In-lens stabilization is especially effective when using long telephoto lenses, where in-body stabilization is generally not as effective. Many cameras can use in-lens stabilization in conjunction with their in-body systems, to provide a greater degree of correction. Image stabilization systems reduce the blur caused by camera shake, allowing sharp pictures to be taken even in low light, at long focal lengths or at high magnifications.

If you own a camera that doesn't have stabilization built into the body, you'll probably want to consider buying stabilized lenses, especially when it comes to telephotos.

The various lens manufacturers all call lens-based optical image stabilization by different names, with corresponding initials in the lens names, so here's what you need to look out for when buying:.

Having said that sensor format has a significant impact on the way lenses behave, it's also worth considering that some lenses only work on certain sensor formats. In several instances, camera makers use the same mount for their APS-C and full-frame cameras.

Some photographers start with an APS-C camera and then buy full-frame compatible lenses for it, to lower the amount of money they have to spend if they later buy a full-frame camera that uses the same mount. In general, we'd advise buying lenses that suit your needs now, rather than ones that may better suit a camera you don't yet own. Each camera maker uses its own proprietary lens mount, meaning that lenses can't be swapped across brands; a Canon lens won't fit on a Nikon body, for example, and you'll cause damage to both lens and camera if you try.

The two exceptions are Micro Four Thirds, which was developed jointly by Panasonic and Olympus, and L-mount, a full-frame collaboration between Leica, Panasonic and Sigma. Most companies are now focusing their efforts on their Mirrorless camera mounts, so this is where the newest and most advanced lenses are emerging.

Many DSLR-mount lenses can be adapted to work on the mirrorless cameras made by the same brand older designs are less likely to offer a full range of functions but lenses for mirrorless cameras cannot be used on DSLRs.

A number of third party manufacturers, including Tamron, Tokina and Sigma make lenses for other makers' lens mounts, with the older DSLR mounts benefiting from the widest support. Sony allows some third-parties to make lenses for its mirrorless E-mount system but Nikon and Canon have, so far, been protective of their new Z and RF mounts, meaning there are fewer third-party options available.

Zoom lenses have become almost ubiquitous over the past few years, and at first sight buying a lens which is restricted to a single angle of view might seem pointless. But prime lenses still have some very real advantages; compared to zooms they tend to be smaller and lighter, have faster maximum apertures, and give sharper, cleaner images.

These factors make them extremely useful for specific purposes, for example low light shooting or blurred-background portraiture where a large maximum aperture is advantageous. Almost counterintuitively, the restrictive nature of using a single focal length can encourage creativity by forcing you to visualize your composition before you shoot.

For instance, a long focal length, shot from a distance can compress your subject and the background, whereas a wide-angle lens placed near your subject will exaggerate the distance between it and the surroundings. A standard zoom is a general-purpose lens that covers a range of focal lengths from wide-angle to moderate telephoto. The most obvious example is the kit lens that came with your camera generally something like an mm for APS-C or a mm for full-frame.

It offers versatility but can become limiting when you find yourself wanting to get more creative. The kit lens can be upgraded to an optic with more range or a faster F2.

Often the second lens that photographers buy, a telephoto zoom effectively allows you to 'get closer' to your subject by enlarging it within the frame. It's therefore useful for photographing such things as sports, wildlife, distant nature scenes, or children running around playing. By narrowing your field of view, a long lens can have the effect of compressing your subject and background, often making it appear as though the background is magnified and closer to your subject.

Superzooms are all-in-one lenses which cover a full range of focal lengths from a moderate wide-angle to long telephoto.

In one package they combine the range of the kit zoom that came with the camera, plus that of a telephoto zoom, and therefore make perfect general purpose travel lenses. The technical image quality is often not quite as good as two separate lenses, and the maximum aperture tends to be small a higher F-number , meaning worse low light performance and less ability to achieve shallow depth of field.

However, for many users this is more than made up for by their convenience. A wide-angle zoom extends the angle of view out beyond that captured with the standard zoom, allowing you to capture broad sweeping vistas or architectural wonders. It's therefore a popular choice for landscapes, cityscapes, architecture, interior shots, and night- and astro-photography.

Some zoom lenses use 'macro' in their name to indicate closer-than-usual focusing ability, but true macro lenses tend to have fixed focal lengths. In general, the longer the focal length, the further away you can be from your subject. Nikon calls these lenses 'Micro' or 'MC' lenses instead, which is technically more accurate.

Fast prime lenses come in all focal lengths, from wide angle to ultra-telephoto, but what they share in common is the ability to capture a lot of light, blur backgrounds and offer high optical quality. We've traditionally found 35mm or the equivalent 23mm or 17mm on APS-C or Four Third sensors to be a pretty good do-everything focal length, in terms of not being too wide or too zoomed-in.

An F1. Wider-angle and longer focal length primes are also available, as are lenses with even faster maximum apertures F1. There are a few other aspects of build and operation which you may wish to consider when buying a lens:. Autofocus performance can vary significantly between lenses, and autofocus performance can make a huge difference between capturing the perfect moment at a sports event or social occasion and having a frustrating photographic experience.

Mirrorless camera systems are still relatively new, and there's a subtle interplay of optical design and focus motor that effects performance. For instance the ring-type ultrasonic motors that were great for focusing on DSLRs aren't as well suited to focusing on mirrorless cameras, particularly for the smooth, subtle movements required for video autofocus. As such, it's difficult to make generalizations, so it's worth checking reviews of the lens you're planning to buy.

Many modern lenses have no physical connection between the focus ring and the focusing lens elements, as was the case in older SLR and DSLR lenses. Many cameras use this to provide speed-sensitive manual focus, where a quick turn of the focus ring results in a bigger focus jump than a slow movement.

This lets you jump quickly to the part of the focus range you want, but can be awkward if you're trying to manual focus while shooting video. To get round this, some cameras offer a 'linear' focus response mode, where the focus always moves by the same amount in response to how much you turn the focus ring: letting you practice and anticipate the amount by which you need to turn the ring.