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| twsottawan Sun 2nd Nov 2008 12:42
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Selecting a Lense.
A camera lense is probably the most important component of a camera system in determining your results and its quality and what you do with your camera. There is a wide choice in selecting lenses for most brands and models of cameras. What will get you the biggest bang for your buck may be a difficult choice.
Here are some things to consider when thinking about purchasing a lense for an SLR or DSLR.
What is the budget for this purchase. Lenses vary in price from a couple of hundred to a few thousand dollars in price. If you only have two or three hundred to spend, don't start thinking about high end 'Pro' quality.
What do you want to do with this lense. Do you want an all-in-one lense that will do everything you would want to do with a camera, or will this lense be an addition to a collection, which will have a more specific purpose.
A lense for capturing wild birds in flight a few hundred metres in the air is probably not a good choice for architectural work, or head and shoulder or 3/4 length portraits of people. Knowing what genre of photography or what subject matter you will use the lense for is a good start to making a purchase and a selection.
What maximum aperture, weight and focal length, or focal length range do you want for this lense.
Wide aperture f1.0 to f2.8 (this is the diameter of the lense as a ratio of the focal length) are considered fast, or have more light gathering power. If you are not anticipating working in available light conditions, or do not require very bright view finding, or exceptionally fast and responsive auto-focus, you will not want to spend the extra money for this class of lense. For subjects which are moving, or sport photography these lenses will allow a higher shutter speed at the lower extremes of aperture to give action stopping,. These lenses are also heavier and bigger in size. If you are carrying this equipment on foot for long distances you may not want this type of lense. If you will be holding the camera and lense in your hands for extended times you might also consider a smaller aperture lense with less weight.
More normal maximum apertures are f3.5 to f5.6. Generally the smaller the maximum aperture the less expensive the lense will be.
The focal length determines the magnification of the lense and thus the working distance of the lense from the subject.
For people portraits a range of 28-135mm (in a 35mm equivalent) will cover most situations for a posed portrait.
For architecture a superwide angle to short telephoto (24 to 90mm) will cover most subjects. A perspective correcting lense is not really necessary if you have a photo editing program that corrects perspective. The PC lense plus the software will give you a wider range of correction with less loss of image area. Fish-eye or ultra-wide lenses (10 to 16mm ) are special purpose and will not get a great deal of use. I have given these lengths in 35mm camera equivalents. Some digital cameras have lenses which or 0.6 or 0.5 times this length because the area (diagonal length) of the film plane or sensor is smaller.
Macro lenses for close ups of smalls subjects are specially made to focus at close distance of a few inches from the lense to perhaps a metre. They are less well suited to general subject matter. Often they are designed for critical flat plane subject matter. They will have less aberations and focus more unifiormly over the whole two dimensional image/subject plane. You do pay extra for this.
Landscape photography might require the fullest range of focal lengths from super wide to very long telephoto.
The wider the range of focal lengths for a zoom, the more complicated the lense design will be and the more compromises it will have on image quality, such as sharpness, aberations or distortions. At the high end of expense, manufacturers take some pains to minimize these compromises.
Single focal length lenses are generally sharper than zooms because of the simpler design and fewer lense elements they are built with. They are no longer in great demand because of their more limited use. If your subject matter is also limited in scope, one or more of these lenses might be a good choice if it is well matched to the requirements. A zoom lense of the same price as a single focal length lense is still not as sharp. If you are a perfectionist about sharpness go with the single focal length design. Zooms are now very good, compared to early designs of decades ago and you should not have any inhibitions about getting these.
The quality class of the lense will be determined by your budget and what you want to do with the lense.
More expensive lenses have a better quality of glass and lense coatings, which gives better contrast, color trueness and sharpness.
If you anticipate only viewing your images on a 1024 by 768 pixel electronic display then you may settle for a less expensive and lower quality lense than if you plan to have 16X20 inch custom lab prints made from your images.
You will want to match the lense quality to to the target media that you will display or publish your images on. Spending the max on a lense, when the images will not be printed larger than 4X6 or 4X5 inches at newsprint quality or 1 hour photo print shop quality probably is not a good choice.
Consider the type of auto-focusing subsystem the lense is built with. The type of servo motor for shifting the position of the forward elements to focus is better, faster, quieter and more responsive with most more expensive classes of lenses. At the lowest level of cost a lense may have manual focus only. These are not to be overlooked, if they are a good fit for your application.
Consider whether you will want an image stabilization feature in the lense. If you don't anticipate doing hand held photography at shutter speeds where the number in fractions of a second are smaller than the number of the focal length in use, or the subject is not moving then you may not want to pay extra for this type of feature.
If you are investing in a lense, consider what the return on the investment will be.
If your photographic work generates income, then you may want to match the capital cost of your equipment to the expected level of income it will generate.
Your customers may also have expectations about the technical quality of your images. Getting a match with this and your equipment will save you money or headaches at a later stage in dealing with them.
If expense or income is not an object and you just want the best, then use the other criteria in your selection.
If the equipment is for hobby work only, then the amount of expected use in relation to cost might be a consideration.
Don't be afraid of looking through the technical specifications for a lense given by the manufacturer. This information will give some basis for making comparisons.
A review or recommendation by someone who has the same lense you are considering buying may be the decisive information . This information is subjective and not absolute but may bring some drawbacks to your attention, before you spend your money.
Most retailers are reluctant to make a refund or exchange on a lense, because you made a bad choice, or changed your mind about which one you want., after it is out of the box and packaging,
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| Jagged PRO Sat 8th Nov 2008 03:39
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That's "lens" by the way.
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| Pondy PRO Sat 8th Nov 2008 20:00
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Or Len's if you knicked it.
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| twsottawan Sun 9th Nov 2008 19:01
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Originally posted by Jagged:
That's "lens" by the way.
Thanks for your invaluable comment. I'll remember to conform to the American English spelling from here on in.
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| LisaSam67 Sun 9th Nov 2008 21:18
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Ok I have to ask. Is there two acceptable ways to spell it?
I used to spell it lense and then someone on Flickr corrected me and I fixed my tags after looking at my fisheye lens box and noticed it was spelled Lens
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| Pondy PRO Sun 9th Nov 2008 21:56
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According to me:
Lense = pretentious
Lens = correct
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| megmet PRO Sun 9th Nov 2008 22:34
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Originally posted by Pondy:
According to me:
Lense = pretentious
Lens = correct
See......we can agree on something !!!
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| twsottawan Mon 10th Nov 2008 10:51
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Originally posted by LisaSam67:
Ok I have to ask. Is there two acceptable ways to spell it?
Could you be right that English is spoken and written the same way all over the world and that way is the way you speak and write it?
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| Doody PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 12:19
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Jacket image of the Compact Oxford English Dictionary
lens
• noun 1 a piece of transparent material with one or both sides curved for concentrating or dispersing light rays. 2 the light-gathering device of a camera, containing a group of compound lenses. 3 Anatomy the transparent elastic structure behind the iris by which light is focused on to the retina of the eye.
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| Doody PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 12:23
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Originally posted by twsottawan:
Thanks for your invaluable comment. I'll remember to conform to the American English spelling from here on in.
I despair when any programme ask me if I want to select "American English" NO I want English, spoken by us inhabitants of a little island where the language comes from...
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| LisaSam67 Mon 10th Nov 2008 15:05
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Thank you for the nice answer Pete. And the funny one Pondy.
I figured when I saw on the NIKON box that it was spelled LENS it must have been me that was wrong.
Mr T,
Was that a round about way of calling me a dumb@ass?
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| DragonSpeed PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 18:30
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LOL...
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lense
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| PhotoPro PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 22:25
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Originally posted by LisaSam67:
Ok I have to ask. Is there two acceptable ways to spell it?
I used to spell it lense and then someone on Flickr corrected me
Originally posted by DragonSpeed:
LOL...
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/lense
Despite wiki's "definition", lense refers to the glass itself.
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| DragonSpeed PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 22:59
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Originally posted by PhotoPro:
Despite wiki's "definition", lense refers to the glass itself.
I can't find any reference to back that up :(
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| megmet PRO Mon 10th Nov 2008 23:49
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Originally posted by DragonSpeed:
I can't find any reference to back that up :(
I would agree that the modern spelling of the word is Lens, but I am of Bill's generation and can testify to the fact that at one time the correct spelling used to be lense....
These days a lense is something you find in a pair of spectacles!
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| Doody PRO Tue 11th Nov 2008 11:14
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Originally posted by Doody:
• noun 1 a piece of transparent material with one or both sides curved for concentrating or dispersing light rays. 2 the light-gathering device of a camera, containing a group of compound lenses. 3 Anatomy the transparent elastic structure behind the iris by which light is focused on to the retina of the eye.
Bill, this is taken from the Oxford English Dictionary
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| PhotoPro PRO Tue 11th Nov 2008 21:46
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Thanks Doody - having the knowledge, and taking the time to search for substantiation are 2 different things...:-))
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| kazi Fri 27th Mar 2009 23:34
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we know what you ment, want to thank twsottawan for info provided!
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| frodge Thu 2nd Apr 2009 15:57
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I work in an Opticians,I had an old lady in who asked to have a scratched len replaced
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| twsottawan Fri 17th Apr 2009 09:08
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Perhaps you people could apply the same concern for spelling and grammar to other words and text that are posted to these forums. The intellectual content might improve in that case. As it is this kind of pettifogging about the spelling of a word leaves me thinking I might go to "flickr" or at a minimum not take the trouble to read this idiocy.
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