Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
I think for newbs(like me) it's best to pair your lenses with complimentary lenses. I kind of did this backwards by buying lenses I needed to perform certain tasks but I was kind of clueless in the beginning.
Your lens collection does not look like the product of cluelessness. You've covered a good range with lenses that have very good quality for the price.
Many newbies have no idea what lens(es) to get, and just go for the standard kit. You seem to have avoided this error. The kit lens is rarely a good choice. (suzzer99, the 18-135 may have been been an exception.) Since one can't expect most newbies to know what sort of subjects they'll be shooting after they gain some experience, one can't expect a newbie to properly design a complete lens lineup at the get go. A good appoach is to start with one or two general purpose lenses, and add new lenses as gaps get noticed. This seems to be what you did.
Of course, there is no one correct combination of lenses. It depends on what you shoot, how much you can afford and when you buy them.
Some common approaches, assuming a cropped sensor body:
- a wide zoom and a tele zoom, perhaps with a fast prime in the middle.
- a superzoom, perhaps with a fast normal prime, and/or with an ultra-wide zoom
- an ultra-wide zoom, a midrange zoom and a tele zoom
- just a fast normal prime
Normal Primes
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I would love to recommend that any newbie get a fast normal prime. A prime lens is one that doesn't zoom. It has a fixed focal length. As a result they tend to be cheaper to construct and optically superior to zoom lenses. A normal lens is one which has about the same field of view as the human eye. This is roughly around 45mm on a full frame camera, or 30 mm on the APS-C crop bodies most newbies buy.
Using a prime lens, one has to "zoom with your feet" This tends to lead you to think more about perspective and composition, which is a good thing for a beginning photographer to get used to doing.
Unfortunately, a fast normal prime is not an easy option for Canon APS-C shooters. A normal lens on Canon's APS-C sensor size is about 30mm. The only 30mm lens I am aware of as available for Canon is the Sigma f/1.4, whose edge sharpness and focussing leave much to be desired. Canon offers a very good 35mm f/1.4 but it costs nearly $1.5K. They also offer a so-so 28mm f/1.8 lens, with worse optics but better focussing than the Sigma. Finally there is the ancient Canon EF 35mm f/2, which seems to have been recalled from retirement to try to partially fill the gap. It is over 20 yers old, has a noisy focus motor, no full-time manual focus, and at f/2 is a bit slower than the competition. Sharpness - meh. It costs about $320.
Given the choices, I can't enthusiasticaly recommend that Canon shooters choose a lens lineup that is built around a prime, if they have an APS-C body. If they do want a prime to start with, one of the 50mm's might be the best choice.
Nikon, in contrast, has the excellent 35mm f/1.8 DX for about $200. This lens beats all the Canon normal lenses on edge sharpness at wider than f/8, and is only caught by the $1,500 35mm f/1.4 for overall shaprness.
Both Canon and Nikon make excellent 50mm lenses. I hear of a fair number of people buying a 50mm lens as one of their first lenses.This is probably related to two things: they are inexpensive, and back in the days of film SLRs, the vast majority of new cameras came with a 50mm lens. This has led to a common perception that a 50mm is the lens to have. These lenses are easy to manufacture at a low price and 50mm is very close to normal on a full frame or film camera. It was a no-brainer for film, and still is for full-frame digital. But as you discovered, it is a bit too long on a crop-sensor body to be optimally useful. I recommend that Nikon DX shooters buy the 35mm DX before a 50mm, unless they want to take a lot of non-formal portraits with an inexpensive lens.
Superzoooms
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I'm using the term "superzoom' to denote a zoom lens whose longest focal length is 6x or more its shortest focal length. Popular superzooms include 18-200mm, 28-300mm.These are both 11.1:1 zooms designed for cropped and full frame sensors, respectively. They are intended to be the lens you use when you don't want to swap lenses. They cover wide to telephoto. These lenses achieve their versatilty by sacrificing image quality (mostly sharpness and distortion), aperture (they are variable aperture and slow at the long end), and by costing more. This is another category where Nikon has a clear edge, except in price. I can't really be enthusiastic about recommending a superzoom for Canon, unless you really don't care about quality, but do care a lot about focal range ratio. Nikon's 18-200 DX superzoom is worth considering if you are willing to pay the price.
Different paths for Canon and Nikon
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As a result of these two limitations, Canon users have fewer good choices of type of lens lineup. (Within the choices they do have, they probably have a few more individual lenses to chooose from.) Canon users are close to locked in to a two-zoom or three zoom approach. Nikon users could make those choices too, but can also go with a superzoom or a normal prime.
This lack of a good normal prime and a good superzoom for Canon APS-C bodies is one of several reasons why I continue to recommend that newbies who are primarily concerned about serious still photography choose Nikon for their first dSLR. (Newbies whose prime interest is video, I point at Canon.)
A few comments on your lenses
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
Lenses I have for my d90
Sigma 17-70mm f2.8-4 I think I got it on sale for ~$500
This is my walking around lens and is pretty ideal for almost everything I want to do.
this is an update to the original Sigma 17-70 design, that adds stabilization, and improves aperture at the longest focal length. I don't normally like 3rd-party lenses, but at the time the original came out, this lens was well worth cosidering. The new version is still a contender if you are willing to put up with a manual focus ring that moves during autofocus, and soft image edges. It is a step up from the Canon and basic Nikon kit lenses without as much of a step up in price (unless you really paid ~$500 for it, which is a bit much relative to list.)
Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
Nikon 50mm f1.4 ~$150 but i don't remember
I bought this for low light photos consisting of mainly indoor portraits and low depth of field focus and it's compact light weight. This lens doesn't really perform as I wanted I think I would have been much happier with a 35mm for indoor photography especially considering the crop factor.
It will do in a pinch for individual portraits (it's a bit too short to be ideal), and might work well for a tight group of two or three, but as you discovered, it is too long for generalized indoor use. Consider picking up the 35mm f/1.8 DX for the role you had in mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
Nikon 55-300 f1.4-5.6 $300 on sale
I use this mainly for sports photography, nature, anything where I'm unable to get in close. I don't really need to use this much but then again that's probably a good thing as I don't have to swap out constantly.
(I think you'll find that the lower focal length is actually 4.5, not 1.4.)
This is a reasonably good choice for these uses. Its autofocus speed, edge sharpness, and freedom from distortion are not as good as the 70-300. Because of this and since you have a 50mm prime and a 17-70mm zoom, I would have suggested the 70-300mm instead. Still this is a good lens for the price if you don't choose rectilinear subjects (or if you have good postpocessing software). You got an excellent deal - 25% off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
I think this is a pretty good mix minus what I said about the 55mm
I like the way you thought about the different uses you put the camera to, and how you tried to choose lenses that matched what you wanted to shoot.
Quote:
Originally Posted by rubbrband
I encourage other people to post a good mixture of lenses
I'll put mine up in a separate post later.