What Lens Do I Buy? What Camera Do I Buy?

I get those questions almost every week - what lens do I buy, or what camera body do I buy? To me that is like telling someone what car to buy. I know there are better brands of cars than others, and likewise there are better camera brands.

I advise any new camera buyers who are feeling the need to step up to a DSLR, or are about to move up a few generations in DSLR's to purchase names - today those names are still Nikon, Canon and new contender Sony.

Why Sony? The guts of Nikon - their sensors - come from Sony, and Sony is not bound (and never has been bound) by being a market leader. Sony is doing things in a way that shakes up the industry.

Why not others like Pentax, Sigma, Olympus etc ... ? Sure, those cameras work, and have good price points, and I do not own one, so I can not recommend one. You are here for my opinion, and that opinion is stick to the three at the top. Have you noticed your local neighborhood mom-and-pop film processing lab has disappeared? Well, in this economy, you can expect some camera makers to disappear too - if not the company, then at least the product.

THAT SAID
That said, I also get a question about buying "kits" or "package deals" right after the first two questions. It goes something like "they have a DXX with a xx to xx zoom lens for xxx.yy. Do you think I should go for that?" My opinion is NO. Just say NO to "kits" and "kit lenses". A camera body is (now) a box with a sensor, while the lens is what the image actually passes through before it hits the sensor (sensor megapixel wars addressed later). Other that megapixel count (which are incredibly high by standards of five years ago) and size of the sensor, the camera has nothing to do with the quality of the image file - ZERO.

YOUR LENS on the other hand has everything to do with the quality of your final image file. Here's why:

Glass - the glass in a lens varies with the quality level / pricing of the lens. High end glass has the best optical glass coated with the most advanced coatings. Cheaper lenses have cheaper glass and coatings. Why does this matter? Good glass and coatings make for sharper image files, and more accurate color renditions. And the glass in better lenses is still ground to be sharp from edge-to-edge as well as in the center. More on that later.

Mechanics - Servos are the little motors that run a lenses' autofocusing, and you guessed it, better lenses have better motors that work more quickly to snap a subject into focus. Cameras play a role as well in focusing speed, but great lenses will help an average camera focus faster.

FOCAL LENGTH - Now this is the critical part, and one that requires a bit of explaining. If you are not sure what the f.stops on your camera are, you will want to either look back in this blog, or google for deeper explanations, but here it goes -

"FOCAL LENGTH - How wide or how narrow a view the lens will provide. Smaller focal length numbers mean wider; larger numbers mean narrower." That means a 24mm. lens is "wide" while a 200mm. lens is "narrower".
Manufacturers try to get you to go for a "kit" lens with an extreme range of focal length, say, 18-to-135 range because they know that covers a wide range that most people would find useful. The manufacturers make these lenses by the thousands - with cheap plastic bodies, cheap elements, coatings and servos. They sell them by the ... thousands. But let's take a closer look at this mythical 18-135 lens. There are more drawbacks than meet the eye. ALL of these lenses have what is called a "variable" f.stop range. What you say, is a "Variable F.Stop Range!!!?"

VARIABLE F. STOP RANGE - Those are those numbers you see on the lens that the salesperson at Best Buy cannot explain, but they describe how light gets reduced as you zoom your new kit lens from wide to narrow - with your f.stop setting set at maximum (wide open). Here is what I found on the internet for our purposes -

Focal Length Maximum Aperture
18mm F/3.5
19mm F/3.8
24mm F/4.0
31mm F/4.2
35mm F/4.5
44mm F/4.8
50mm F/5.0
58mm F/5.3
70 - 135mm F/5.6

TRANSLATION - The more you zoom your lens, the darker it gets ---- LIKE IT OR NOT! In the real world, say you are photographing sports or a musical recital (I know polar opposites), these are both probably going to be low light and perhaps high speed subjects (sports for sure). Well, as you zoom in to get a closer shot of your Michael Jordan, or YoYo Ma, guess what, the light reaching your camera sensor becomes less and less - in exponential fashion, and quickly.
THIS IS WHY you see professionals with big fat zoom lenses. They are usually top-end lenses that have a FIXED FOCAL LENGTH zoom. No matter how far you zoom them (and to maintain quality their zoom ranges are always less than cheaper lenses), their aperture remains the same over the entire range of focal lengths --- at 17mm my lens is 2.8 (twice as bright as 3.5) and at 55mm my lens is,YES, 2.8 (almost four times brighter than most variables). All the lenses I use on a daily basis are f.2.8 throughout their entire range. There is never a mystery aperture waiting inside my lenses - they all max at 2.8!

I bet you are starting to see the light. I want to digress a minute, for the purpose of letting all that sink in, and talk about cameras for a short bit. Camera bodies by major manufacturers are made to compete on price points first and features second. If you have gotten this far, you know that buying a camera these days is like buying a computer. Something bigger and better will come out in a few days after you sweated over your decision for months. If you are lucky, and time your purchase for that new camera that is just about to hit the market, GREAT! It will be awhile before it becomes old news, and the value drops by at least two-thirds - at least. Buying a camera these days is like catching a falling knife, so get used to it. My advice is to ALWAYS buy a camera that you will grow into and not out of, meaning if there are features you don't understand, you will, if there are features you think you will never use, you will. Why end up "wishing you would have ..."? Reach a little bit further on the camera body, and a lot further on the camera body, and I guarantee you will be happier with your decisions.

BACK TO GLASS
Remember those numbers for zoom range 18-135? Well, this does not translate to your daddy's old Pentax in the closet. Why? The numbers are deceptive because they are shown to be for a "Full-Frame" sensor. What is a "Full-Frame" sensor? A "Full-Frame" sensor is a sensor inside your camera that is the exact same size as a full 35mm film frame. They are rare in affordable cameras due to the great expense to manufacturers of making these sensors. So, they reduce the size of the sensors to reduce the cost. Here's a general translation for the two major manufacturers:

Nikon
They have two different sensor sizes currently in use in their line of DSLR's - a full frame sensor in the D700 and above, and a 1.5 sensor (50% smaller sensor) in the cameras below the D700.
Canon
They use a wide range of sensor sizes which is one of the drawbacks for Canon as a company. They have great prices on full-frame sensors as well as higher end cameras that are not even full-frame. Check Canon for those numbers because they are critical to lens selection

"So why is this so important to me", you may say to yourself? Well, there is one big reason, and that is that a smaller sensor does two things critical to your lens decisions; it reduces the actual focal length of the lens by a matching percentage (1.5 means a 50% reduction) and it uses the "sweet spot" in the glass of your lens. "What is the sweet spot", I heard you say? The "sweet spot" in all lens elements is nearer the center of the elements and away from the edges. As manufacturers make glass, they have more quality control over the middle of the glass, and progressively less toward the edges.In this regard a smaller sensor is a good thing. "What is a 50% reduction"? That means your 18-135 is actually, drumroll please, a 27-200 zoom lens. If it were a full-frame sensor, or being used on a 35mm relic, it would be its actual range of 18-135 - but then and only then would it be that range. So, that can be good, and it can be bad. It's bad if you were really expecting a "wide angle", but good if you were expecting some "long" focal length. You have more long and less wide.

WHAT DO I DO?
In the long run, you will always end up with at least two lenses. That is still better than when I started out with a bag full of fixed lenses from 20 to 300mm. They were great, but heavy and a lot more expensive than what lenses are today - pound-for-pound.
Here's what you do
Camera Body - get one you think may be a little out of your price or knowledge range, and I can help you grow into it (www.livephotolessons.com).
Lens - Break the bank and you will be happy. Virtually every individual lens I own (each) costs more than any camera body I currently use.
Add-ons - Forget that crazy pop-up flash on your camera - just tape it off and forget it. They are completely worthless, and a sales gimmick by manufacturers. You are going to have to buy a flash made by the same manufacturer of your camera - one that "talks to" your camera. I can show you how that works too, but as much as all these upgrades will change your life, a dedicated flash will rock your world.

I hope this sheds some light on your needs, and gets you started in the right direction toward your camera purchases and use. I suggest you google any terms that I may not have made clear enough, and contact me for clarifications. As always, I do live photo lessons online at www.livephotolessons.com .