PCPhoto
Buyer's Guide 2024: LensesHow to choose the best glass for your D-SLR |
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Pop quiz, hotshot: Would you rather have a) an awesome camera and an okay lens, or b) an okay camera and an awesome lens? The correct answer is b—no doubt about it. Don’t get me wrong, awesome cameras are awesome for a reason. Full featured and well designed, they can make photography a real pleasure. But in terms of image quality, the lens is by far the most important element of any camera system. It’s a big deal to choose the right lenses for D-SLRs; with so many lens options available, you need to know what’s what in order to choose the right lenses for you and to avoid subpar glass that will leave its unfortunate fingerprints all over everything you shoot. LENS BASICS Wide-angle, standard and telephoto are the three basic categories of lenses. A wide-angle lens has a short focal length, typically less than 40mm in the 35mm film-format equivalent. A telephoto, or long lens, usually has an equivalent focal length of 60mm or more. In between are lenses that are considered “standard,” the 40mm to 60mm range. They’re standard because they approximate the human eye’s field of view. SPEED Speed is another fundamental part of the lens-buying equation. Speed refers, in this case, not to movement, but to light-gathering ability, specifically a lens’ maximum aperture—the small numbers like ƒ/2 or ƒ/1.8 allow the greatest amount of light into the camera. Faster lenses, with larger maximum apertures and smaller numbers, are ideal for photographers who shoot in low-light situations with fast shutter speeds or for those who relish the opportunity to minimize depth of field to help put the focus solely on the subject. Some lenses are fast some of the time and not so fast at other times. These zoom lenses have variable maximum apertures, a range from, say, ƒ/4-5.6. At the wide-angle end, the maximum aperture is larger than at the telephoto end, which sometimes makes it harder to shoot telephoto in low light. However, these variable-maximum-aperture lenses are often smaller and lighter than their fixed-speed zoom brethren. They’re usually less expensive, too. The faster a lens, particularly in longer telephoto glass, the larger and more expensive it usually is. DESIGNED FOR DIGITAL Whether they’re fast or slow, wide angle or telephoto, some lenses are specifically designed for digital cameras. These digital lenses can be smaller in size when they’re designed to cover a smaller-than-35mm camera sensor, and they’re optimized to collimate light and better prepare it for its interaction with the sensor. Unlike film, CMOS and CCD sensors have depth; light entering the camera from obtuse angles is less likely to accurately reach the light-sensitive pixels on a chip. To combat this, digital lenses are built to bring in more light at a right angle to the sensor, producing better color fidelity and sharper images.   |
