What kind of zoom lens do i need

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Submit a News Tip! Reading mode: Light Dark. Login Register. Best cameras and lenses. Now reading: What you need to know before buying your first lens 57 comments. What you need to know before buying your first lens Published Jun 27, dpreview staff. Updated June A camera is nothing without a lens, and while the bundled 'kit' lenses sold with many interchangeable lens cameras ILCs are good enough to get started, they're quite limiting.

Lenses and sensors Lenses themselves know nothing of the sensor mounted behind them, but different sized sensors change the visual impact of the lens specifically the focal length and aperture on the final image.

How are lenses named? Focal length The first number used to describe a lens is its focal length; in combination with the camera's sensor size, this defines the angle of view covered by the lens, with smaller 'mm' numbers indicating a wider angle or more 'zoomed out' view. Illustration showing the coverage given by a series of popular focal lengths.

Lens type 35mm 'full-frame'. Glossary Angle of view - Describe the view offered by a lens, measured as the angle between the furthest extremes of the lens's coverage. Tags: buying-guide , lenses. You may also like. A photographer's guide to buying a smartphone. Beginner's guide to buying a camera for video.

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Best Compact Zoom. Enthusiast Long Zoom. Best Fixed Prime Lens. Best Waterproof Cameras. Best Mirrorless Cameras. Best Instant Cameras. Best Video Cameras for Photographers. Best Cameras for Videographers. Best cameras for Travel. Best cameras for Landscapes. This is measured in f-stops, and in what seems counterintuitive, the lower the f-number, the more light you can capture. The latter also uses higher-quality glass and construction, leading to the huge price difference.

A prime lens with a large aperture often lets in two, three, four or more times the amount of light as a kit lens. Many mirrorless cameras have image stabilization built into the body to help eliminate camera shake. However, this feature is much rarer in DSLRs. However, when working in low light at slow shutter speeds, shooting video in any conditions, or using a very long focal length, stabilization is very important.

Stabilization is more common on zoom lenses, less so on primes where the wider apertures let you shoot faster shutter speeds. The best lens to add to your kit depends on what you want to shoot. Here are a few of our favorites:.

The best part? Other great primes are 35mm, 85mm and mms, but they will be a bit more expensive. Macro lenses come in many different focal lengths, but the most important is to look for that ratio to get real close to subjects.

If you want to capture subjects that are skittish — such as bugs — opt for a macro with a longer focal length. They are versatile, allowing you to do wide-angle landscape shooting, before zooming in to the telephoto end to take a great portrait.

In fact, standard zooms tend to cover moderate wide-angle focal lengths all the way down to a medium telephoto — they often start at 24mm to 35mm, then zoom to around 70mm or even mm. Many kit lenses — lenses that come as part of a camera package — are standard zooms.

However, there are also standard prime lenses. Well, prime lenses offer just one focal length, such as 35mm, 50mm, or 85mm. So a standard prime falls somewhere in that 35mm to 85mm standard range. In fact, back in the good old days of film, the most popular standard lens was a standard prime: the 50mm. When I was a student, everyone in the class started with a 50mm lens. That said, whether you choose a zoom or a prime is up to you.

Most people feel that zooms offer more bang for the buck these days. As such, a good all-day or travel lens would be one that was easy enough to carry around, but still offered you the freedom to capture shots from landscapes to portraits, and zoom in on distant objects.

Street photography can be done with almost any lens, though a mm F2. However, a focal range of around mm is often seen as the ideal for capturing the moment in urban areas. Unless you want all of your subjects looking directly at the camera, you'd probably be best served by something discrete. It's also important that street photography lenses feature a fast maximum aperture for lower-light situations. This means that something like the Fuji XF 23 mm f1. The Sigma 35 mm F1.

Many people shell out for a DSLR or mirrorless interchangeable lens camera when they have a child, but by the time that child starts running around, the kit lens struggles to keep up, both in terms of aperture and focal range. This is especially true if you're trying to photograph the kids running around in the garden or on the sports field. This means you need something with a bit more reach, but probably without the bulk and weight that a professional lens would bring.

A zoom lens will allow you to keep your shots framed as you want while your subject moves around in front of you. While the kit lenses which come with most cameras are surprisingly good at the wide angle end, you could find that they don't quite go far enough for some of the landscape images you try to take. So, unless you're able to keep moving backwards, you're going to need a new lens.

Focal length is key here, and you'll only get some landscapes if you've got an ultra wide angle lens. You could go for either a prime or a zoom, but most people in this situation are probably going to be best-served by a zoom. After a while you might find that you've simply outgrown your kit lens. You suddenly find that it's stifling your creative ambitions and preventing you from taking the photos that you want, even if they are within its focal length reach.

This is the ideal time to get yourself a fast prime lens, and the good news is that you don't have to spend a fortune to do it. Because they are primes, it also means you need to zoom with your feet, which will in turn probably mean you spend more time thinking about how you compose shots.

Never a bad thing. As we've seen, different lenses can give photographers the creative freedom to take all sorts of images. It's no understatement to say they are as important, if not more so, than the camera you're using. This is why it's such a shame to see photographers buy cameras with the ability to change lenses and then never do so. It's worth remembering that lenses can often last longer than your camera, because they will continue to work on the next generation of cameras, and the one after that, probably.

This is why many photographers are willing to spend more on an individual lens than their camera. However, buying new lenses doesn't have to mean spending a fortune.

We've seen how relatively inexpensive primes like the nifty-fifty 50 mm F1. There are also thousands of second-hand lenses which will work just as well as new ones out there — especially for DSLR shooters, where you can often use a year-old lens.

You never know, your father might even have some lying around in the attic. Hopefully this article hasn't made you feel compelled to buy more and more lenses, as that really wasn't the aim. If you're not sure if you need a new lens, you probably don't.

Instead, we hope this has helped you understand what to look for when you feel that your current lenses are preventing you from being the photographer you want to be. LOG IN. Menu HOME. Search Query Submit Search. By Simon Crisp. Facebook Twitter Flipboard LinkedIn. Choosing which lens to buy for your DSLR or interchangeable lens camera can be a daunting and confusing experience. View 30 Images. A normal prime and a telephoto zoom are two of the most common lenses to be bought after a kit lens.

Telephoto zooms are good for focusing in on specific details or distant subjects. Telephoto lenses offer a normalization of relative size which can be used to give a sense of scale. The difference between various focal lengths, taken on a full frame 35 mm-format camera. Wide angles lenses suffer less distortion than their ultra wide counterparts, but you still get an exaggeration of lines and curves.

Telephoto lenses enable you to capture subjects without having to get too close. Telephoto lenses are good for focusing in on specific details or distant subjects. Typical uses of ultra wide angle lenses include landscape, architecture and interior photography. Wide angle lenses can still be used for portraits, just be careful not to distort faces unflatteringly by shooting too close. Because of their typical sharpness, macro lenses often make good portrait lenses too.

Telephoto lenses are those with a focal length in excess of 70 mm, though many people would argue that "true" telephoto lenses are ones which exceed mm. Marco lenses are technically those which are capable of reproduction ratios greater than Though normally used for close-up photography at which they excel , macro lenses can also be great for portraits.