Camera Lens Buying Guide

How to Choose the Right DSLR lens

In today’s world Digital SLR cameras have really taken over the photography industry. SLR stands for single-lens reflex camera, which means that it uses a mechanical mirror system to direct light into the lens. These cameras used to be only available in the $1,000 all the way up to $10,000 range, but have now dropped down to as low as 500 (for just the body) With Digital SLR Cameras exceeding 21 mega pixels, taking a professional photo has become much easier, and the technology is now widely available to the consumer. Because of these jumps, buying the best lenses for your SLR camera has become one of the most important things you can do. It is much easier to take a quality photo with a decent camera and a great lens, opposed to a great camera and a decent lens. However, with so many lenses on the market, picking the best one can prove to be a difficult task.

How to Choose the Right DSLR lens

There are many things to consider when choosing a Camera lens for your for your Digital SLR camera. The process is best broken down into four main steps.

Step 1: Identify what type of camera you are shooting with (i.e. Canon, Nikon, Pentax or other various cameras). This is important because many lenses cannot function properly on more than one type of camera. Digital SLR lenses have certain devices that link with like devices on the camera to help manipulate focus, aperture, and other factors on the lens, through functions on the camera. The easiest way to guarantee that your lens will fit and function with your camera is to use the same brand for both. For instance if the body of your camera is a Canon, then it is always safer to purchase a Canon lens as it will fit, when others may not. Third party lenses, such as Tamron or Sigma, have a different lens mount, which allows use on multiple camera bodies, but is not always guaranteed to work with all.

Step 2: Decide on the type of lens you are looking for. There are two major types of lenses to decide between, fixed and zoom. Fixed lenses, also referred to as prime, are set at one zoom length. For instance you can buy a 50mm lenses that is made for portraits such as the Olympus 261003, but it will not allow the lens to zoom in or out, it is fixed at the distance of 50mm; hence the name fixed lens. This can be a great thing or really invaluable depending on what type of use you are wanting out of the lens. The advantage to fixed lenses are the glass inside the lens does not move, allowing more sharp, crisp images.

Zoom lenses are exactly as the name implies. They allow the camera to zoom from specific distances. Many camera bodies come with a lens that can zoom from 18mm to 50mm. This lens is perfect for shooting portraits of people and other close activity, but would not work for sporting activities or bird watching, where the subject is much further away. A lens such as the Olympus 261054 is a good all around lens to carry as it works from 18mm to 180mm, allowing it to capture a large variety of distances.

Step 3: The third step is to determine the focal length, also known as the f-stop, desired for your photos. This feature of the lens allows the aperture to be manipulated. The lower the f-stop (ex. F 1.2 is the fastest lenses on the market) the faster the lens will be. This factor is of great importance in two areas of photography. The first is shooting in low light; if your lens f-stop is not fast enough for the lighting you are shooting in, your picture will come out blurry. The second reason low f-stop is important is to create bokeh in your photos. Bokeh is when the subject is in clear focus, and the rest of the picture is blurred out. Most standard cameras come with a lens that is an intermediate zoom lens with a normal or slower than normal f-stop. This is OK when shooting in high light areas (florescent lighting or quality sunlight) but make it incredibly hard to get a good picture, without using the flash, in low light areas.

Step 4: If you are still unsure of what to buy but now have an idea of what you are looking for? Go through the inventory and select a few different lenses you are interested in and compare the differences. Also read customer reviews on the lenses and take price into consideration. Sometimes it is not worth the money to bump up 2 f-stops. For example if you wanted a great 50mm lens but not the top of the line, you might want to consider the Pentax 21530 50mm f2.8. This lens sells somewhere around 520 dollars opposed to the 50mm f1.2 that runs $1400+. While there is a difference between the two lenses, the difference is not extremely noticeable to the novice photographer.

Using these four steps you should be able to decipher which lens is a best fit for your needs. Head over to OutdoorPros.com to browse our selection of Zoom Lenses and Fixed Lenses