Some time ago my wife insisted that she needs a fancy SLR camera so I bought her a Canon 1100D. As per the link, it came with a 18 - 55 lens. I don’t know much about photography. Apparently this lens is ’ a basic basic lens’. ‘It doesn’t even have stabilizer button’. :dubious:
My wife is now insisting that she needs this new lens, which I am told will allow her to take good pictures.
We are going on a hiking trip next week and there will be plenty of opportunity for some great landscape shots. I’m not sure if this is relevant to the choice of lens.
So is my wife correct that her standard lens is crappy and she needs a new one?
I have the Canon T3i and the standard lens as well as a longer lens. I didn’t know you could even buy a lens without the stabilization option for Canon.
As to your question…the lens is a huge difference. Most photos you see anymore are shot with camera phones. Those photos often look really good when the image is small…say 4X6 inch. Now, try blowing that photo up to 8X10 or 11X13 and the flaws will be revealed in a big way.
The standard lens usually is in the 55mm range and that is great for shooting photos of people within 10 feet or so. Anything beyond that reveals the giant limitations for the standard lens.
Your wife is right, the lens is hugely important.
You will probably recieve a ton of good advice very shortly.
Yes, an excellent lens is always better than a consumer lens.
If photography inspires your wife and she has a passion for it then high-end lenses will deliver sharp images.
The one caveat (which many ignore) is that it is the person behind the viewfinder who actually creates the photo. Albeit these days assisted by Photoshop.
There was an exhibition of Poloroid photos years ago taken by professional photographers which undermined the need for high tech cameras. The ability to frame and seize the moment is the core photographic skill. You can do it with a disposable camera.
I have the Canon T3i and the standard lens as well as a longer lens. I didn’t know you could even buy a lens without the stabilization option for Canon.
As to your question…the lens is a huge difference. Most photos you see anymore are shot with camera phones. Those photos often look really good when the image is small…say 4X6 inch. Now, try blowing that photo up to 8X10 or 11X13 and the flaws will be revealed in a big way.
The standard lens usually is in the 55mm range and that is great for shooting photos of people within 10 feet or so. Anything beyond that reveals the giant limitations for the standard lens.
Your wife is right, the lens is hugely important.
The short answer: a LOT of difference, but it depends on the lens, and the photographer.
If you have the non-IS 18-55, well, it’s not known for its stellar image quality. The second generation with IS is generally considered to be good value for money, with excellent image quality (see here for example). The new lens that you’ve linked has also got excellent reviews, and the quality of images you’ll get from that should be significantly better than your current one. Whether that’s worth the price is up to you, of course.
The lens she wants to buy is a step up, but it’s no where near an “expensive” lens. Take a look at the L series lenses for really expensive.
Basically as you go up in price for lenses you get a few things; faster, sharper, better build quality. The most important one for most folks is faster - it uses less light allowing you to shoot at a shorter shutter speed and in lower light. Sharper means that the focus is more precise and allows your pictures to be in very tight focus.
Depending on how you use your camera and what you plan on doing with the photos, better lenses make a big difference. The lens in question is a more versatile lens, and probably a bit sharper, but it’s no faster than the kit lens and won’t make a huge difference in image quality IMO.
It’s a $800 lens, so naturally it’s lots better. And there’s free shipping, so I don’t know what you’re complaining about.
I have a framed 8 by 10 landscape photo on my office wall taken with a cellphone camera (Nokia Lumia 1020). It looks good to me but obviously I don’t know what I’m talking about.
The lens she currently has is what is known as a “kit lens”. That’s because the manufacturer offers them in kits with the camera body. Sometimes this term is use as a pejorative by advanced photographers. The lens is entry-level but these kits are usually a good deal.
Your wife’s camera is also entry level (it’s the Rebel T3 in the US, street price is $400 with the kit including that lens), and it sounds like it’s her first DSLR. Is it also her first SLR? If she is an experienced photographer then she will probably outgrow her current lens quickly. But if not, it sounds like she is getting Gear Acquisition Syndrome. No matter what you have, there is always something better that you want.
“…which I am told will allow her to take good pictures.” The camera doesn’t take pictures. The photographer does.
There are a multitude of high-quality lenses without image stabilization. I have a Canon L-glass lens without IS (over $1000). Hardly a necessary feature until you get to longer lenses.
The image quality of your wife’s proposed lens may be a little better than the one she has (but maybe not, I haven’t checked) but my guess is that she won’t be able to tell the difference. If you read lens reviews you will see all kinds of technical metrics to evaluate image quality that the average person can’t see with the naked eye. The camera sensor will make a bigger difference than the difference between these two lenses.
The only significant advantage in the proposed lens is the zoom range. It will give her a little longer range. However, I would think about putting the same dollar value into a fixed-focal length lens at the same price point.
Also, don’t feel tied to Canon lenses. They’re great but there are some also very good third-party lenses out there.
Lenses make a huge difference, and it’s one of those things where expensive really is a lot better (not quality-wise, but super-duper lenses are always expensive, no exceptions.) But that doesn’t mean that having a better lens is necessarily better, if that makes sense.
As has been mentioned, the photographer is what really matters. It’s only worth getting the expensive lens if you’re that serious about taking pictures, and if you feel hampered in what you are doing now. A good thing to remember too, is that it is good exercise to limit yourself as an artist, to work with what you have. Take amazing pictures with your phone camera, and you will become a good photographer. The lens of a phone cam is so crappy that you are forced into decisions, and it will make you better and more creative. You also actually learn a bit about how lenses work: there a lot of distances and lightings in which a crappy lens won’t work.
Getting a really great and expensive lens is something you should do when you really know that you need that to go further. Perhaps your wife knows that, or perhaps she wants a toy (which might also be a valid reason for the expense).
Disclaimer: I am not a still photographer, but lenses work the same way. If you can make a cool short film on your iPhone you are a good filmmaker.
One of the important things to ask when getting a new lens is what it will allow you to do that your current setup doesn’t. The 18-55 I believe is the same speed as the 15-85 - that is it has the same aperture range over the focal length. So you’re not gaining speed. The difference is USM (focus faster), focal length (more zoom), and image quality (sharper). If you have the 1100D which is the T3i, I’d be surprised if the kit lens it came with didn’t have IS. Comparing image quality of the lenses in question, take a look here. Mouse over to toggle images. In my eye, the 15-85 is clearly a sharper lens. Do you look at image quality like this generally?
The biggest advantage that the different lens has is the length - it will allow more zoom. This is a good feature when talking about a general all purpose lens. The 15-85 is one I recommend to folks looking for an affordable all around lens and want a minor upgrade from the kit lens.
The lens will not make a huge difference when you are talking about blowing up an image for printing - that is a function of the megapixels, size of image, and size of sensor. A higher quality lens will not show defects as readily at larger sizes as compared to a lower quality lens however.
I’m a professional photographer, and only one lens in my collection has stabilization: the 70-200 f/2.8, and I have non-stabilized lenses in my collection that approach $2K. It’s not unusual at all for modern lenses not to have stabilization, and, if you shoot primes (not zooms), no stabilization is pretty much standard.
Lens stabilization is a good feature, though. However, in my line of work where there are a lot of moving subjects, I rarely end up using it. It’s good for hand-held subjects with minimal movement. If your subject is moving at any decent rate, lens stabilization is not that useful (except maybe for panning motion-blur type shots.) That said, with lens stabilization you can hand-hold on a relatively still subject a good ~ three stops over what you would normally handhold. The general advice is keep your speed at 1/focal length, so for a 200mm lens, 1/200 sec, to expect a reasonably sharp picture. With a stabilized lens you can comfortably hand-hold up to about 1/25. You can even go slower than that, depending on how practiced you are. I know photogs who will hand hold a non-stabilized 300mm lens at 1/60 and still get sharp pictures.
Anyhow, that’s kind of beside the point. The quality of a lens does make a noticeable difference to the quality of the image, especially in harsh lighting situations, like shooting into a backlit subject. A cheap lens will not show the crisp contrast and color fidelity of a pristine quality lens. It has a tendency to let light spill, especially at the wider apertures, and is subject to chromatic abberation. (Where high contrast points of your image start showing purple and green outlines, typically). The more expensive lenses, also, tend to have much wider maximum aperatures, allowing you to shoot hand-held in lower light situations and allowing you more flexibility with achieving shallow depth of field (where only a small sliver of your photo is in perfect focus–this is especially important with close-up portraits where you want your background to become soft and direct the viewer’s eye to the subjects.) That’s a good deal what I pay for – the ability to shoot at f/2.8 and lower.
So what does this mean for the average photographer? Probably not too much, but not necessarily so. Experimenting with low depth-of-field would probably be a good exercise for any budding photographer. Instead of getting a real expensive fixed aperture zoom lens, for instance, I’d start out with something affordable, like a 50mm f/1.8 or the 85mm f/1.8. Work from there, learn those lenses, and see if that difference is important enough for you.
For great landscape shots on a trip, though, I’d say the 18-55 kit lens is good enough to take good pictures if you know what you’re doing. While it would not be my lens of choice, I would have no problem somebody shipping me out to take landscapes with that camera and that lens, and I’d be confident I’d come back with some great photos. Much more important to great landscape photography are quality of light and composition. If your landscape photos suck, you shouldn’t blame it on the lens. Blame it on the fact that you were taking a photo at noon in full sun of a flatly, overhead lit landscape.
One thing that gets overlooked sometimes is that this rule applies to full frame sensors. A crop sensor like the T3i will need to be 1/1.6x, so for a 200mm lens, you’re looking at 1/320 speed as a baseline.
This is great advice, but keep in mind that on a crop sensor 50mm is not a versatile focal length. 85mm inside is even more restricted. Those lengths would work just fine on a full frame camera, but the T3i would be better served by a 28mm or 30mm length prime. Canon’s lineup has a 28mm semi-affordable lens (for the enthusiast). Not nearly as cheap as the 50mm 1.8, but if you’ll use one and not the other, that’s more important.
Thanks all for the advice. My wife has decided to stick with the kit lens until she understands it’s limitations a bit better.
Yes. I usually make that caveat, but I’ve been stuck in full-frame sensor mentality for the past 5 years or so. Thanks for mentioning it. However, it should also be noted that this is a loose rule of thumb. Some people are a little less still and need faster shutter speeds, others are rock solid. I can usually go around 2 stops below (so I’ll shoot a 200mm on my full frame at around 1/50-1/60), but I’ll usually burst shots of three or so while trying to keep perfectly still and bracing myself appropriately to make sure at least one frame is tack.
That’s up to individual tastes. 50mm on a crop sensor or 85mm on a full frame sensor are the first lenses I get for any camera I use. (I’m mostly Nikon, but I do have a Canon in my arsenal. I’ve bought four different 85mm lenses in my career, I love that focal length so much on a full-frame or 35mm film. If you held a gun to my head and told me I can shoot the rest of my life with only two prime lenses, I’d pick the 85mm for sure and waffle between the 24mm and 35mm. Now, for landscapes, no not the best, but the 50mm f/1.8 is the perfect lens to get to experiment and see what it’s like to work with a wide aperture lens. On a crop sensor, it’s pretty much ideal for portraits. Even the 85mm is, although the 50mm will be a bit more versatile.
At any rate, at around $100 or so, the 50mm f/1.8 should be a part of every beginner’s lens kit. It’s a cheap investment, it gives you options for low-light situations your kit lens wouldn’t, and it’s great for portraits on a full-frame sensor, especially head-and-shoulder type shots. Just do a google image search for “50mm portraits” to get an idea. Do note, however, that it’s not just the lens that makes the great images. it’s the lighting, good use of low depth-of-field, expression/connection with subject.
I’m an amateur photographer and occasionally hang out at a pro photographers forum. They frequently ask a question like “If you had $X what camera/lens combo would you buy?” The answers are invariable. They always choose the cheapest camera body and most expensive lens that fits $X, because it’s the glass that matters.
I have a Canon 40D. The kit lens is average and I find myself limited by it. I purchased a 300mm F4.0L. It’s unbelievable. The clarity and color are out of this world. Now I’m the limiting factor
Here’s a pic I took with it. I credit the lens far more than myself.
http://i1296.photobucket.com/albums/ag10/reverendgreg/DPP_0250_zps1bb788e1.jpg
Don’t sell yourself short there. While you cannot achieve this kind of look with a kit lens, you have good, clean lighting going on there, as well as a good choice of background (dark and clean) to have the colors pop against. The low-depth of field (as I mentioned above) is key to achieving these types of shots, with great foreground and background separation. You can achieve something similar with less expensive wide-aperture lenses (although not with the same amount of great “compression” a long lens gives you), although you’d risk scaring your subject (butterfly) away.
At any rate, for landscapes, a 300 f/4 is not really going to be necessary. Now, if you’re a bird photographer or wildlife photographer or sports photographer, yeah, you pretty much require at least something of that focal length and maximum aperture in your gear.
And while lens is probably the most important choice, I can think of plenty of bodies in which I’d choose a combo of a better body and a cheaper lens to the other way around. But that’s only if I’m never allowed to upgrade the body. If there’s no caveat, I’ll pretty much always buy the top-of-the-line lens for my use, because I’ll be shooting with it for the rest of my life, hopefully. Or at least the next 10 years.
Another option is, if you have a camera gear rental place nearby, rent a lens for a weekend and play with it before making that commitment.
I got a Canon Rebel from my wife a couple years ago. I use it mostly for taking pictures of my daughter. It came with the short kit lens, and I got a longer one a little later.
The long one makes a huge difference. I can take sharp crystal-clear pictures from a long distance away, which I could never get with short lens. It also makes the faces pop, because the focus blurs the background.
My son does some part-time freelance sports photography and is obsessed with lens speed – I know he’d say that f/4 just isn’t fast enough for pro-grade sports pictures. One of his often-used lenses is the Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS II USM coupled to an EOS 1D body. For some events he’s rented the EF 400mm f/2.8 which is a lens that isn’t used enough to justify its outrageous purchase price and gets a little silly in size, weight, and price, but the results are outstanding. All of which leads to the fact that the OP question kind of begs the question, “how much of a difference does an expensive lens make for what?” And at what point is the lens overkill for the camera body or the skills or needs of the photographer? For instance the Canon L-series lenses have fantastic optics, but also some of what you’re paying for is the true ring-USM, which autofocuses faster than micromotor USM or STM. Will any of those things make a difference to the casual user? Possibly not.
That said, I’ve been distinctly underwhelmed by the kit lenses that have shipped with cameras like the T3i and the like, mostly in terms of speed and build quality, but also obviously optics and more subtle things like the aperture mechanism. IIRC, at least for the one I was looking at some years ago, not only is f/3.5 the fastest speed, but it only achieves it at the minimum focal length, dropping rapidly as the zoom is increased. When my son had the T3i years ago, before he got the 1D, the kit lens was the first thing to go. YMMV. Personally I’d use the kit lens for a while and get a good feel for its specific inadequacies relative to my needs before blowing major dollars on new lenses. If nothing else, you’ll have a much better idea of what you really need.
Excellent call.
Just to second some of the advice above. The problem with modern cameras, and a lot of the lenses, is that they are too complex. Lots of features, most of which are there to allow you to take OK pictures without much thought. I have found my most pleasurable times, and best work, have been done with the simplest of gear. Single fixed focal length lens, no auto focus, just a simple exposure meter. It gets you to think about what it is you are doing. One lusts after the Leica M series.
But everyone is different in their ideas and expectations. For most people a camera is a way of recording their life’s moments. That is a very different use case to wanting to have photography as a hobby - where within the hobby you have a whole new set of possible goals.