How to choose your lenses?
This is a difficult choice at the beginning, but it will really depend of your needs and your budget. This will also depend of the camera you will choose. For a full frame camera, like Canon EOS 5D, you will not be able to buy EF-S lenses. With the EOS 7D or cameras with 2 or 3 digits (like EOS 60D or 550D)
In my case, I have a Canon EOS 7D and a 550D and I really like using the following lenses, I always have them in my backpack:
When I bought my cameras, I got the following lenses as part of a pack:
- EOS 550D:
- EOS 7D:
There are others interesting lenses:
What is important to know?
EF & EF-S lenses: EF-S lenses are less expensive and cannot be mounted on full frame cameras. To reduce the price, they reduced the quality on the border of the lens, because it is only used by full frame cameras.
IS means stabilized lens. This is really good to have a better picture when you are not shooting with a tripod.
L means this is a higher quality (professional) lens.
USM means that the motor is faster and less noisy than standard lenses.
When buying lenses, think about the camera you currently have and the next camera you will buy. If you are planning to get a full frame, don't spend your money on EF-S lenses and watch the coefficient between you current camera and the full frame. A same lense will not produce the same result when you have a full frame or another camera.
Let describe the lenses I would recommend:
EF-S 17-55 f2.8 IS USM
This is a very good lens, for a reasonable price. This lens cannot be mounted on a full frame camera, this is not a good choice to buy it if you have a plan to buy a full frame digital reflex.
This lens is always mounted by default on my digital camera. It is the perfect lens to take most of the pictures, from landscape to portrait. It
EF 70-200 f4L IS USM
This is a really good lens for landscapes or to zoom on specific topics. There are different versions of the EF 70-200 lens.
EF 70-200 f2.8L lenses have a better quality, but are a little bit bigger and are twice the weight. The 2.8L lens is not really needed if you are not using it a lot indoor.
EF 70-200 without IS are a little bit less expensive, but when you zoom and do not always shoot with a tripod, this will help you to guarantee the quality of your pictures.
Peleng 3.5/8A Fish-eye
Taking pictures with a fish-eye can be very funny or generate special effects you cannot have with a standard lens.
This is really good to have a fish-eye, but this should not be a priority in your choices as you will not use it for every picture. Even if you can have really good pictures with this kind of lens, you will be tired of it very fast.
This one is manual, but really less expensive than Canon once. For my personal usage, it is really doing what I wanted, for a very good price.
EF-S 18-55 f3.5-5.6 IS
This lens was included in the EOS 550D package I bought. This was enough for me to start and understand the difference between lenses and I keep it as a backup lens, just in any case.
I have replaced it with my EF-S 17-55 lens, which is much better.
EF-S 55-250 f4-5.6 IS
This lens was included in the EOS 550D package I bought. This was enough for me to start and understand the difference between lenses and I keep it as a backup lens, just in any case.
I have replaced it with my EF 70-200 lens, which is much better.
The biggest advantage of this one is the weight.
EF-S 18-135 f3.5-5.6 IS
This lens was included in the EOS 7D package I bought. I took it for a good reason: my girlfriend is now using the EOS 550D and mounted this lens by default. This allows her to keep the same lens for most of her needs and not carry any additional lens.
This is a good choice if you are not looking for a very high quality, but want to have something flexible that you can use for most of your needs.
EF-S 10-22 f3.5-4.5 USM
I still didn't test this lens, but this will probably be the next one I will buy.
This lens will give me the opportunity to have better pictures in certain circumstances, like when I am visiting a city and want to take a nice pictures about buildings around me.
EF 24-70 f2.8 USM
This lens could replace the EF-S 17-55, especially if you are planning to buy a full frame.
But be careful as it is heavier and more expensive.
EF 50 f1.4 & EF 85 f1.8
These lenses would also be a good choice for taking indoor pictures, for example for portraits.
This is not really flexible, but this will allow to take good pictures where there is not too much luminosity.
I bought the EF50 f1.4 to use it with my EOS 7D, the result is really good. I would only take the EF85 if I had a fullframe camera, which is currently not the case.
This was only a short resume, talking about the different lenses you can find. This is not possible to talk about all lenses, as we could find a very important amount of lenses.
I found really interesting to talk about the lenses I really like. We could also say they are kind of basic ones.
I hope you enjoyed this description.
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Written by Nicolas Buache
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Created on Thursday, 11 August 2011
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Last Updated on Wednesday, 25 April 2012
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Hits: 420
