equipment choice is driven by these areas. People who do a lot of macro
work might opt for a specialist lens like a Canon 65mm MP-E. A nature
photographer might want a 170-500mm zoom or a 400mm prime lens with a
teleconvertor. Landscape photographers love good wide angle lenses.
Portrait photographers prefer high quality small telezooms. I shoot a
wide range of subjects and have many areas of expertise and I need a set
of lenses which are suitable for the task.
I love prime lenses. Non-zoom lenses are the best quality. Zooms have
come a long way but there's nothing like a razor sharp prime lens. The
quality is unbeatable.
However zoom lenses offer convenience and portability. They're several
lenses in one. They offer speed of use too. There's no need to switch
between a 28mm and a 50mm prime lens.
There are professional megazooms too. These are lenses like the Canon
35-350 L-series. One lens which covers a massive focal range is very
useful for some applications but the lenses are invariably lower quality
than standard zooms. It's a question of glass and optical design. The
simpler the design and the less glass required the better the quality.
There are no fast megazooms either. By "fast" I mean ones which have a
widest aperture of at least f2.8.
The most important lens for me is the standard zoom. This is what's
always on my camera. I used to use a Canon 28-70mm f2.8 L. This would
have been about £1000 when it was first launched but I bought it second
hand when Canon released a new 24-70mm f2.8 L. It cost me about half
what it would have cost new. Sadly it's broken now. When I first got it
I used it with a Canon 350D - a consumer digital camera with a
professional lens attached. I got amazing quality results with this
combination. I've seen many people make the mistake of spending lots of
money on the camera and skimping on the lens.
I'd like to buy the Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L. It's pretty expensive though
even secondhand. On the cheaper Canon SLRs which use a smaller sensor
the effective focal length is a lot longer. It makes it useful as a
portrait lens but reduces the wide angle capability. It becomes a
38-112mm. It's fine on a full frame SLR like the Canon 5D. It's worth
spending most of the budget on the lens you'll use the most regardless
of whether it's professional or amateur photography.
Camera brand lenses like Canon and Nikon are expensive. There are
alternatives from Sigma and Tamron as well as other independent
manufacturers.
Canon also make lenses suited for the smaller sensor SLRs only. I don't
like these lenses because they don't offer the flexibility of being able
to be used on a full frame camera. I aim to use a Canon 5D as my main
camera and a 50D as a backup so I need lenses which work on full frame
cameras. Full frame cameras usually offer much better quality than their
smaller, cheaper counterparts. The exception may be the Canon 7D which
is a professional-grade SLR with a small sensor. It's not as good as the
Canon 5D MkII but it might be as good as the MkI.
Smaller sensors might be the future of professional photography.
Initially it was something designed for consumer and amateur buyers. The
lenses released with designed with the same market in mind. They were
lower quality than those for full frame cameras. This has slowly changed
but the full frame camera is still what's preferred by professional
photographers (except sports photographers, paparazzi and other fast
action photographers who prefer a smaller sensor which magnifies the
focal length of their long lenses) today.
As for the telezoom this is a difficult choice. I often use a telephoto
lens - a lot more than other photographers - but it us a specialist
lens. They're also very expensive to get an f2.8 version and very heavy
too. 70-200mm f2.8 is the standard for most professional photographers
from photojournalists to portrait photographers. They're often used for
shooting fast moving subjects and this is where the f2.8 version have
the advantage because camera autofocus sensors work best with f2.8 or
wider lenses.
An f2.8 telezoom also means I can still get reasonable apertures when I
use a teleconvertor. A teleconvertor can mutliply the focal length of a
lense by 1.4x or 2x. There are even 3x teleconvertors available. For
each step in magnification there's a decrease in the maximum aperture so
a 70-200mm f2.8 lens becomes a 140-400mm f5.6. I used to use an old
Sigma 400mm f5.6 which only worked at f5.6 on my digital SLRs. It's a
useful lens but I rarely used it which is why a teleconvertor makes a
lot of sense. They're relatively cheap compared to the price of a good
lens which reaches to 400mm. f5.6 is about the narrowest aperture at
which autofocus systems work with a decent degree or reliability. I'm
not sure they're even capable of working with f8 lenses. These are
usually manual focus mirror lenses anyway. Even Canon's behemoth 1200mm
L-series (the most expensive 35mm lens ever made) has a maximum aperture
of f5.6. This is why a 70-200 f4 telephoto lens doesn't make much sense
because with a 2x teleconvertor it becomes an f8 lens.
Canon's L-series zoom lenses are the best. They're superb quality and
well built. They're also weather-proof and dust-proof. The have a
significant premium over the independent lens manufacturers who offer
alternatives which are nearly as good and half the price. The second
hand market means there are opportunities to pick up older generation
Canon L-series lenses at relatively cheap prices.
The standard zoom and telephoto zoom are the two most important lenses.
They cover a field of view on a full frame camera of 28mm-200mm. This
covers the range most photographers need for most photographs. With a
teleconvertor the potential maximum focal length is 400mm and on a
smaller sensor camera this extends to 640mm.
At least one prime lens is useful to have. They're still the best
quality available. The 50mm is the most developed lens design and the
simplest. It means it can offer superb quality and a very wide aperture.
The Canon 50mm f1.8 is on par with the 28-70mm f2.8 L-series in terms of
all measures of quality bar bokeh. The professional zoom lens is better
in some areas but the cheap prime lens a tenth the price betters it in
others. The Canon 50mm f1.0 is one of the widest aperture lenses ever
made for the commercial market (I think Leica made a Noctiliux lens
which is even wider at f0.7). It was also one of the three best quality
lenses every made about a decade ago. It's about £1000 for the latest
version - the Canon 50mm f1.2 L. The Canon 50mm f1.4 is a reasonably
priced prime lens which offers much of the quality of the L-series
optic. It's also very fast - f1.4 offers 4 times as much light as f2.8.
It's still an expensive lens but being close in quality to one of the
best lenses ever made and offering those extra two stops of light mean
it's an important lens for my arsenal. I do a lot of low light
photography and g1.4 is the difference between using ISO 3200 and ISO
800 - a big leap in quality - or getting 1/60s instead of 1/15s - a big
leap in getting sharp shots in extreme lighting conditions. Every
photographer should have a 50mm lens.
A wide angle lens is useful. The standard zoom on a full frame camera
allows a wide field of view but ultra-wide lenses offer the opportunity
for dramatic shots. It's easy to use wide angle lenses to create
interesting images. I haven't used one in a long time and I know these
wide angle lenses, in practice, are rarely used. They're useful but it's
not something I'd seek to buy initially unless I was using a smaller
sensor camera. I wouldn't spend a lot on one.
The other lens is a macro solution. I've used a Sigma 105mm f2.8 macro.
I took that with a Canon 28mm on holiday for 2 months using two film
camera bodies. It's a great lens. It combines 1:1 macro with a portrait
focal length. Macro lenses are another lens which often doesn't get used
except for specialist photography. I shoot a lot of flowers and lifesize
macro is useful. A prime lens for portraits is also very useful. This
lens combines the two functions. It's another lens that is used for
specialist applications but the dual purpose of being a high quality
portrait lens and a macro lens means it gets carried in the kit bag
rather than left at home.
There's an alternative solution. It's not as convenient as a proper
macro lens but it's a lot cheaper and offers no loss in optical quality.
Extension tubes can be fitted between the camera and the lens. This
reduces the minimum focusing distance but means while the tubes are
fitter the lens can't focus to infinity. These could be used with the
50mm lens for macro work. At a later time I might get a dedicated
portrait prime lens - something between 85 and 135mm.
So, two standard fast zooms are essential professional lenses. A Canon
24-70mm f2.8 and a 70-200mm f2.8 L series are the ideal lenses. The
latest Sigma 70-200mm is a much better value option and offers their own
version of Canon's Image Stabilisation technology and flourite lens
elements. There are cheaper alternatives to the standard zoom too
however an L-series optic is still worth the premium and older ones can
be picked up cheap on Ebay. A teleconvertor can increase the focal
length and is also worth considering for sports and nature photography..
a 50mm lens is an undernoted essential for any photographer. The quality
and the wide aperture as well as the simplicty of shooting as the eye
sees are reason enough. The Canon 50mm f1.4 is exceptional. If I had the
freedom I'd prefer to only use prime lenses but the cost would be very
high. Sadly 10 prime lenses is still a way off for me.
Extension tubes can offer macro features for a low price. Portrait focal
length macro lenses offer convenience, quality and dual purpose but are
more expensive. My personal preference is to have a portrait focal
length prime optic but it may be something purchased at a later time.
A Canon 24-70mm f2.8 L, 70-200mm f2.8L, 50mm f1.4, extension tubes and
2x teleconvertor would cost somewhere in the region of £3500.
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