Choosing Lenses for your DSLR Camera

I've mentioned earlier if you're just getting started in photography, your kit lens is enough. Why? Because you don't know yet what kind of photography you're more interested into and the more often that you'll buy lenses or other equipments which you will not use for a long period of time. As you start learning photography there is gap between what you want to be; a portrait, landscape, commercial, band, editorial, sports or a wedding photographer. This gap will narrow as you start to learn more and progress being a photographer. There are variety of lenses to choose from; wide angle, zoom, telephoto, macro and prime lenses. Here are some guides on how to choose lenses for your DSLR camera:

1. What type of photography that you're more interested?

This is the most important question in choosing lenses. If you don't know the answer, spend more time shooting and learning. This will help you realize what type of photography you're more interested and keep you on the track. Also remember that you want to be a photographer not a lens collector and you should choose  the appropriate lenses for a certain type of photography. 

2. Focal Length

If you already know what type of photography you're into, the next consideration is the focal length for coverage of the scene. For landscape, architectural or group you may want to the focal length from 11mm - 35mm; for portraits you might consider shooting 50mm or more because you want to give space or distance to your client in shooting and avoid distortion or chromatic aberration. For sports, wildlife and bird photographers they use 200mm or more. While from macro varies 40mm, 60mm or 105mm which will allow you focusing as much as 6 inches to your subject like flowers, insects or smaller objects. There are also prime lenses (fixed focal length and aperture) which are lighter in construction than zoom lenses and offers sharper images.

3. Maximum Aperture

The aperture values on consumer zoom lenses varies; every time you change the range of focal length, the aperture change along. Again it falls on what type of photography you're into but also considers the stops of light it can add to your settings especially if you're shooting in low light conditions.

4. VR (Vibration Compensation), IS (Image Stabilization), VC (Vibration Compensation) or OS (Optical Stabilization)

If you have shaky hands and can't shoot steadily in lower shutter speed settings then you  should consider VR(Nikon), IS(Canon), OS (Sigma), VC(Tamron), it compensates the subtle movement of the camera so that you will not have blurry images.

5. Crop/ Full Frame Lenses
Do you have plans moving from crop to full frame DSLR camera? Then you should also consider investing to lenses which are compatible to full frame bodies. Crop lenses are not compatible to full frame bodies while full frame lenses works great for crop and full frame bodies.

6. Budget

Again, how much are willing to spend? If you're just an amateur not earning to compensate on what you're shooting then you should consider this as well. How about third party lenses? There are so many third party lenses and you should do a research about it. But you should keep in mind that you get what you paid for and it will not be as great as Nikon or Canon. Sometimes you'll read lot of positive comments from the users but it does not guarantee that you'll be happy using it.

7. Rent or Borrow from Friends

If you're unsure with lens that you're about to buy, the most inexpensive way is to rent or borrow from friends. In that way, you will have the freedom to choose before spending your money rather than buying the lens and selling it for a lower price if you're not using it anymore.

A little piece of advice, invest more on lenses than camera bodies. With so many advances in the DSLR camera industry, you'll find more camera bodies are coming out with cheaper prices. But with lenses, you'll see that it takes manufacturers years to replace it and the value doesn't go down that much.