How to Choose the right Lens for your Pro Digital Cameras

I have always been a fan of Canon and Nikon camera and i especially like the Canon rebel XT and the Nikon D80 pro camera. Iam planning to purchase a Nikon D80 camera in a couple of days and i have been looking to purchase a Good lens for it. I have been researching quite a while for a lens trying to understand how different lens are used in the photography world.

Choosing a Camera Lens:The first classification of the camera lenses is Prime lenses vs the Zoom Lenses.

Prime Lens: A traditional lens that most of cameras now a says use is the 50mm standard camera lens for an SLR camera. It is a must have and primary lens for most of the photographers. The best features of the 50mm lens are they are dirt cheap compared to an optical zoom lens and they are excellent in terms of their quality even under low light. The feature that highlights Prime lens is that they show things as seen with a naked eye in a visible distance.


Zoom Lens: A zoom lens on the hand is usually in the range of 10mm to 400mm. A zoom lens is usually a combination of Prime lens added together to get better zoom. A zoom lens is much more expensive compared to a Prime lens. Zoom lenses are slower compared to Prime len's. A zoom lens basically adjusts the focal length of the lens in order to get a wider or closer shot or( infact magnification as one says )of the image. Zoom lens tend to have more aberrations compared to a Prime lens. One suggestion would be try to get close to the object rather than zooming your lens to get a better shot of the image.

A Further classification of the Zoom lens is the Optical vs Digital zoom. My 2 cents would be on Optical zoom. when you purchase a camera always choose one with a higher optical zoom. A camera with higher optical zoom will always give you better resolution compared to the one with a high Digital Zoom. The same applies when purchasing a Lens too.

Macro Lens: As the words say "Macro" so are they.. These lens magnify objects and are mostly used for close up photography. These lens usually have longer focal length in the lange of 75-200mm. It offers excellent resolution of close objects without distortions. A macro lens looks pretty similar to a Prime lens but offers great resolution and clarity compared to a Prime lens.


Telephoto Lens: A telephoto lens is usually opposite of the so called wide angeled lens. They offers excellent long shots especially in Football matches, Olympics, Cricket matches etc. These lens give greater focus of the object. They are pretty similar to the zoom lens. A zoom lens basically zooms and enlarges the image but a telephoto lens bring the object in focus closer to the camera giving it a higher resolution and image clarity compared to a naked eye.

There are other lens in the market like the Fisheye lens but my 2cents would be to get :A standard prime lens 2) Get a High Optical Zoom lens 3) Get a Macro Lens for long shotsand well the answer to SLR is that it stands for Single Lens Reflex.

What Digital camera do you use.. What kind of lens do you use with your SLR camera.. let me know in your comments

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