DSLR Lenses

Many people will spend more on DSLR lenses than on a camera body, and this makes perfect sense. The one you choose will affect everything from the sharpness of your image and how well aberrations are corrected, to the angle of view and perspective you can achieve. It's important, therefore, to understand both a lens' characteristics and what it is you are paying for, particularly as camera lenses vary in price so wildly.

Unlike digital compacts, digital SLR cameras have a lens that can be separated from the body and exchanged for a camera lens that gives a different angle of view. All budget models come with a kit lens that covers a zoom range of 18-55mm. To keep the price down, the build quality is not the best with kit lenses, but they are a great introduction to low-cost DSLR photography.

There are a large number of DSLR lenses available, ranging from fisheye, wide-angle end to the powerful zoom lens that brings you closer to the action. Once you have a good idea what additional lenses that best suits your type of photographing there are plenty of options to splash some money, and spending money on new lenses can be the most important investment apart from buying the camera itself! Each manufacturer uses a different lens mount for the placement of their lenses to their cameras, so it is worth considering the range and price of the lenses available before investing. Once you have committed to a particular camera system it's expensive to change.

What about the camera lenses you have from an old film camera? Well, many of them are compatible, although some functions will not always work, and because the budget and mid priced digital SLR cameras use a sensor that is smaller than a frame of the film, the edges of the image are cut off. This is known as a camera's "crop factor" affecting your angle of view, so you tend to hear the focal length of DSLR lenses referred to in terms of their 35mm equivalent.

The most common crop factor is 1.5x and that means a 50mm lens behaves like a 75mm lens, although Canon uses a 1.6x crop factor and the Four Thirds lens mount used by Leica, Panasonic and Olympus is 2x.

Standard Prime Camera Lens

A 50mm focal length when used with film has always been seen as the standard, thanks to its similar field-of-view to the human eye. Attach a 50mm prime lens to most DSLR cameras and you have a film-equivalent focal length of 75mm due to the 1.5x crop-factor - perfect for portraits as they normally have an ultra fast maximum aperture of either f/1.8 of f/1.4, so not only can you shoot in low light with ease, but they can also produce a lovely, shallow depth-of-field.

Standard Camera Lenses

Standard Camera Lenses vary from the kit lenses that come with DSLRs to professional-grade optics with wide maximum apertures - and their price generally reflects this. By paying more you may further benefit from faster and quieter focusing, image stabilization (with certain manufacturers) and elements with low dispersive properties, to help control chromatic aberrations. Professional DSLR lenses also often boast environmental sealing, such as with Canon's L range.

Wide Angle Zoom Camera Lenses

Wide Angle Zoom Camera Lenses typically have a limited range and a standard aperture of around f/3.5-5.6. Their construction often features aspherical elements to help control spherical aberrations, but also to maintain image quality when shooting at wider apertures. The elements themselves are generally larger, and for these reasons they command a premium. Most come with a lens hood to control flare, and some even feature a distance window to help with focusing.

Telephoto Zoom Camera Lenses

Telephoto Zoom Camera Lenses are the business as they let you get much closer to the action than you would with a standard kit lens. Telephoto Zoom Camera Lenses are not a direct replacement for a standard zoom lens, but are a perfect accompaniment, offering much more in the way of zoom range, letting you get right up close to your subject.