Probably the First dSLR Lens You’ll Buy

So you’ve spent on your first dSLR, and it probably comes with kit lens. Eventually, you’ll realize working with just one set of lens is pretty limiting. The prospect of buying new lens to increase your versatility becomes more enticing.

That’s the subject of a great article on Gearlog, which attempts to take the literally endless suite of lens options and trim the list down into something not too overwhelming for dSLR newbies.

So, what’s it going to be? I’m not going to steer you toward a specific brand or size, but I do have some advice to help you narrow your choices. I can see this is going to take more than one entry to cover properly, so lets start with prime lenses versus zoom.

A prime lens is a lens with a single focal length. A 50mm lens is a prime lens. A 17-55mm lens is a zoom lens.

Why would anyone ever buy a prime 50mm when that 17-55mm or 18-125mm zoom covers its function and a lot more? It’s simple. Prime lenses are less complex, make fewer compromises and are more often than not faster and sharper.

From personal experience, I do suggest that new dSLR owners get a set of 50mm prime lens. Most (if not all) of my friends and acquaintances who are into photography—whether enthusiast or professional—reveal that their second set of lens was the 50mm prime.

That’s because the 50mm prime is the cheapest lens you can get with high aperture. In layman’s terms, aperture usually dictates the blur difference between the subject of your camera’s focus, and the rest of the picture. It produces a great effect, particularly when taking portraits: while the background is blurry to the point of pointillism, the face remains really clear.

The same effect is also useful when you want to call attention to a particular object in the picture, isolating it from everything else. Or you like your foreground to be really sharp while the background isn’t, or vice-versa. The point is, even though you’re limited to one zoom level (50mm), there’s a lot you can do with this kind of prime lens, making it worth the relatively low cost compared to more advanced lens. Since you can’t zoom though, you may have to do a little forward or backward to get the frame you want. In most cases though, that’s no problem.

(image courtesy of Canon USA)