Sian: Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed those trip to Photomart as much as I have, but moving on, we’re back with Chris, and we’re gonna take a look at the type of lenses you can buy if you bought yourself a DSLR camera. So what kind of stuff have we got here then?
Chris: Well, starting yourself off, when you buy your SLR, you’re gonna get your kit lens.
Sian: That sounds a bit like we have to build it, not very good at that kind of thing.
Chris: No, not quite. What your kit lens is gonna do, your kit lens is gonna get you your standard lens.
Sian: Oh okay.
Chris: Standard, usually referring to 50 mil. That’s where we tend to start the ratio off, saying that though, the word standard can often be pushed to one side now. There’s nothing standard about these lenses. Good example, Canon here, new 40D, came about the end of last year, what this is got, is this got a 17-85 mil, image stabilize, USN lens. Major benefits there, image stabilizer, multi coated glass and ultrasonic motors. This lens is worth about 500 pounds by itself, buy it with the camera as a kit, you give 200 pounds. So that again the sort of thing you’re looking at. Sony doing very much the same thing, offering you a nice 18-70 mil lens, designed by Kalsize group, simply because it doesn’t have to carry the badge again, they knock it in half, prices on this things are fantastic. And because of that you get a good kit to start you off.
Sian: Okay, so moving on from kit lenses, what are the lenses can you buy?
Chris: Well the main choices that start dropping off now are quite vast. But the good lot, the biggest trend is the all day lens.
Sian: Right, okay. What’s that?
Chris: Well all day lens is very simple, they’re gonna cover you the whole way through. You can use it for everything and by that I mean, 18, so in general wide angle right away through 350 up into your telephoto, and by that I mean anything at 200, 200 mil, proximately 30, 20 times optical zoom at some respect. So you got a really good range of everything within one lens. There are pluses and there are negatives to this, I mean pluses you get one lens to carry on board your camera. No more changing of lenses, no more swapping stuff over. And the negative is, it’s got a lot of work to do. It’s gone vast, it’s dedicated. This can be questioned for the quality, a great example of, from a third party manufacturer, the Sigma here. It’s a DC, 18-200 mil, its optical stabilize, optical stabilizer, face it there worth image stabilizer or as Nikon would call it vibration reduction. This is a lovely feature to have in a lens that can cover such a vast range, again cancelling out your blur.
Sian: Yup.
Chris: Everyone else is offering at least one at the moment. One I thought is worth bringing to the table is Sony’s version. Again, similar sort of range as this, doesn’t need to carry a stabilizer however. In a stabilizer, with the Sony, it’s all in the camera.
Sian: Right, okay.
Chris: That’s one thing to look out for if you’re looking at you buying a Sony, don’t be put off that it hasn’t got a stabilizer on the batch. It’s all in the camera.
Sian: Okay, so what about specialists lenses?
Chris: Well specialists has, where I suggests is quite an open dream, mainly, you got a, mainly your wide angled lenses and your macro lenses, this the way your shots get into areas such as your landscape photographer, your detailed internal close up photographer, we weren’t go to that too much, it really is like I say a really long dream.
Sian: Yeah. Absolutely. And you got some telephoto lenses here as well.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, we have a lot of people as I mentioned earlier with your all day lens, gives you a bit of everything, however this is now, if you mean, if you want so tied down to that idea of only having to carry one lens, for many people, it’s still a better option to carry the two. What we tend to find is when you make the purchase of your standard camera, your lens, it will fish you off to the 50s or the 70s, you wanna be finish signing off from about that point onwards. You don’t have to feel that you're entitled to buy the manufacturer of the camera with your lens either. Good examples come from people like I said earlier, with Sigma, for example this one here, this is made by Sigma, it’s APO, which means it’s a double coated glass in the lens, it’s got a wonderful built quality, well made, it’s a light, and with all that, you still got yourself 300 mil optical range. With that, you’ve actually got a bigger range than any of the all day lenses we mentioned earlier. Sony, also bring us to the plate a nice offer here, again, what they done with this, start it at 75, that way finishing off with exactly where you left off with your standard lens, giving you little bit of cross. I also, I brought this one to the table, little bit more chunky. Not necessarily say it’s a bad thing, but the reason I brought it forward coz we spoke of the 40D earlier. The 40D standard lens is way and above the means of standard, and what this is, this is basically the big daddy to the standard lens that comes with the 40D. It’s ESF, its image stabilized, and it’s got a USM motor. Everything about this lens mates perfectly with that camera. Image stabilizer like I say, hugely beneficial, when you got any form of optical range. You try and stabilize what’s going on there, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done. This is doing it physically within the lens.
Sian: What’s the price range we’re talking?
Chris: Well what we’re looking at here is about 380 pounds, so like I say, all that isn’t necessary peanut. It’s by no means as far as you can go. Strictly speaking, the sky is the limit with lenses, and actual fact, Canon have a 75,000 pound lens in the market currently. But within the general range most people will tend to look for when they’re going up the range is isn’t how much how expensive it is, it’s what it can do. And by that we mean for example the speed, for example tends to increase being to carry a lower Fstop, letting you more light in, working better at high speed. This is the sort of thing you start to see when using a sport photography or wildlife photography and that what tells us to drum in the extra pounds, anything up to around about 1300 pounds, average figure. That’s what we’re looking at with telephoto nowadays.
Sian: Right, well that’s fantastic. Thank you very much Chris for everything you done with us today. and a big thank you for Joseph for allowing us to be here today. We’ll see you next time.
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