What lense do I want?

[kasavien]

I'm hoping someone can advise me on which lense I want because I only have a vague understanding of what the spec of a lense actually means. However I do know what type of pictures I want to take.

I have a Nikon D60 with the standard 18-55mm kit lense, which I've been very happy with so far. I'd now like something that will take pictures with more quality and detail in the pictures, although that might be down to me using my camera incorrectly.

I want a lense that will allow me to take good landscapes, but I would also like to be able to take wildlife photographs, and I think that means I need a zoom lense, so I think what I really need is two lenses.

So would I be best getting something like a 70-300mm for wildlife and sticking with my 18-55 for landscapes for now, or are there other options I should consider. I'm not really sure what I would need to specifically take panoramic landscapes.

Hopefully someone can point me in the right direction, I'm currently a bit confused! My budget is roughly £200-£300, depending upon what profit share I actually receive through work.

Thanks

Andy

[kalniel]

Panoramics can be taken with anything that doesn't distort too much - focal length isn't much of an issue. Your kit lens will be fine, just make sure to stay away from it's weaker areas - so stop down a bit, avoid the full wide or tele settings and you'll be fine. The increased size of panoramics means you don't need so much resolution in each shot either, unless you're printing HUGE.

Increasing detail probably is a technique, and especially post-process, thing, unless you are talking very large prints - or if you are cropping to zoom in, so I think it would be worth getting a long telephoto lens for your wildlife, but not to worry too much about getting a super-quality lens.

My first recommendation would be the 55-200 AF-S VR nikkor - it's a compliment to your existing kit lens, has lens stabilisation, and it great value at around £150, as well as being very compact and light.

The 70-300 AF-S with VR (stabilisation) is out of your budget and quite heavy/large. However it apparently performs better if you don't mind the extra bulk/weight/cost. I would avoid non-VR models as stabilisation is a god-send for tele-shots.

[brammers]

With a thread like this, I always want to know what's wrong with your existing pictures, and what pictures do you want to be able to take? If you can stick a few examples up in the thread it'll go a long way. Lack of detail for example means 1000 things, you can lose detail to corner softness, or you can lose detail to flat lighting. A Zeiss lens or 2 ain't gonna help your lighting out!

[kasavien]

First of all, thanks for the replies, the 55-200mm nikor looks good. As for pictures it's not being able to get close to things that I really want, which I guess answers my own question. For example I like taking pictures of wildlife, birds, insects, flowers etc, but some things are out of the range of my lense to get a good shot of the target without losing it in the scenery. I think I'm happy enough with my landscapes at the moment so my 18-55 will suffice for that.

The pic below is of some ducklings I saw whilst on a walk, I'd love to be able to take more close up shots in situations like that



As for detail, in shots like below, I'd like more finer detail but I suspect that's more down to not focussing correctly.

[brammers]

Good examples. For getting closer to the ducks a tele-zoom is certainly on the cards, and a 55-200 isn't a bad shout. If you want to get something a bit nicer, then maybe a Sigma 50-150 2.8 or even a 70-200 2.8, or you could go longer and slower with a 70-300 4.5-5.6 of some description. Just remember that while getting close to big things like ducks requires focal length (and good technique), getting close to tiny things like insects often requires magnification, for which you can sometimes be looking at a macro lens. You can get suprisingly close with a lot of tele-zooms though.

For the mussels shot, it looks plenty detailed enough to me. If you're talking about the way the mussels in the top right corner get blurry, that's because they're out of the plane of focus of the picture: you've used too wide an aperture to produce too narrow a depth of field. Not checked the exif, but it also looks like you've taken that at wideangle which has produced the bending and the perspective - for shots like this standing back and zooming in a bit often works well. Your shutter speed can get problematic, then we're looking at tripods.

If when you say you want finer detail you mean that it doesn't look very sharp when you zoom all the way in, this can be down to a number of things - post a 100% crop from the area you're not happy with. If you mean something else then I need more info! Why is the detail not fine enough?

[kalniel]

Agree with the above - the muscles shot looks fine to me where it is in focus, but the depth of field is quite narrow so it is going out of focus quite quickly away from the focal point (although I think the bending is more due to the muscles being on a lump rather than distortion). Also the narrower the depth of field the harder it is to keep the camera in it during the time between focusing and taking the actual shot - especially for close-ups. I'm very guilty of doing this - I set up the shot, focus/exposure lock, then sway slightly before taking the shot and I've moved out of focus. If the camera has a focus confirmation light then use it!

If you're only noticing lack of detail when viewing at 100% size on a monitor (a situation you're unlikely to use often in real life) then you're probably noticing the more or less inevitable fact that DSLRs are naturally a little blurry at the pixel level, due to the anti alias filter in front of the sensor. Most cameras correct the perception of this by applying sharpening automatically (sometimes even without letting you turn it off unless you shoot RAW) - as far as I remember the D60 doesn't sharpen too much, preferring to leave it in the control of the photographer, so going over your picture with an UnSharp Mask will do wonders for your perception of fine detail. The Nikon software probably has options for this, if not I use The GIMP (free) which has a pretty good USM, although it's not quite up to the standards of very expensive software.

[kasavien]

Hmm, maybe it's just my technique. I'll need to wait till I get a new lense to show what I mean by more detail, but the kind of detail I'm looking for is the detail Bobster has in some of his photos like the Bluetit in the photo a day thread, a couple of pages back.

Thanks for the help though, I'm fairly confident I'll go for something like the 55-200mm Nikor

Andy