Andreas J. Pratama

It is extremely easy to get lost in the endless sea of lenses options for purchase. For the photography enthusiast, finding out what lens is good enough is both scary and daunting. Scary as it imposes financial capability to those newly learning about photography. Shelling out 2000-3000 dollars’ worth of lenses are hard enough already but to muddle through the massive selections of lenses and comparing them one by one without hands on experience is really a challenge in its own.

Commonly, those starting in the field of photography should stick to their most basic selection of lens. Namely the kit lenses, those ranging from 16-50, 24-70, 20-105 in millimeters are generally solid lenses to begin with. But those are only millimeters, let us now take into account the measurement of the aperture opening. Commonly kit lenses are made with opening of around 3.5 – 5.6, there is a specific reason as to why these kits were equipped with said openings. The industry assumed that in its most basic of bundles the camera users are those that prefer practicality over quality and would generally fit in the demography of the everyday photographers where image recording capability should be more than suffice the desired functionality.

Those with agenda of producing better, sharper, more contrast, and higher dynamic range of image straight out of the b

ox would consider a few more parameters in lens selections. They are the aperture opening, the lens built (glass quality), lens coating and some would also take into account the externalities of the lens. These couple more parameters are not quite as important or as fatal as that of aperture opening. The F. number in a lens dictates its capability to produce a good background defocus but also the capability to take picture in lower light condition.

Under studio condition, the primacy of the lens play a tremendously important rules its sharpness will produce effect natural enough out of a camera RAW untouched by image editing software. This is a territory no kit lens can venture no more, the 2000 dollars difference in lens will go a long way in the department of quality. However, to illustrate the novelty, it is very easy to fall into the trap of large lens opening aperture but not paying attention to sharpness and the image quality produced by the lens. To make things easier, today, it is best to look at reviews, join forums and look at RAW files uploaded by fellow photographers to compare image qualities before actually deciding what lens is worth investing on.