Lenses for Nikon D5200?
I want some lenses for:
1-Long range photography.
2-Very very very short range photography.
3-Taking photos for persons (portrait).
4-Low light photography.
And one more thing, does anyone know other cool stuff helps In photography?
1- Buy the lens with the most number of mm you can afford.
2 - Buy a macro lens with the shortest minimum focusing distance you can afford.
3 - Buy a 50mm or 80mm lens with the lowest f/number you can afford.
4 - Like #3 but could be any focal length.
5 - Photography is cooler if you study it first.
1. A telephoto zoom lens with a range around 70-300mm
2. A macro lens (Nikon may call then "micro" lenses) - I find that a focal length of around 100mm is good for me but they are available from 50 to 180mm. Avoid any zoom lens that claims to be macro because they are not true macro - Tamron and Sigma are guilty in this field
3. A 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4
4. As 3
"Cool stuff" - learn to use the camera before you spend heaps on money on lenses, flashgun etc. Buy gear to meet a need.
Don't buy cheap stuff. You spent several hundred on your camera - don't ruin it with a lens costing 20!
Most don't have a clue about what lens they need. First you need to know what lens is considered "normal" for your model. By "normal" we're taking about angle-of-view". Cameras are first fitted with a lens that delivers and angle-of view of about with the camera held in the horizontal position (landscape position. The camera maker calculates this and sells the camera with a multipurpose lens called a "kit" lens. The word kit comes from fact that most cameras are sold in a box with body and lens and perhaps a few accessories, this is the "kit". The lens sold in the kit is a zoom with a range that covers from moderate wide-angle through "normal" to moderate telephoto. For your camera this a zoom focal length 18mm thru 55mm. What is "normal"? This is a lens that delivers a perspective as seen by our unaided eye, It will be a lens with a focal length about the same as the diagonal measurement of the image sensor installed in your camera. This measures about 16mm height by 24mm length with a diagonal measure of about 30mm. Thus if you mount a 30mm lens, it delivers a "normal" view.
Note your kit lens, 18mn thru 55mm centers on 30mm. Thus you already have a way to set your camera for a "normal" view. OK, what is telephoto for this format size? Answer: A lens that a about 200% of normal or longer (30 x 2 = 60mm or longer). Mount a 60mm and objects photograph as if they were twice "normal" size. In other words a baseball player 100 meters (yards) away, photographs much like he/she was only 50 meters (50 yards) distant. Mount a 300mm telephoto and the subject is 10X larger. Thus the player 50 meters away is about the size of another player only 5 meters away. A wide-angle lens is one that is 70% of "normal" or shorter. Thus the realm of wide-angle is 30 x 0.7 = 20mm or shorter.
As to close-up work; your camera has a close-up mode and if you buy a micro lens, you can image very close. A true micro is optimized to take pictures at "unity" (life-size) often called 1:1 (one-to-one).
A to portraits: no real rules but --- portraits look best when the camera is a little further away from the subject than most would assume. As a rule-of- thumb, most professionals gravate to a lens that is about 2x to 2.5x normal in focal length. Such a focal length forces the photographer to step back and the results are deemed more pleasing by the subject. This would be 30 x 2 = 60mm thru 30 x 2.5 = 75mm. Your kit lens at maximum zoom is 55m and this near enough to be the ideal position for portraiture.
Best of luck - Alan Marcus
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