Best Basic Sony Lens

[ChelsJanePhotography]

Hey All! I'm looking to buy a basic Sony lens for my Alpha55. I have an 18-55mm, but it distorts my photos. I'm also looking to upgrade my camera soon to an a77 or a99, I'd love your oppinion on that as well! Thanks in advance

 

[Stevepwns]

save your money and keep the body you have and buy nice lenses. The distortion is correctable in Lightroom. You will see more of an improvement in your pictures if you spend the money on lenses and keep the body you have as apposed to spending the money on a body and buying cheap lenses.

You can research lenses here.
Dyxum lens database for a-mount cameras

 

[DiskoJoe]

Hey All! I'm looking to buy a basic Sony lens for my Alpha55. I have an 18-55mm, but it distorts my photos. I'm also looking to upgrade my camera soon to an a77 or a99, I'd love your oppinion on that as well! Thanks in advance

What exactly do you mean when you say that the lens distorts your photos? Could you post an example?

Most vertical lens distortion is caused by the angle the lens is held at when shooting the photos. Or are you possibly referring to barrel distortion, where the horizon will be slightly curved? Barrel distortion can be fixed in photoshop or a better program to use is PT lens. With PT lens you can correct the vertical and horizontal aspects of barrel distortion independently from one another where as photoshop corrects in using a circular correction that is not as effective.

 

[dxqcanada]

Hmm, DPreview thought distortion was extreme: Sony Alpha DSLR-A380 Review: Digital Photography Review
... interesting that wide open this lens is sharp.

What's your reason to upgrade body ?

 

[DiskoJoe]

Hmm, DPreview thought distortion was extreme: Sony Alpha DSLR-A380 Review: Digital Photography Review
... interesting that wide open this lens is sharp.

What's your reason to upgrade body ?

@dxq - Better is always better, lol.

OP - The a99 is a full frame camera, so any Aps-c lenses you have would not work properly with it and you would have to upgrade to full frame lenses. But you can use full frame lenses on you current crop sensor body and then upgrade to full frame later. I have a friend with the a99 and its pretty awesome. Personally I didnt like that action on the a77. Everything had a slight softness to it that I really didnt like and I was using it with a Sony 35mm f1.4 G lens, so lack of quality was not an issue. If you wanted to go full frame you could look for an older a900 or even an a850 which are both pretty decent motors, but the a99 has much better at handling noise then the older full frame options.

 

[minicoop1985]

As for the 18-55 SAM lens distorting, yeah, I can't stand that thing. It has some uses, but cranked to 55, it's horrible.

As for the best basic lens, I HIGHLY recommend this:

Sony 50mm f/1.8 DT Alpha A-Mount Standard Prime Lens SAL50F18

Cheap, sharp, and quick autofocus. My wife has one on her a230 and it's a maaaaassive improvement over the 18-55 SAM kit lens.