Lense Question

[King James]

Im looking at either the 50mm f/1.8 or 100mm f/2 lense. I'm leaning towards the 100mm, but when looking at reviews all I read was how these were great portrait lenses. I am not interested in portraits, but more of outdoor and landscape shots. Just wondering if this lense would be good for that or If i should look into a different one.

 

[Tiberius]

For Landscape Shots you want a Wide Lens - considerably wider than either of those lenses offer. Something around 12mm or 18mm.

 

[King James]

well i guess I said it wrong when i said landscape...i ment more like outdoor shots but being able to get closer up. I think I'm describing what I'm looking for poorly

 

[Philip Weir]

Hi King James, It seems from your second post, you probably require the 100mm, though a 50mm is a standard length lens. When you say "being able to get closer up" What do you want to get closer up to ?? A flower, get the 100mm. A group of people ?? get the 50mm.

 

[markc]

It depends on what you are going for.

"Normal" lenses give you an image that is similar to how the eye sees. For 35mm film cameras, that's around a 50mm lens. For Nikon and Canon digital SLRs, it's about 35mm. For medium format cameras, around 80mm.

When you start getting lower than those numbers on those specific cameras, it's a wide angle lens. It packs more field of view into the same space and gives the illusion that front-to-back distance between objects is larger than it is.

Going higher is a telephoto, which narrows your field of view so you can grab details at a distance, and they tend to give the illusion of compressing distance.

On a 35mm film camera, the 50mm would be a normal lens and the 100mm would be a telephoto.

On a digital SLR, they would both be telephotos.

 

[spike5003]

Ideally if this is to be your primary lens you should get one with some sort of zoom, There are a thousand different 35-80 or so lenses out there to choose from, this will allow you to have both a normal and a wide angle lens at the same time.

 

[markc]

Ideally if this is to be your primary lens you should get one with some sort of zoom, There are a thousand different 35-80 or so lenses out there to choose from, this will allow you to have both a normal and a wide angle lens at the same time.

A bit of contention to that one. I personally think it's best to start with a prime, like the 50mm 1.8. Zooms tend to engender bad habbits, as people often adjust them based on where they are standing, rather than walking to frame the image after choosing the correct focal length for the scene. They also tend to be rather slow (narrow max aperture) unless you pay big bucks.

 

[King James]

well I think I'm going to cover both bases and get the 50mm 1.8 and the 100mm 2 so I can have the best of both worlds and not worry about losing quality w/ a zoom

 

[JigsawMan]

The canon 100mm f2.0 macro is a beautiful lens. It was my second lens purchase and pairs up real well with my 20D.

Bear in mind that this shot was handheld (and I have shaky hands) so I couldn;t get as much DOF as I would have liked, but it should give you an idea of how well this lens performs - even when used by a complete amateur like me. Shot taken 2 weeks ago in my back garden.

Reduced in size from original image:

here is a 100% crop of the bee's face:

No post processing other than converting from RAW with Raw Shooter. You won't regret buying the 100mm macro - I presume we are talkin about the 100mm macro as I don't think canon do a 100mm lens that's not macro and everyone seems to rave about this lens for portraits too. Good build quality. Focusing is top notch too, I've used faster but rarely does it ever go hunting all over the place.

I have the 50mm f1.8 as well - I think it cost me about £50 from DigitalRev (HK ebay seller). Build quality fees poor, but for the price you can't fault it as a lens.