Point and Shoot to SLR

[Buszaj]

Hi everyone,
I am starting out in photography, and am possibly looking into buying a DSLR camera. Right now, my camera has 12 optical zoom. (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ3). I was wondering, what SLR lens would have the equivalent of 12 optical zoom on a point and shoot? (Like the focal lenght or the amount of "mm" stated on the lens).

Thanks a lot

 

[Alex_B]

Hi everyone,
I am starting out in photography, and am possibly looking into buying a DSLR camera. Right now, my camera has 12 optical zoom. (Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ3). I was wondering, what SLR lens would have the equivalent of 12 optical zoom on a point and shoot? (Like the focal lenght or the amount of "mm" stated on the lens).

Thanks a lot

any lens with the larger mm-number 12 times as large as the smaller mm number is a 12x zoom.

usually, the longer the zoom, the poorer the image quality at the long and the short end though. A 4x zoom is the maximum I would recommend to anyone, and even that is already a compromise with usually considerable distortion and other problems.

 

[The_Traveler]

SLRs are a combination of body and lens so you are really asking what lenses are available with an equivalent zoon range. Both Nikon and Sigma, and perhaps others, produce a 18-200 mm zoom lens.

These hyperzooms sacrifice some sharpness for range.
Additionally zoom lens features are not the issues you should base slr camera decisions about.

There are 100s of threads around comparing features, etc. so, establish a budget and do some searching and reading first.

 

[DSLR noob]

There aren't many high quality 12 zooms in the DSLR market. but Tamron makes a 18-250mm lens for several DSLR mounts. That is a 14 (13.9 for nikon 14 for canon) times zoom on a cropped sensor body (has to be used with crop sensors)

 

[Garbz]

And just like the 18-200 f3.5-5.6 VR Nikkor lens it sucks overall but is great if you can't afford 2 lenses.

The top end zoom lenses have really small zoom ratios, usual 2x max. Like the 5 figure 200-400 f/2.8 Nikkor, or the much cheaper but still ludicrously expensive 28-55mm f/2.8.

If you want to cover a wide range, 2 cheap shorter lenses will get you much better quality than even some expensive large zooms.

 

[JIP]

If you can afford an 18-200 you can afford 2 decent zoom lenses.