Question about lenses

[MCantrell]

Thanks guys, I think I am starting to understand it a bit better on what I am needing to do to get what I am wanting to achieve. I have been looking at camera bodies and lenses and I am starting to think that how I have been starting to look at what I am needing to buy has been better on track. I know that the lens quality has a good bit to do with how the outcome is and have started looking at the cost of lenses to determine what body I want to get. Sticking with a cheaper good body so I have more to put towards a good quality lens. I had started leaning towards a canon, but after reading other posts and on this one, I'm swaying back to the d3200.

 

[KmH]

Sticking with a cheaper good body so I have more to put towards a good quality lens.

:thumbup: That's the hot set up.

 

[Designer]

Sticking with a cheaper good body so I have more to put towards a good quality lens.

From what I gather by reading about this stuff is that lens technology is fairly stable over time, whereas camera bodies are upgraded every couple of years. So the high-quality lens that you purchase this year will probably still be current for many years to come.

Meanwhile, you learn all you can with the entry-level body and when the time comes to upgrade the body you will have an excellent understanding of what you need, and some good glass to go with it.

 

[Derrel]

As KmH mentioned, "bokeh" is often used when what the person wants to achieve is shallow depth of field. Shallow depth of field is also commonly, and properly, referred to as "selective focus". Selective focus has long been a hallmark of professionally-made photographs. Selective focus is EASY to acheive whehn one uses a large format camera, like a 4x5 inch sheet film camera, either of the view or press styles. Selective focus is easy with medium format film cameras shooting large negatives like 6x6, 6x7, or 6x9 centimeter sized images. As the film format gets smaller and smaller and smaller, it becomes increasingly difficult, almost impossible, to achieve shallow depth of field/selective focus type shots.

Using an APS-C camera, like a Nikon D3200, you CAN achieve selective focus shots easily in close-up situations, like taking photos of say, a rosebud from 10 centimeters distance, or a person three feet away with a distant backdrop. In the shot linked to, the CLOSE foreground objects are thrown well out of focus. The man is in-focus. It's pretty easy to achieve out of focus FOREGROUND objects as long as the foreground objects are close to the camera lens.

I think you'd probably be happy using a 50mm f/1.8 AF-S G Nikkor lens on a D3200, as a way to achieve shallow depth of field on a wide range of subjects. On some shots, a fast-aperturer wide-angle lens like the 35mm f/1.4 or the 28mm f/1.8 G lenses would also work. The 85mm f/1.8 AF-S G is a decent lens too, good for shallow depth of field shots.