Lens Limitations

I have gone through pretty much all the content on SpongeFish that is tagged "photography" but did not bump into anything related to SLR cameras/lenses or professional photography. So either this is going to be the first or the only post. Not sure how many will benifit from this, I had second thoughts on continuing with it. But two potential advantages convinced me to give it a shot. One - Anyone groping on the Internet for such information might run into this, come to know about SpongeFish and possibly increase the userbase. Two - It can push a SpongeFisher on the fence into the world of photography.

Following is an analysis of different lenses used for Canon Digital SLRs (specifically on an EOS Rebel XT I have). Most of it is based on my own experience with almost half a dozen different lenses and also a brief comparison between Canon and Nikon. This is not digital photography 101 because there are a million of them out there if one wants. So I'm not going to explain things like focal length, depth-of-field (DOF), Image Stabilization (IS) and Internal Focus (IF). But I will provide some useful links for such things.

The photograph accompanying each of the lens descripotion is taken using that particular lens. 

Some Useful Links

General info on photographic lens on Wikipedia

 
A brief and interesting article on understanding camera lenses

How to choose a digital SLR lens

B&H - My favorite store

Lots of Useless Information

Let us start with a smaller focal length, wide angle lens and move towards the long range telephoto ones. These are basically the lens I used.
 

Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 USM:

This is a basic wide angle lens that came with my 350D. If bought separately, a brand new one would cost around $140. When I first upgraded myself to a DSLR, I decided to stick around with this baby for a while and understand the behavior of a lens before jumping for a more expensive one. It proved to be a great experiment. I came to know the pros and cons of the lens myself and studied the cause and affect of various settings and features, first-hand.

Pros: Light weight, easy to carry, Auto Focus with the USM providing pretty fast focusing when there is enough light, very good for wide landscape shots, liked it even for macro shots

Cons: Cheap casing, no Internal Focus, no Image Stabilization, slow focusing in low light, manual focusing is not easy

Canon EF 35-80mm f/4-5.6 III:

A very simple lens that can be bought for roughly 50 bucks. Nothing special about it except that it covers the range between the usual wide angel lenses that are 18 - 55 mm and the telephotos that start from around 70 mm and go all the way to 300 mm. I did not use this lens a lot and hence don't have a lot to comment. Unfortunately I could not find any picture I took with this lens. If I manage to find one in the pile of thousands of them, I will add that here.

Pros: simple and light weight, auto focus, very cheap, fills the gap and completes the range

Cons: No USM, no IF, no IS, slow focusing, not great under low light

Canon EF 80-200mm f/4.5-5.6 II:

As a not-so-popular lens, this does not really have a lot of use. With a minimum $100 price tag, this is not a lot cheaper than a 75-300mm lens with nothing extra to offer. I thought I never used it but luckily found a couple of pictures I took with this lens and here is one of them. If you look at it, it's not a bad lens but by spending around 25 dollars more, one can get a range up to 300mm.

Pros: Very inexpensive, not very heavy, good image quality even at 200mm, good value for money

Cons: not very useful range, looks little ugly when fully zoomed

Canon EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM:

This filled a lot of gaps I had with my first 18-55mm lens. I was very much restricted to macro photography or landscapes in sort of panoramic views. After this arrived I was relieved for a considerable amount of time before hunting for a new one. At $125 this is best value for money for an amateur. I explored quite a bit with this lens.

Pros: best value for money, ideal telephoto zoom lens for amateurs, not very heavy, USM helps in faster focusing, wide range from 75mm to 300mm, good DOF

Cons: no IS, no IF, poor quality images when approaching 300mm, looks very ugly when fully zoomed

Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM:

The best lens I had till now. This is my current telephoto lens and is going to stay like that for a while. Main reason I switched to this from the 75-300mm above? Image Stabilization. I desperately needed that for low light photography. Of course I could have pumped up the ISO but that is the last thing I would do for extra light. It comes after tripod, IS and high f-stop. Till now I definitely surpassed 3000 pictures with this and still there is a long way to go. I'm not going to switch to the 'L' series (I'm going to talk about this later) without completely exploiting this baby. For a minimum of $500 this is not a cheap lens but I found it is almost worth it. I'm saying almost because even for that price Canon does not give Internal Focus and that sucks.

Pros: Image Stabilization - this makes hell lot of a difference, fast focusing, very good range, decent image quality even beyond 200mm, two modes of IS, very good DOF

Cons: NO IF, heavy, cheap casing, looks ugly when fully zoomed

Canon EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM:

Canon Vs Nikon

I have this here not to compare the quality or the performance of each of these lenses but to tell you what really pissed me off in Canon. Both Canon and Nikon have lenses of all ranges and for all purposes and every lens in one brand has an equivalent one in the other. Now, the problem with Canon is that the price of a particular lens is almost always more than a similar lens in Nikon. The casing and the looks appear cheaper than that of Nikon. Even for a lens that costs half a grand, Canon does not provide Internal Focus and the the lens does not come with the basic accessories like lens hood and a carry case. All these may sound very insignificant but they do matter when you are in love with something :-).