If you recently purchased your first DSLR or mirrorless camera, you probably know it won’t reach its true potential unless you add a few lenses to your basket. Your DSLR purchase could turn into wastage of money if you don’t ever replace the kit lens that came with the camera. Invest in a new lens will certainly bring a huge boost to image quality. Buying a new lens could be intimidating, as you must dive deep into the world of lenses for making an informed purchase. We can always consult with our experts at Ryans either online or physically visiting your nearby Ryans showroom. However, this article aims to help you out with building a greater understanding of lenses.

There are five different parameters that you need to take into consideration while purchasing a lens for your camera. Let’s take a closer look at all these parameters one by one.
 

Lens Speed

Lens Speed is the first thing you need to take into account while purchasing a lens for your DSLR. Lens Speed describes the maximum aperture of the lens. Aperture is a hole within a lens, which allows light to travel into the camera sensor. You can shrink or enlarge the size of the aperture to allow more or less light to reach your camera sensor. It is described as a number with the letter F next to it. The smaller the number the larger the hole and more light can get passed at a time. This means that the shutter speed can be quicker and means the lens is faster.

The maximum aperture of a camera will help you work out several things.

• A fast lens for instance with a maximum aperture of f/1.4 is capable of taking shots in a lot darker places than a lens with a maximum aperture of f/4 or f/5.6.

• A faster lens will also allow you to take pictures of moving subjects and freeze them better.

• Faster lenses let you have a shallower depth of field. This means that when you’re focusing upon a subject the foreground and background will be blurrier. Of course, having a very fast lens means that this can make focusing trickier as your depth of field is very shallow. Of course, you can shoot at a smaller aperture with a fast lens to make your depth of field deeper.

• Faster lenses will help with your flash photography too as they capture more ambient light.

Focal Length 

Focal length allows you to change the perspective of your shot without having any movement. A shorter focal length, like a 24mm one, will allow you to capture a wider slice of the scene. On the other hand, a longer focal length, such as a 200mm, allows you to get closer to the action. That’s why longer lenses are used for capturing distant objects and shorter lenses are good for capturing landscapes. The focal length of a lens tells you how much it will magnify your subject when photographing it. It will also tell you what kind of angle of view you’ll get.
 

Focusing Distance

This is the measurement between the end of your lens and the nearest point that it can focus. It’s particularly useful to know if you’re interested in Macro or close up photography.
 

Image Stabilization

Many mirrorless cameras have image stabilization built into the body to help eliminate camera shake. However, this feature is quite rare in DSLRs. If you want stabilization on a camera that doesn’t have it built-in, you have to buy a lens that comes with this feature. Manufacturers use various tags to denote this feature, from Canon’s IS (Image Stabilization) to Nikon’s VR (Vibration Reduction) to Sony’s OSS (Optical Steady Shot).

Stabilization isn’t always necessary for still photography — shooting at a fast shutter speed will also keep things nice and sharp. However, when working in low light at slow shutter speeds, shooting video in any conditions, or using a very long focal length, stabilization is very important. Stabilization is more common in zoom lenses, less so on primes where the wider apertures let you shoot faster shutter speeds.