Through the lens: How important is the lens?

by Ryan Macalandag

A lot of people ask me what camera to buy all the time. My answers always come back with a camera body AND a lens. Kit lenses suck. If you’re going to spend dough on a Digital SLR, do yourself a favor and at a minimum buy a cheap 50mm prime to go with it. – Thomas Hawk

Thomas Hawk is right on the dot. The lens you use on your camera plays a major role on the image quality you get from your pictures. I don’t think most people know this ‘coz most people I know still use their kit lens. Mine, I threw (sold) away as soon as I had money to buy the Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 lens. Sure, it’s not a zoom lens but the difference in image quality is so vast it’s not even funny.

The Lens That Sees

How important is the lens really, we ask? Well, try taking off the lens on your camera. All you see is a blurry view on your viewfinder, right? It is the lens that sees and the camera body that captures/records the image. Thus, if your glass (also refers to lens) is a cheap kit lens, your camera will capture/record it as a cheap image also.



I repeat. It is the lens that sees. The camera body only captures the light that went through.

Now, before enumerating the fine aspects of a good glass, let’s enumerate the aspects of the cheap ones. Cheap lenses are not sharp and have optical issues like chromatic aberration, distortion, focus-hunting and a lot more. Cheap DSLR lenses are made of cheap materials thus break easily, too.

For the pro lenses (professionals use the better and more expensive ones thus the “pro” label), sharpness is never an issue. It is apparent when I first had the 50mm f/1.8. The photographs I took all had a “crispness” to them. My images looked “professional”, I told myself. My photos looked better and I was even more passionate to create more pictures. And most importantly, I didn’t have to post process my pics like crazy. No more sharpening and contrast/brightness adjustments in Photoshop. And the colors were much better now.

Professional glass would also mean it is built tough. Pro photographers use and exchange their lenses most of the time and subject their lenses to harsh handling. But good lenses can withstand heavy use and would last a lot longer than the ordinary ones.

Price Wars

Price-wise, pro lenses are much more expensive, too. The pro standard 24-70 lens could fetch around P50,000 in the market. Third party alternatives like Sigma and Tokina are at around P20,000. Cheaper but still, a lot more expensive than the cheaper versions.

I use an ultra wide Tokina 12-24 f/4 as my standard walk around lens which cost me P22,000 from an online seller. The Nikon version costs around P35,000.

My current portrait lens, a Nikkor 60mm f/2.8 – which also does superb macro photography – set me back P15,000 which I bought second-hand from a friend. Brand new, it would cost around P24,000.

The Nifty Fifty

Do you still want to get into photography? With the prices I mentioned I won’t blame you if you would switch to cross stitch. Don’t be scared, there is a cheap “expensive” lens though. I mean, it is cheap alright, but, it churns out photos that looks like they came off an expensive lens. I bought mine at P5,000!

The 50mm f/1.8 was the kit lens of yore. It was cheap and easy to make. Most cameras had it. But when the lens manufacturers found a way to make cheap zoom lenses, they started using zooms as kit lenses.

The “nifty fifty” – as it is called – is still one of the standard prime lenses today. If you own a digital SLR, buy one of these. And voila! Stunning photos!

Of course, the basic rule still stands - nothing beats skill over gear.

Happy shooting!

(For questions and comments regarding this column, please email me at ryanmacalandag@yahoo.com or look me up on Facebook. You may also catch me on these websites: ryanmacalandag.blogspot.com and www.flickr.com/ryanmacalandag. A photography workshop and clinic is planned to happen soon in February. Stay tuned.)