My Favorite Lens? Currently My 70-300mm Nikkor f/5.6 Zoom

One of the most fun things about owning a DSLR, of course, is that there are so many lenses available. In fact, photographers (pros and amateurs) probably spend more time fantasizing about owning newer and better lenses than actually using them. It's easy to become addicted to the visual possibilities of owning a lot of lenses. I've owned a lot of lenses over the years, but I have sold a few lately on Ebay, so don't have as many as I usually have. One of the reasons is that I want to upgrade several of my older lenses to image-stabilized lenses and I wanted to sell my non-IS lenses while there was still a market for them.

No matter which lenses come and go though, there are a few that just become my favorite go-to lenses and currently (and for the past few years) one of those has been my Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED IF AF-S VR Nikkor Zoom Lens for Nikon Digital SLR Cameras. For around $500 it's one of the best lenses I've ever used. Yes, it's a bit slow in terms of maximum aperture, but compared to the $2,000 80-200mm f/2.8 Nikkor (which, admittedly, was a sharper lens and had a constant maximum aperture but you're talking a lens that costs two grand!) that I used to carry everywhere, it's much lighter (I can carry it in my photo vest pocket easily) and it's perfect for using in nightclubs and theaters when I'm shooting concerts. I sometimes sneak it into theaters in the inside pocket of my denim jacket.

There is just something about that focal-length range that attracts my eye--I love that it allows me to fill the frame with relatively distant subjects (like the animal trainer working with a beluga whale shown here and shot at the Mystic Aquarium in Mystic, Connecticut--one of my favorite photos, by the way) and that it focuses very quickly. For a lot of the subjects that I shoot (lots of travel and wildlife), it's tough to get as close as I'd like, but I just can't afford to buy a 400mm or 600mm lens. When I use the 70-300mm on my Nikon D90 body, it becomes a 105-450mm lens! That is a whopping amount of lens for that price. If you add a 1.4x tele converter (Kenko makes an affordable converter that fits it) Kenko 1.4X PRO 300 Teleconverter DGX Nikon AF Digital SLRs it has a max focal length of 630mm (but you lose a stop of speed). Just be sure that any converter that you buy fits the specific model of lens.

I shot this photo of the Blue Angels at an air show in Rhode Island using the 70-300mm and I could never have done it with my 80-20mm because it simply weighed too much to hold over my head for an hour or more. 

Consider the Strange Beauty of the Fisheye Lens

If you happen to be a Nikon DSLR shooter, are completely bored with all of your lenses and have (roughly) an extra $700 burning a hole in your equipment pocket, the Nikon 10.5mm f/2.8G ED DX Fisheye Lens may be just the lens you need. That's exactly the situation I was in when I bought mine and I have to tell you, as unnecessary as owning a fisheye lens is, it's still a lot of fun--and actually, there are some practical uses (just in case you need to justify owning it to a nit-picking spouse), though you may have to stretch the word "practical" a bit to find them.

The fun part first: The Nikkor 10.5mm fisheye lens is an ultra-wide-angle lens that provides a whopping 180-degree (measured diagonally from corner-to-corner) angle of view and that is far wider than even our own peripheral vision which is about 120-degrees. This is also what's known as a full-frame fisheye lens because it does not provide the cropped circular angle-of-view that some fisheye lenses produce. The result is a wild and distorted (but again, full frame) view of the world that can't be obtained with any other lens. Photos taken with this lens have a curved (bowed) distortion that, combined with the super-wide view, produce some really interesting and, I think, creative images. At the moment I think that Nikon is the only lens manufacturer making a full-frame fisheye and it can only be used on cameras with a DX-size sensor (D80, D90, etc.) and it can't be used on a full-frame DSLR body because it won't cover the field of the sensor.

Another side benefit of such a wide lens is that it has incredible depth of field--you barely have to focus this lens and if you shoot at a mid-range aperture like f/8 or smaller, everything from your feet to the horizon will be in sharp focus. In fact, I shot the frame here at f/6.3 and everything is in sharp focus from the bench that's about a foot from my knee to the far horizon. And, by the way, as you can see here, when you include the horizon in a fisheye shot you get a wickedly curved horizon line that looks like the edge of the earth (which, from where you're standing, is exactly what you're seeing).

OK, so now that you have yourself convinced you absolutely need one of these lenses, what are the practical applications? Because these lenses produce such a super-wide angle-of-view and because they have enormous depth of field, you can use them in tight spaces (like photographing your beautiful newly remodeled bathroom so that you can show it off to the relatives--you see, a perfect argument in favor of owning this lens) to provide very inclusive and very sharp images. You can also photograph large groups of people (like all of your wife's relatives gathered on your front steps--you can see where I'm going with this) without having to back up three blocks.

But won't these images be horribly distorted? Ahh, there's the fun part (oops, this is supposed to be the practical part): there is software available that can correct the distortion and leave you with an optically correct image that still retains the wide-angle-view and great depth of field. The Fisheye-Hemi Plug In from Image Trends is probably the most popular and sells for just $29.95 and works with both Photoshop and Apple Aperture software. Once you've run the image through the software the curved lines and image distortion are totally removed. Neat, eh?

To be honest, as much as I wanted this lens, it sat in my camera bag and was only used infrequently for the first few months that I owned it. Since then, however, I've been carrying it with me everywhere and though it doesn't fit into every situation, it's a ton of fun to have around. It's also a tiny lens physically and will easily fit into a jacket pocket. So if you're hiking it around Manhattan and shooting with all your traditional lenses and then suddenly you run into your spouse's cousin in their brand new car and you want to show everyone just how cool and spacious the backseat is...hey, I'm trying to help you get a new lens here, work with me.

Add a Wide-Angle Lens to your DSLR Kit

Other than asking me what camera they should buy, the question I get most from friends (and students) with DSLR cameras is: What lens should I buy next? Most people buy their DSLR as a kit these days and that usually includes a fairly substantial zoom lens that covers a range from moderately wide angle to moderate telephoto. These lenses are typically lightweight, fast-focusing and, for the optical range they cover, offer a lot of flexibility.

The larger issue for me is that these lenses are restricted to a fairly moderate (i.e., creatively safe) optical zone. You get a moderate wide-angle lens through a moderate telephoto lens range and that's it. I much prefer working with optics that are capable of providing a more extreme view of the world--either extremely wide-angle or extremely telephoto. Let's look at wide-angle lenses first and in the next posting I'll talk about teles.

Most consumer-level DSLR cameras have a DX sensor that is about one-third (in terms of diagonal size) the size of a 35mm frame of film. One of the byproducts of having a digital sensor that is smaller is that, because the sensor is only seeing the center of the lens' coverage, the focal length of whatever lens you're using is effectively longer. This magnification is called the cropping factor. Typically you have to multiply the focal length of a lens designed for 35mm by a factor of 150% (it varies by camera and sensor) to get the effective focal length. (And again, I'm only talking here about cameras that have a smaller sensor; lenses used on digital SLRs that have a full-frame sensor provide the same coverage that they would provide on a 35mm film camera.) This is great if you're a telephoto lens user (if you often shoot wildlife or sports, for example), but not so great if you like using very wide-angle lenses.

If, for example, you're using a 24mm lens--which provides a stunning wide-angle view on 35mm--you're working with what is effectively a 36mm lens on a DSLR. That's only a moderate wide-angle at best and is actually closer to a "normal" lens. In order to get really wide-angle effects with your DX-sensor DSLR you'll need a much wider lens. I recently bought a 10-20mm Sigma ultra wide-angle lens and I love it. In terms of 35mm lenses it provides the angle of view of a 15-30mm lens and so restores the ultra wide-angle view that I'd get with a lens in that focal-length range. Nikon makes a 12-24mm lens that provides coverage equal to an 18-36mm lens on 35mm and Canon's EF-S 10-22 USM is approximately the same.

The beauty of a really wide-angle lens is that it exaggerates spaces like crazy and can elongate shapes and provide a much greater feeling of depth in all kinds of photos from landscapes to still lifes. I shot the photo of the old freight train show here (shot in Greenville, Maine) using the Sigma 10-20mm lens specifically to exaggerate the shapes and length of the train cars. Look at how that near car seems to be looming over the rest of the train and really draws the eye into the composition.

If this type of visual exaggeration appeals to you, you might want to consider adding an extreme wide-angle lens to your DSLR kit. I would suggest getting something that offers a minimum focal length in the range of 15-22mm (in terms of 35mm coverage), so 10-15mm in the DX lens format. (I wouldn't go for a "fisheye" lens as your first ultra-wide lens, but I will talk about those in a future posting.) In the next posting I'll talk about the advantages of adding a more extreme telephoto lens.

Exaggerate Space with a Wide-Angle Lens

Yesterday I closed my posting with a question. Did you get the answer? I'm sure you did! Yes, of course, wide-angle lenses exaggerate or expand apparent space in a photograph. Wide-angle lenses have a wider field of view which creates the illusion of greater distance because they make everything in the frame appear smaller. The farther something is from the lens, the smaller it appears. Also, the wider the lens the more exaggerated space becomes.

Wide-angle lenses are particularly useful when you want to expand space in a landscape photograph. In this street scene taken in the wonderful little town of Prairie City, Iowa, for example, I used an 18mm lens (27mm on my Nikon D70s with the cropping factor) to exaggerate the feeling of distance of this small road. I also used a small aperture (f/22) to keep everything in sharp focus from near to far--which adds to the illusion of distance. One more trick I used to heighten the depth illusion in this photo was to use the power of one-point perspective--letting the road converge to a vanishing point.

What constitutes a wide-angle lens? In basic terms anything wider than a "normal" lens (roughly 50mm in 35mm format, for example) is considered wide angle. The most useful lenses are those that have a 35mm equivalent focal length of between 21mm and 28mm (again, we have to talk in 35mm equivalents because different sensor sizes make the actual focal lengths irrelevant in general terms). There are wider lenses--up to about 10mm--but these begin to fall into the range of "fisheye" lenses, or extremely wide-angle lenses used only for special effects. (And since I have a fisheye lens on order, I'll write more about them very soon!)

Get to know how all of your zoom lens settings or different DSLR lenses transform various scenes and you'll always know which lens to turn to for a specific effect.