What is the best Digital SLR Camera Lens.
- What you want for a starter digital slr camera lens is a high-quality prime lens with a fixed focal length. You want a normal perspective so that the relative sizes of objects in the image will be roughly what you experience with your normal vision.
- For a 35mm film camera or a full-frame digital SLR, the normal focal length is 50mm. For a Canon Digital Rebel or similar big lenses/small sensor camera the normal perspective is afforded by a 35mm lens.
- In the Canon system there are two kinds of autofocus motors available in the various lenses. The best kind of auto focus motor is ultrasonic, denoted by the USM designation on a lens.
- With USM the pure auto focus will be faster and it is also easier to let the camera do most of the focus work but manually change the point of focus if desired. For the EOS-1Ds or EOS-5D, I recommend the Canon 50/1.4 because it has the USM motor, unlike the cheaper Canon 50/1.8.
- For the Canon small sensor DSLRs, e.g., the EOS 30D and Digital Rebel XTi, the Canon 35/2 lens is an economical lightweight choice, but sadly it lacks a USM motor. Canon makes a very fine 35/1.4L USM that lets you work in light only half as bright as the 35/2.
- This digital slr camera lens costs more than $1000, however, and, at 580 grams, is heavy. Generally speaking, "third party" lenses such as those made by Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina, are not worth considering compared to Canon-brand lenses. The remarkably cheap wide-range third-party zooms deliver terrible image quality.
- The high quality third-party prime lenses or fast zooms aren't much less expensive than high quality Canon- or Nikon-brand lenses. Sigma's 30/1.4 digital-only lens is an exception. Because it does not cast an image large enough to cover a 24x36mm film frame.
- The digital slr camera lens is much lighter (422g) than the Canon 35/1.4 and less than half the price. It has an ultrasonic motor, denoted "HSM" by Sigma, and has delivered superb optical performance in magazine tests.
