Question About Multipurpose Zoom Lenses.
What is your opinion on multipurpose zoom lenses such as an 18-250 Sony or Sigma lens for an Alpha 65 or 77?
No retailers in Connecticut sell them so I am looking for some opinions. Can you get good bokeh from that type of lens? This would be my first SLR or SLT in Sony's case and I really don't want to carry a bag full of different lenses around. Or should I go with a couple of lenses? I would be shooting mainly landscapes and wildlife.
Answer:
Those types of multipurpose lenses such as the 18-250 Sony zoom lens make for a great all-around, walk-around lens in my opinion. They give you a wide range of zoom abilities in a single easy to carry lens. For someone traveling who does not want to carry multiple lenses or does not want to have to switch lens back and forth, they can be a good option.
As to whether you would be better off with a single lens or two lenses it really depends on your needs and what you will be photographing. An 18-250mm zoom would give you the focal range needed to take wide-angle photos for landscape photography with a telephoto lens that can also be used for wildlife photography.
Popular Photography recently did a review of some of these lenses and listed their pros and cons. You might want to check out that article online.
This type of lens can be a good multipurpose lens but one has to compromise some when compared to having multiple, more specialized lenses in your camera bag. As for bokeh...at the telephoto end of the zoom range, you can probably get some decent looking bokeh but overall because they tend to be slower lenses you will not get the bokeh you could from say an f2.8 70-200 zoom lens. Also for wildlife photos, you will likely find that you wish you had more zoom capability than 250mm, however, if using a Sony A77 you can effectively us the smart teleconverter to get a field of view similar to having a 500mm zoom lens.
Depending on how you will be using your camera, one of these multipurpose lenses could be the only lens you would need but likely as you get more and more into DSLR photography you might want to add some other lenses as well.
My basic two lens setup for my Sony A77 is the 16-50mm F2.8 kit lens that came with the camera and a Sigma 50-500 zoom. I carry those lenses with me most of the time. At some time in the future, I want to add an 18-250 for those times when I am traveling and do not want to have a larger camera bag or multiple lenses with me.
As to what type of lens you should get that will depend a lot on what conditions will you be shooting in and whether the slower multiple purpose lens will meet your needs or will you also want lenses with larger apertures for low light photography or longer zooms for capturing those elusive wildlife photos.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment