The 4 most useful lenses every photographer should have

A curated collection of the first lenses you should consider purchasing as a photographer. These lenses are fairly inexpensive and well reviewed, and great bang for your buck! I also own most of these.

You may recognize that a lot of these lenses are prime lenses. No zoom means you are the zoom, which helps you develop your eye for composition because it’s harder to fix it (cropping is fine, but sometimes not as great as a perfectly framed shot). The glass for primes tends to be sharper and clearer, since there are less elements going on in the lens.

My Top Picks – valuable lenses that give you bang for your buck!

The first lens I recommend you picking up is the amazing 50mm f/1.8 (or wider, if you can afford it). You can snag one of these for around $100. Buying used drives the price down even further.

Why pick one of these up? These lenses have an aperture of 1.8, which means you can open way wider than your kit lens, giving you much better low light performance, speed ( can use faster shutterspeeds because of more light), and that highly sought after bokeh!

Since I shoot Canon, this is the one I currently have: For my Nikon people:

And here are a few of the best shots I took with it, demonstrating the sharpness and bokeh you can achieve with it – I post more of my photography on tumblr & DeviantArt

Another lens that is awesome is one of these pancake lenses , which hover around $100-$125 and can be found much cheaper used on Ebay.

Why pick one of these up? These lenses are very sharp and offer a pretty nice, slightly wide angle. Probably not as wide as the kit lens at 18mm, but pretty great. If you’re using a crop sensor, it’s around 35mm, which is pretty close to the human eye’s natural field of view. They’re also super compact and light weight, which is excellent for travel.

The one I have is here:

A sample photo:

Here is a lens I did a bit of research on, and own. I enjoy it. It’s sharpest around the middle of the range, but I do use it at 70 and 300 and it’s not that bad. It does pretty decent close up shots too. It’s a decent telephoto at the price of $160ish.

Here is the one I own and it’s available for Canon, Nikon, Sony, Sigma, and Pentax DSLRs.

A few samples:

Next Lenses

Once you gain more money, there are definitely better lenses out there. The lenses themselves will not outgrow your skills, but there are ones that are faster, sharper, and more versatile. Here are some sites that have great roundups and camera lens reviews and recommendations:

• Snapsort – allows you to compare cameras and lenses! “Snapsort has a pretty simple goal: help consumers make informed purchasing decisions quickly. It just turns out this is a really hard problem to solve.”
• Gizmodo’s post that inspired this one
• Lenses for Beginners - a pretty useful collection! From 2013 so if you look up these lenses used, you are likely to snag a wonderful deal.
• The 8 Best Lenses For DSLR Cameras to Buy in 2017- a high quality post! This site is really clean and nice to look at.

I hope this post helped you find a lens you like! You may also be interested in looking over your options for free photo editing software. If you enjoyed this post, please consider sharing it with your friends!