Which lens?

[Gord K.]

I am going to be taking pen pictures to put into a tutorial. I have a DSLR camera and the three lens I have to pick from are the 18-55mm f3.6-4.5 kit lens that came with the camera, a 28-105mm f3.2-4.5 lens or a 50mm f1.4 lens. I am equally competent (or incompetent!) with all three lens so which one would be the best choice for pen photography?

It's a grey, cloudy day here so I will probably be using natural light. We have a large east facing kitchen window.

Would appreciate your thoughts.

Gord

 

[Sylvanite]

Without knowing more about the rest of your equipment, how you plan to compose your photos, and your target resolution, I can't say which lens would be best. What's behind the camera is much more important than what's inside it.

Try starting off with the 28-105. Compose your photo, choose your camera placement for the perspective you want, frame the shot, and see what focal length you've chosen. If it's close to 50mm, and you aren't happy with the image quality from the zoom lens (distortion or sharpness), then switch to the 50mm prime lens. If, for some reason, you want a wider angle than 28mm, then fall back to the 18-55.

I hope that helps,
Eric

 

[76winger]

I agree with Eric.


Your distance from the pen and how you wish to frame the the pen in the photo are what you need to figure out, and either one of the zoom lenses should allow you the flexibility of trying different distances and angles until you find what you like best. After I took many photos, I found most of mine being taken in the 38-42mm range, so when I decided to get a prime lens I went for one in that range, which was a 40mm lens. You may find the 50 will work you in similar fashion,but play around with the zoom lenses you have and just see where you end up!

Sent from my iPad using Forum Runner

 

[farmer]

18-55 kit kens

I haven't tried a 28- 105 mm but I have had a lot of fun with my 18-55 kit lens and it does a good job on pens

Everything depends on if you plan on moving into a full frame camera body.

If you do then do not buy EF s model lenses, My EF s 18-55 and EF s 10 22 mm lenses with fit on my t3i but not on my 5D MK 2 .
EF and TSE lenses will fit on a full frame and a cropped camera body.
Not all EF or TSE lenses work well on a cropped body.

If you want to go all out product photography then you might want to ( think ) about going full frame. I have fun with all of my canon camera's

But it already sounds like you have 2 lenses that will work good.

 

[Boz]

In the old film days a 50mm lens was the normal lens because 50mm was the length of the diagonal of the a 35mm negative (or slide). A lens that is shorter was considered to be wide angle and longer was a telephoto. The shorter lenses can distort perspective and in extreme cases you can get curvature along the edges of the frame. Depth of field is also increased at smaller f-stops. Conversely a telephoto lens flattens perspective and depth of field is reduced at small f-stops. Now today the chip that records your image is smaller than the old 35 mm. Depending on the camera a "normal" lens would be around 35mm. So your 18-55 is the most normal. As Dave said most of his pen photography is done between 38-42mm which for his camera is close to normal or slightly telephoto. Hope this helps.