All About Lenses

5 Compelling Reasons to Shop Smart Why Buy Used Camera Gear? 5 Compelling Reasons to Shop Smart There is a moment every photographer knows. You find the lens you want, check the price new, and quietly close the tab. The budget isn’t there — not for new. But the creative vision is. That gap between…

The Lens Is the Camera: Why Glass Comes First When Building a Camera Kit

The good news is that these numbers are not complicated once someone explains them plainly.

Lens coating quality is only half the picture — the glass itself varies considerably too. In the early days of commercial photography, lens flare was not an aesthetic choice. It was a problem. When light struck the uncoated glass surface of an early photographic lens, a significant percentage of that light bounced around inside the…

Why Secondhand Glass Deserves a First Look A photographer acquaintance once walked into a well-known camera store in Vancouver carrying a 1970s Nikon 105mm f/2.5 lens that had belonged to his father. He wanted to trade it toward a new lens of the same focal length. The salesman examined it, quoted him a modest trade-in…

How to Start Smart, Buy with Purpose, and Avoid the Gear Trap There is a particular kind of photographer you encounter at camera clubs and online forums. They own seven lenses. They have spent, in aggregate, a substantial amount of money. They photograph their cat. This is not a character flaw. It is the entirely…

Understanding lens types — what they are designed to do, why they exist, and which photographic situations demand them — is the foundation of making good purchasing decisions and, more immediately, good photographs. This post is that foundation.

Keeping Your Glass in Peak Condition A wildlife photographer who had been working in the field for thirty years was once asked what single piece of advice he would give a younger photographer about equipment. He did not talk about focal lengths or camera bodies or autofocus systems. He said: store your lenses correctly, clean…

Common Lens Mistakes Beginners Make A photography instructor once described the first year of serious photography as ‘an expensive education in what not to buy.’ He was not being unkind. He was describing a pattern he had watched repeat itself in every cohort of students he had ever taught: enthusiastic beginners, armed with genuine passion…

What to Inspect, What to Avoid, and How to Buy With Confidence This is the post the entire series has been building toward. Over the previous nine posts, we have covered why the lens is the foundation of a camera kit, what focal length and aperture mean in practice, which lens types serve which photography,…