MEC Photography: Lenses

If you need some extra incentive to get those great photos of yours off your camera and onto our Flickr site, have we got something for you! Submit your photos to MEC’s Flickr site and they will be considered for our new MEC Photo Contest. Beginning in December, we’ll pick one photo every month and the winning photographer will receive a $50 MEC Gift Card!

For those of you who are at all serious about photography, the first thing you should do after getting a new camera is to buy a new lens. Why? Most cameras come with low quality kit lenses, which are fine to get started, but I recommend upgrading if you can afford it.

For example, many Canon cameras come with the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II, (EF-S lenses are designed to be used on crop-frame cameras such as the Rebels and the 7D) – it is the equivalent of 28-88mm on a full frame. The lens is small and light, but the quality of your photos will suffer – zoom lenses, in general, are slower and optically inferior to fixed lenses, but this can be overcome by spending the extra money on a high quality lens. Most of Canon’s L Series zoom lenses are excellent, and some of the new EF-S products are close in quality.

Image may be NSFW.
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Good options for Canon upgrades are the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM or the EF-S 15-85mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM. They have a better range, and/or are faster, and are optically superior.

For a very useful, fast lens at a good price, I like the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM. The advantage of having faster lenses is that you can shoot in lower light situations, and the photos often look better with less depth of field – you can isolate the subject by having the background and/or foreground blurry. In the photo above, the kayaker on the right is clearly the subject and the eye is drawn to him by the selective focus, which eliminates the distracting background.

A good rule-of-thumb is to buy L-series zooms, and regular fixed lenses.

I use Canon products, but I’m sure other companies have a similar product offering.

I encourage MEC members to submit photos. Here’s how you can do that:

Check out our Photo Submissions page – it has all the details.

Go to MEC’s photo submission site on Flickr.

Have a look at this Flickr gallery. The images here represent the type of images we are interested in using – something with a unique perspective, showing people enjoying the outdoors, using the gear we sell at MEC.

If you liked this post, make sure you read more about MEC Photography.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.

Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.