so i have the 18-55 kit lens, and just bought 35mm 1.8 lens as my goto lens. should i keep both, or can i sell the kit lens now that i have 35mm?
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Keep both lens?
- Thread starter rick snagwell
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The 18-55 mm kit lens is not a bad piece of glass (I should know I have one sat in my cupboard). My advice is to use your zooms and when you have a few weeks or months worth of pictures, sort them by focal length. Then you can see what you are using more than others.
In other words don't rush to buy everything and get things you find you won't need. I only had the 18-55 mm for the first 9 months.
The kit lens is better than you think. Especially on a bright day and an f/8 setting. Keep it. Use it as your travel lens. Not everything needs to have a shallow depth of field that's all the rage these days. But I'm a street photographer mostly so f/8 is pretty much my thing.
A wider lens is good for landscapes. If you shoot them at all, I'd keep it, as it's not going to bring you much if you sell it.
Fisheye is a fun thing to have, but a) a fisheye is not quite the same as simply a wide lens and b) a decent fisheye costs a lot more than the 18-55mm kit lens.
I have the 10.5mm fisheye and I love that lens, but it's not a replacement for a regular wide angle, it's just a very quirky, niche tool.
Fisheye is a fun thing to have, but a) a fisheye is not quite the same as simply a wide lens and b) a decent fisheye costs a lot more than the 18-55mm kit lens.
I have the 10.5mm fisheye and I love that lens, but it's not a replacement for a regular wide angle, it's just a very quirky, niche tool.
Kit lenses won't really fetch you a lot of money, so it probably is best to just keep it (unless you could really use the cash). Plus, a zoom lens provides you much more flexibility than a prime (even though it is generally less sharp than a prime lens).
I shoot a fair amount at 28mm-equivalent (18mm on your camera), so there's no way I'd give that up for 50mm-equivalent. Others may shoot a lot of portraits, so the 55mm end would be very important to them. Your needs may differ.
A prime lens affects the quality of your images. Specific focal lengths determine how you shoot/what you shoot - focal length helps determine your creative vision.
If you like/want the discipline of shooting with a fixed focal length (until you get to the moderate telephoto range covered by your 55-200), go for it. If the only thought on your mind when buying the 35mm was, "faster/higher quality," hold onto that kit zoom for now and shoot exclusively with the new lens for a while. You'll quickly learn whether you still want/need the zoom.
The 35mm you just purchased is the equivalent of the 50mm kit lens that came with film SLRs back in the day - much-maligned, as it was a compromise - too short for portraiture, too long for landscapes and room interiors.
Now, a fisheye would dramatically affect your creative vision - perhaps too much. I know of one photographer who seems to use only fisheye and IR effects, either singly or in combination. He's very good at it - that's a benefit of narrowing your selection of tools - but looking at his stuff got tiring after a while. It was more about presenting unusual views of typical subject matter than anything else - the equivalent of having only Piccassos on your wall.
A prime lens affects the quality of your images. Specific focal lengths determine how you shoot/what you shoot - focal length helps determine your creative vision.
If you like/want the discipline of shooting with a fixed focal length (until you get to the moderate telephoto range covered by your 55-200), go for it. If the only thought on your mind when buying the 35mm was, "faster/higher quality," hold onto that kit zoom for now and shoot exclusively with the new lens for a while. You'll quickly learn whether you still want/need the zoom.
The 35mm you just purchased is the equivalent of the 50mm kit lens that came with film SLRs back in the day - much-maligned, as it was a compromise - too short for portraiture, too long for landscapes and room interiors.
Now, a fisheye would dramatically affect your creative vision - perhaps too much. I know of one photographer who seems to use only fisheye and IR effects, either singly or in combination. He's very good at it - that's a benefit of narrowing your selection of tools - but looking at his stuff got tiring after a while. It was more about presenting unusual views of typical subject matter than anything else - the equivalent of having only Piccassos on your wall.
all great info, thanks for it!!
the main reason we got this DSLR was a newborn coming in september, and some random vacations we will go on soon.
the main reason we got this DSLR was a newborn coming in september, and some random vacations we will go on soon.
I like both. The 35mm is good for most shots but sometimes you need the wider 18mm lens. the 35 is not great for land or city scales.
Also you don't get much for a used kit lens as so many are on the market.
don't save the SLR for special occasions. So many people do that. They keep it put away in a case, in a box in a closet.
Leave it out, with no case on a table with battery charged. Make a goal to shoot at least 100 frames a week, every week.
Vacation shooters have a problem in that they are using a camera that is unfamiliar to them. They tend to simply point the camera a subject and press the bottom. It takes constant practice to "see" composition, color and line and stop thinking that ANY image of your kid where the face is recognizable is good. Take 100 per week and learn to sort them, keep the best 2% or so. and then you learn to recognize those 2% keeper shots while still looking in the viewfinder.
Like anything else, if you do it all the time you get good at it. If done twice a year you don't ever get good.
You don't believe it now but the BEST images are always the ones near your home. Yo know the area you can take advantage of "interesting" weather and light and can go back and re-shoot any time. Vacation shots are done in a rush in a place you don't know well.
Keep it on the kitchen table.
Great. A joke from the film era was that to many rolls of 35mm film had a picture of a Christmas tree at BOTH ends of the roll.
I'm always surprised by the number of threads where it's recommended that the user sell their 18-55 and/or 55-200 kit lenses.
Is there a large demand for these lenses?
Anyway, I say keep it. They're not worth anything (or certainly not worth the effort of selling them), and you may need to shoot wider than 35 mm. I say this as someone who ONLY shoots with 35 mm and 50 mm primes. I don't need to shoot wider, but at times, I wish I had a 28 mm and 50 mm, or a 28 mm and 43 mm or something.
Is there a large demand for these lenses?
Anyway, I say keep it. They're not worth anything (or certainly not worth the effort of selling them), and you may need to shoot wider than 35 mm. I say this as someone who ONLY shoots with 35 mm and 50 mm primes. I don't need to shoot wider, but at times, I wish I had a 28 mm and 50 mm, or a 28 mm and 43 mm or something.
A prime lens is great for family holidays situations where you're in a semi controlled environment. When you go on vacations, all that goes out the door. For instance, when I take my kids to DisneyWorld, swapping lenses is not really feasible. While your baby is not ready for DW, the time will come fairly quickly when you're out and about where a zoom lens gives you the flexibility that a prime cannot.
Also as others mentioned, kit lenses while very good, aren't in high demand, you'll not really get that much for it. As I mentioned, I recommend keeping it, then selling/trading it.
Chris - this simple post should be made a closed sticky!
Practice does make one a better photographer, maybe not world class and all that, but all people can learn the "basics" and those then become their core strengths to build upon.