 BetterPhoto Member |
What Lens to Get for Pentax ZX 50 My, what a great site this is! I would like to ask... I have a Pentax ZX 50 SLR that got for Christmas. I feel I could get sharper images with a better lens. What would be a good lens to start with? I like to have to ability to either acquire manually or with the AF feature. I love to zoom! I also have to mention... I'm on a budget. Thanks for any advice!
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Ken Pang |
Quality is never cheap unfortunately and it really depends on what you want the lens for that determines how much you want to spend. On a standard 6x4 photo, the difference between the best pro lens and a reasonable lens is not much (that of course, rules out the extremely cheap lenses! It can be pretty damn obvious when someone uses those!) If sharpness is what you are after, you probably want to look for phrases describing the lens such as "apochromatic" or "Ultra low dispersion" (performance characteristics) and "aspherical elements" or "coated elements" (Technologies which help achieve the first two) To extend your dollar further, try these hints before rushing out to buy anything: 1) Make sure it's the lens that is causing the unsharpness and not slow shutter speed or shallow depth of field. Get several opinions. Ask someone at your local photography club, or your photofinisher, if they seem knowledgeable. (On second thoughts, they might try to sell you something you don't need to "solve" your problems) 2) Shoot at two stops from maximum if there is sufficient light. (IE, if you have a f/5.6, shoot at f/11. if you have a f/4, shoot at f/8) In most zoom lenses, the image is sharpest around those apertures. On the bright side to things, you even get better depth of field, meaning you can miss your AF sensor by a little bit and it doesn't matter so much. 3) Get an MTF graph for your lens, and find out where the "sweet spot" for the lens is. For example, on my 70-200 f/2.8, 200mm end has a better MTF than the 70mm end. Try to shoot at the sweetspot and move yourself to recompose the photo to your liking. (For a good explanation on evaluating lenses and MTF, go to this web site The 70-200 purchase was actually a knee jerk reaction from a set of slightly blurry photos. If I had known back then what I knew now, I'm not sure I would have gone and spent all that money. On the other hand, it is a brilliant lens, and having depth of field of under 3cm at f/2.8 200mm, it has taught me to pay attention to a few things - 1) Check the computer's focusing VERY carefully. 2) Lock the focus when reframing 3) and make sure I have a fast enough shutter speed as required by the focal length! Good luck with your photography, and don't fall into the same trap I did - make sure your equipment is limiting you before splurging out on new equipment! Ken
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