Photo By Harshit Sekhon

Different types of photography genre require different ability in lens. Landscape and nature require sharpness, Portraits need nice bokeh, Sports and wildlife need fast focusing speed, low light photography need fast aperture etc.

If you are planning to buy a new or used lens, its better to check the ability and specialization of the lens. It will help you to buy the appropriate lens for your purpose.

Zoom VS Prime Lens A zoom les is always helpful and nice attraction. It will be difficult to find a photographer who didn’t used a zoom lens. Most of the pro photographers prefer prime lens for their work. Well it doesn’t mean they don’t like or don’t use Zoom lens. The main difference is Zoom provides you the freedom of focal length and Prime give you more sharpness and color contrast. For details of Zoom VS Prime lens, visit the post Zoom VS Prime Lens. Become sure on your requirement of focal length freedom, Sharpness, Contrast. If you think you can’t pay more for different focal lengths by buying multiple prime lenses, go for a nice zoom lens. If Sharpness, Color Contrast is your priority, go for Prime lens.

Sharpness: Sharpness of A zoom lens can very easily in different focal length. Typically in long range zoom lens, the longest end doesn’t product good result in case of sharpness. But this is not an obvious. Sigma 50-500/ Sigma 150-500, Nikon 18-200 is known to produce fine result in longest end. It will be better for you to check the sharpness in maximum possible focal lengths before you buy.

Aperture: A fast lens means a lens with large aperture. Aperture is the gate for light in your DSLR. If you are a low light photographer or you need a large aperture, than go for 1.4, 1.8, 2.8 aperture lenses. If low light is not your concern, then you don’t need to pay much for a large aperture.

Focus Speed: A fast lens doesn’t ensure fast focus always. Modern Canon lenses use USM (UltraSonic Motor), Nikon use SWM (Silent Wave Motor) but in Lens it is marked as AF-S (Autofocus-Silent), Sigma use HSM (Hyper Sonic Motor) and Temron use USD (Ultrasonic Silent Drive) technology for fast focusing speed.

Taken from Wikipedia

Chromatic aberration (CA) Chromatic aberration is an issue which happens when a lens fails to bring all wavelengths of color to a focus at the same point. When chromatic aberration occurs, objects can appear blurred, and halos and streaks of color may appear in the image.

There are two types of chromatic aberration: longitudinal and lateral, also known as transverse. The good news is, it is easily recoverable in Photoshop, Lightroom or with other editing software.

Check in lens review sites if your chosen lens have CA problem or not. If yes, how much it is and can you accept it.

Famous Review sites are: DPReview.com, Ken Rockwell (Specially for Nikon), Canon Lens Reviews, The-Digital-Picture.com etc

Example from Wikipedia

Distortion A perfect lens would render straight lines as straight, no matter where they occur. Most practical lenses aren’t that good, though, and instead bend lines outwards (barrel distortion) or inwards (pincushion distortion). Wide-angle lenses and wide-range zoom lenses often suffer particularly badly from this. Wide angel lens produce more distortion rather than telephoto lens. Check how much distortion your chosen lens produce.

If you are purchasing a used lens, then check if the lens has any fungus in front or rear elements. Check if there any scratch in the lens. If it’s a zoom lens, check if auto focus works on every focal length.

Well this is not the full checklist and there might be any item unknown to me. If you have any tips to share, share in comment.

Photo By Tambako the Jaguar

Depth of Field (DOF): Depth of Field (DOF) means the focused and sharp part of the photo. DOF can be narrow or wide. You can check details on DOF vs Bokeh Explained post. DOF effect could be used to compose your photo and highlight your main subject when unwanted subject will be in out of focus.

Photo By Michael Foley Photography

Foreground and Background: Use foreground and background to capture your photo. Any unwanted elements in background or foreground could ruin a photo. Unwanted elements could take place because of limitation of movement by photographer, focal length limit, too much attention in subject itself etc. Though some of them could be removed through cropping after taking photo but sometime it might not be possible and your favorite shot could be just waste of a shutter. Before taking a photo, look for suitable prominent foreground and clean background.

Photo By dorena-wm

Texture A texture is design a surface of an object, small or large, in repetitive pattern or random pattern. Texture is all around us! If you don’t believe, stop reading and look around you. Texture itself is a good subject to capture. Texture can be used to compose a photo keeping it in background.

You may also have a look on Elements of Landscape Photography and 5 More elements of Landscape Photography.

Photo By It'sGreg

Color Strong and leading color could make a great photo too. Colors represent mood and environment. To illustrate peace, cool mood use green, white color, to represent strong, bold mood use red, yellow. To represent girls, pink is the best choose. Except all those, naturally a well composed photo with color would be great except the wrong composition could make it worst. Different colors could be used to compose the photo.

Elements of nature or elements around us could be a great resource to use in our photography. Lets see three of them.

Photo By Bas Lammers

Pattern A pattern is repetition of an object, line, color or anything found naturally around us. Patterns are all around us and we just need to find them. A pattern could be used as primary subject or as background or foreground in your photos. If you are lucky enough, sometimes you will find a pattern breaker object standing inside a pattern. This are more interesting than pattern. Windows, Street Lamps Posts, Chairs in auditorium, Soldiers in a parred, Glasses in table, cars in car park are examples of Pattern.

Photo By maxcosworth

Reflection use reflections in your photo to make it more dramatic. Reflections are easily found in water body like ponds, river, sea beach etc. In city, you’ll find reflections in glasses of shopping mall, car window, even in unwanted water in road.

Photo By Team Traveller

Lines & Shapes People really like to see geometry in photos. One of my dearest friend and fellow photographer Kamrul Hasan once told me guide eye of viewers through the photos.

Lines are the best ways to guide viewer’s eye. A straight line will easily guide viewer from where to start and where to end. You can use Curve line or S shape line too. Diagonal lines give a photo more dimensions. Find lines and use them in your photos.

Like lines, shapes are important elements for better photo. Use square, rectangle, triangle, oval, half moon any kind of shape in your photo. Create shapes in your photos through subject placement and the invisible shapes will increase the beauty of the photo many times better. You might also find the shapes in real form around you in street, nature, building even in your home. Use them to compose your photo and find better result.

After a while I figured that they are related but different things. I don’t know yet which though of mine compiled me to think them same.

Here I have tried to explain them as per my current knowledge about DOF and Bokeh. If anyone have any confusion on them, this blog might eliminate them.

Photo By - Ariful H Bhuiyan -

Depth Of Field (DOF) is the area in an image which is particularly focused and sharp than other area. This is a common and effective technique to show intended subject in a photo. DOF is controlled by aperture settings in camera. DOF can be shallow or high using big or small aperture. In shallow DOF only very little area in the image will be sharp and other parts will be out of focus and in high DOF major part of the image will be in focus. A Wide angle lens have more Depth of Field then a Telephoto lens and vice verse.

Photo By Scholastica Ees says, yuhuuu to all (^_^)

Bokeh is the blur/out of focus area of the image which bring higher aesthetics value for the image. More specifically bokeh is the tiny light circles in blurred area of an image.

A perfect Bokeh in a photo dependent on few things like

• Large aperture,
• A long focal length,
• Long distance between subject and background,
• Close distance between camera and subject,
• Perfect light and background element for bokeh
• Quality of Bokeh is depend on Lens, Background light.

DOF vs Bokeh

Brief description above shows that DOF and Bokeh are not same. DOF in an image is used to show the main subject clearly where bokeh is used to increase the aesthetics value of the image.  When bokeh can be measured by good bokeh or bad bokeh, DOF is measured as shallow or high. Bokeh is dependent of DOF but DOF is never dependent on bokeh. One this they have only common is, both of them are used to produce beautiful images.

See more Portrait Photography tips

Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM

There are few lenses in market which are call portrait lenses. It has been agreed by most of all photographers that the best focal length range for portrait photography is 50mm to 135mm. Based on the portrait type, you can choose your lens for the out of the box portrait.

For full body portrait, you can use EF 50mm f/1.4 USM or Nikon 50mm f/1.4G. This lens has a better built quality, fast focus capability, crispy image quality, excellent DOF and the standard focal length.  The focal length and aperture support excellent lens for indoor body portraits.

Most impressive and renown portrait lens is Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM and Nikon 85mm f/1.8D AF. These are two lens are mostly famous for sharpness and bokeh they deliver. This is excellent lens for Headshot Portrait.

For tight frame or headshots with extreme bokeh and crispy sharpness there is only few lenses above Canon EF 135mm f/2L USM. This is a great performer in outdoor but might be a little difficult for indoor if you try to shot candid portrait with it.

Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM

Environmental portrait requires a wider focal length with sharp image, beautiful color contrast, balanced DOF. Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM is capable enough to serve the requirements.

To know more about lenses, visit Know DSLR Lenses series

I did not mention the most important thing for successful portrait. That is the proper expression of subject. No lens can help on that rather a photographer should manage it. A telephoto lens can give a decent distance to make a comfort zone between subject and photographer. The comfort zone can help a little to bring the expression.

Photo By mikebaird

1. Professional Photographers Take A Lot Of Pictures But Showcase Only The Best Ones

Photographers do not always shoot selectively. They shoot thousands of pictures and then showcase only the best ones.

2. A Majority Of The Finest Pictures Are Post-Processed

Almost all the photographs go through post-processing unless they are done by purists. Post-processing is a good thing to do. It was done in the darkroom in the days of the film, it is done in Photoshop or Lightroom in the digital days. But their processing are smart and not over processed.

3. Professionals Have Learnt To Break The Rules

Sometimes the best images come out from behind a subject. Try shooting your subjects from behind. Landscape shots comprising a subject shot form behind give amazing effects. Don’t follow the rules blindly. Learn and have the experience it takes to break the rules.

4. Professionals Are Painfully Patient

Sometimes, photography tests your patience. You cannot expect a perfect day everyday. If you want to take a shot of the rain, you have to wait for the rain. If you need to shoot in the golden hour, you have to wait for the time to come. Photographers wait months to get the moon right and days and hours for the perfect sunset. Patience often bears good results for photographers.

Photo By kenny_lex

5. Photographs Are Two Dimensional

The world looks different to the one eyed camera than to our eyes. Therefore, close an eye and look at the subject to visualize how the final image will come out. You’d have a pretty good idea about what you can expect.

6. Professional Photographers Never Cease To Learn

Read the camera manual and always keep learning from your mistakes to avoid making same mistakes again (you can make new mistakes though, and learn from them  ) Learning is a life-long process. Every situation is different and every situation brings a new experience.

7. Experience Brings Maturity & Perfection To The Art Of Photography

Practice makes a man perfect and photographers are no exception to this. Practice constantly to master your art of photography. Only then can you have your own photographic secrets. The professional have shot thousands of pictures and trashed thousands of them to become professional. They have missed a lot of scenes and have learned to be ready for the moment. They can visualize with their creative vision, what kind of a result they are expecting. Spend time with your camera and love photography.

A short checklist might be more helpful in your traveling to take better photograph and cover most of the things in travel.

Photo By Michael Foley Photography

Subjects in travel photography: if you are visiting in beach doesn’t mean you only capture beach. That will not be travel photography, but something else. Some possible subjects that you might like to include in your travel photography portfolio.

• Buildings - May be your place isn’t really rich with architecture, but remember the poor buildings are the property of that area. It will represent the area.
• Landscapes - Ty to take some landscape of the place. If the place is really not suitable for landscape, try some cityscapes. That will represent the city.

Search our site for more landscape photography tips

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  Photo By Michael Foley Photography

  Monument - Almost every place has a monument. That might not be world recognized but still known for local or citywide. Take photos of monument, because those actually represent a city or place.

• Local People - Don’t just take portraits of local peoples, because you might find them in your city too. Try to shot them in their work or in their native place. Try environmental portraits.
• Travel Companions - If you have companions in your travel, don’t always just keep them away from the frame. Sometimes take their photos as traveler of the place. There will be more smell of travel photos.
• Food and Drink - Shot local food. Restaurant shots are great sometimes.
• Hotels - Shot hotels of different standards.
• Transportation - In a city or a place there are must be many types of transportations. Try to shot those with local peoples. If the local transport is especially for tourists like tourist bus, try to shot them.
• Market places/Shops - A market place is the very own place of a culture. It’s very easy to represent a place with its market place.
• Local Written Language - If you find graffiti in street or anywhere, shot them. Local advertisements, writing, sings are good elements in travel photography.
• Shot Color - Try to shot colorful subject and avoid Black & White in Travel Photography. Travel is more about joy and joy mean color.
• Self Portrait -Well don’t forget to take some self portraits. I’ve seen Michael Foley use mirror for self portrait with some local context.

This is a general list of topics but combination of maximum number of those subject might give you a nice travel story. Based on the place you traveling, you might find different subjects and topic not listed here. Shot the details. Travel photography means documentation of a place, not just portraits or landscape. So put the local context and you will see your travel photography becomes different then regular photography.

Aperture

Have you ever faced problem of metering data change or settings change during your zoom/focal length change in lens? If you say yes, you’ll know now where is the problem.

Here we will only discussion on zoom lenses but two kinds of zoom lenses. Those are

• Variable aperture lens and
• Fixed aperture lens.

More articles on Aperture

New DSLRs users are familiar with Kit lens 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS/VR etc, Canon EF 55-200mm f/4.5-5.6 or similar lenses from Nikon Yes! It’s a child task to recognize the aperture here. Its f/3.5-5.6 but why 3.5 to 5.6 range? This is what I am going to explain now. Those lenses which have an aperture range are called variable aperture lens.

Variable aperture lens have multiple numbers of aperture for its widest open for multiple focal length. In a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6, when you’ll set your focal length to 18mm, you are allowed to set your widest aperture in f/3.5. But when you’ll change your focal length to 55mm without changing the aperture, your aperture will be automatically changed to f/5.6.  Because 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 means 18mm can have f/3.5 maximum aperture but 55mm focal length can have only f/5.6 at wide open.

Again if your focal length was set in 18mm but aperture was set in f/5.6 and you change the focal length to 55mm, your aperture will not change as it stays in its limit. Some most used variable aperture lenses are listed here.

During using a variable aperture lens, after composing a subject if you change the focal length, check for the metering details to shot again, as there is a possibility of settings change if your aperture is between the variable aperture range. Technically only zoom lenses are variable aperture lenses, but zoom lenses can have fixed aperture too.

Fixed aperture lenses have only one aperture for its widest open no matter what is the focal length. But don’t think that fixed aperture lenses have only one aperture and it cannot be changed. Aperture is obviously changeable and the only facility of fixed aperture lens is it will not change your settings in any case of your focal length change. These are some popular fixed aperture lenses.

A fixed aperture lens with a large fixed aperture has a better optical design overall this means (all or some of the following)

• high resolution / sharper
• more contrast
• less vignetting
• fewer chromatic aberrations
• better rending of out of focus regions

A fixed aperture lens is always much expensive then variable aperture lens.

Based on sensor size, there are three kind of sensor who converts the light into photo. When one of my favorite photographer Ahmed Sharif told me that a full frame Camera like Canon EOS 5D Mark II or Nikon D700 are actually small format camera my heart was really broken. Yes! I said a full frame camera is small format camera and sensor of entry level or semi pro DSLRs are smaller than the small format camera as they use cropped sensor. Now let’s have a look at what are the formats and what is crop sensor.

Sensor Size Chart

Small format | Full Frame In days of film photography, the films used for SLR was 35mm in size. Width and height of the film size ware 36mm x 24mm. In digital photography, film is replaced by the electronic sensor and the full frame camera use 36mm x 24mm size sensor to take photo. That’s why full frame camera called 35mm equivalent. But still it’s the small format. Before going to crop sensor, I’ll finish the medium format and large format.

Medium Format I hope by this time you have the idea that it’s all depend on sensor size. The most common sensor size for medium-format digital cameras is approximately 48mm x 36mm (1.9 × 1.4 inch). Kodak has its “KAF-22000 CCD Sensor” for 22 Megapixel cameras and “KAF-39000 CCD Sensor” for 39 megapixel camera. Phase one offers the P65+ digital back with Dalsa‘s 53.9mm x 40.4 mm (2.12 × 1.59 inch) 16-bit sensor containing 60.5 megapixels for medium format cameras. These medium formats are highly highly expensive. Few Medium format cameras listed bellow.

Large Format Camera

Large Format Well another irony is in the age of technology we don’t have a Large format digital camera. Film size of a Large format camera is minimum 4 x 5 inches and its most common format. Other sizes of film was/is available for large format camera and those size includes quarter-plate, 5×7 inches, 11×14 inches, 16×20 inches, 20×24 inches, various panoramic or “banquet” formats (such as 4×10 and 8×20 inches). Above 8×10 inches, the formats are often referred to as Ultra Large Format (ULF). Most, but not all, large-format cameras are view cameras.

Crop Sensor Now come back to our world and look at the crop sensor. Based on the manufacturer and camera purpose, more or less there are three sizes of crop sensors. Nikon and Sony use 1.5x  crop factor for their crop body, sensor size is 23.6mm x 15.6mm. Canon uses both 1.3x crop factor which lead to sensor size in 27.9mm x 18.6mm and 1.6x crop factor for their crop body with sensor size 22.2mm x 14.8mm.
Few Crop sensor example here:

Sensor Size and Lenses Both Canon and Nikon produces EF & EF-S lenses for Canon and AF & AF-S Lenses for Nikon. What are these? EF and AF lenses are actually developed for full frame camera. A EF or AF 24mm f/2.8 prime lens produces exact 24mm  focal length in a 35mm equivalent or full frame camera while it will produce  24mm x 1.5 (crop factor) = 38.4mm focal length in a 1.5x crop sensor camera like Nikon D300s, D700, D90, D3100, D5000 etc. EF-S of AF-S lens mount is a derivative of the EF /AF lens mount created for a subset of DSLR camera with APS-C sized image sensors. They are designed as crop lens like an EF-S/AF-S 18-55mm focal length is equivalent to 28-88mm focal length in full frame. You can mount EF/AF lens in a crop sensor, but a AF-S or EF-S lens can’t be mounted on a full frame body.

Sensor Size and others Crop sensor images have a larger depth of field (DOF). This may be good for landscapes, but not so good for portraits where you often want a shallow depth of field to wash out distracting background details. Smaller the sensor size mean lower the ISO performance. A full frame camera provides the best most ISO performance.

I tried my best to explain the Sensor size story in non-technical way. If I’ve missed anything or you’ve anything more to say, please put your comment.

EF 50mm f/1.8 Prime Lens

Freedom VS Limitation: A strong and visible difference between Zoom and Prime Lens is the Freedom of using different focal lengths allowed by your zoom lens limitation of fixed focal distance in your prime lens. For example, if you are using a 18-135mm lens or a 24-70mm lens, you can change your focal length (Zoom in/Zoom Out) between any of the focal from the rang which will allow you to stay where you shoot where with a 24mm, 35mm, 50mm or any prime lens you will not be able zoom in or out rather you’ll have to go close or distance to the subject for magnification.

Quality Except some new costly high end lenses like 24-27mm f/2.8, 16-35mm f/2.8, 70-200mm f/2.8 and similar type of zoom lenses from both Nikon and Canon, no zoom lens can beat image quality of a prime lens. Primes lenses are known for its sharpness, contrast and softness for a long time. You’ll be able to differ it easily from two low cost lenses like 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 and 50 f/1.8.

EF 24-70mm f/2.8 USM Zoom Lens

Price prime lenses are generally simpler lenses in terms of construction. By the fact that they don’t need to zoom they generally have less moving parts and as a result they are generally cheaper to buy. Once again – there are many factors that determine the price of a lens (including quality) so not all prime lenses are ‘cheap’ (in fact some can be incredibly expensive at the Pro end of the spectrum) but do some searching around and you’ll find some that are definitely value for money. Renowned as usually being the cheapest lenses (but still not bad in quality) are ‘nifty 50′ lenses – or 50mm prime lenses, particularly from Nikon or Canon.

Weight because of their simple construction you often find that prime lenses are smaller and particularly lighter lenses than zoom lenses in similar focal lengths. Again you can compare with a 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4 with a 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. Any prime lenses are visibly lighter than any EF or AF Lens. Prime lenses are great for heading out to locations where it is just not practical to haul lots of gear around with me.