Couple of questions from a newbie

[Woodford]

Hi guys, I'm quite new to photography and have a couple of questions about lenses. Hope someone can help

I have a sony alpha a290. Whats the cheapest way of getting fisheye/wide angle because I enquired in Jessops and they quoted me 400 quid which is more than the camera!

Second question, I have a 70-300mm lens which cost me 100 quid from jessops, is there way of getting more zoom without spending 500+ on a ??-500mm lens for example? ie adapters?

And lastly, are filters beneficial?

Hope someone can help me and sorry if they're silly questions :_

Cheers

Lewis

 

[squishy]

It actually makes more sense than you think to spend more on the lens than the camera. The lens is the most important component for determining image quality (second only to the photographer of course). Lenses with extreme qualities (like very wide angle or long telephoto for example) will be the most expensive because they have to manipulate the light the most so they have to be more complex and/or use a lot of glass.

The cheapest way to get wide angle depends entirely on how wide you want go and how high quality you need. There are fisheye adapters that can be very cheap but the quality will take a hit, or there are lenses like the samyang 14mm f/2.8 or 8mm f/3.5 fisheye that offers great quality at the expense of being purely manual. A uses sigma 10-20mm would be the widest non-fisheye you can get quite cheap and I've seen plenty of excellent shots taken with those. What exactly do you want the wide angle for? A lot of people assume they need the widest angle possible for landscapes, but ultra wide angles are actually very difficult to use effectively for landscapes, and there's really no limits on what focal length works for landscapes.

Some types of filters are beneficial in some circumstances, for example circular polarisers allow you to manipulate the degree to which reflections appear in your photos and enhance colours in ways you can't replicate with photoshop so can be a powerful tool for landscape photography. But just slapping any filter onto the lens won't do any good

I doubt teleconverters or other adapters for increasing focal length would be a good idea on your 70-300mm, they lose light and quality so are only best used on high quality fast aperture lenses.

 

[woof woof]

Keep in mind that fisheye and wide angle are different things. Probably

 

[HoppyUK]

Hi guys, I'm quite new to photography and have a couple of questions about lenses. Hope someone can help

I have a sony alpha a290. Whats the cheapest way of getting fisheye/wide angle because I enquired in Jessops and they quoted me 400 quid which is more than the camera!

Second question, I have a 70-300mm lens which cost me 100 quid from jessops, is there way of getting more zoom without spending 500+ on a ??-500mm lens for example? ie adapters?

And lastly, are filters beneficial?

Hope someone can help me and sorry if they're silly questions :_

Cheers

Lewis

If you want a fish-eye, Samyang 8mm - about £250 I think http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/665-samyang8f35nex

There is no practical way of extending your 70-300. Decent quality long lenses cost I'm afraid.

Use filters if you have a need for the effect they produce, but not a plain filter just for protection. They are not good for image quality, and don't believe what sales people tell you - use a lens hood for protection.