New to all this - need some lens advice!

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mooty2

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Sharon
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I recently bought my first DSLR which came with an 18-55mm lens. I'm really interested in all types of photography and want to get the most from the lenses I buy.
As I have the 18-55mm does that mean that I don't need any others within that range, for example I have seen one on ebay that's a 24mm macro - will this give me a similar photo as with the 18-55mm, or will the photo quality improve?
Apologies if it seems a bit obvious but as I said I am new to this - any help would be greatly appreciated.:thinking:
 
Knowing what you bought and the make of lens you are looking at would help?
 
What lens you want is all about what you are going to use it for if it was me I would look at a longer lens like a 70 -200/300mm
You need to use what you have for a time and see what it is you find hard to take as you want.
As for macro a longer lens will give you more distance then the one you talking about.
 
Assuming the 18-55 lens you are talking about is the kit lens that came with your camera, I will say it's a good lens for a beginner, but you may want to graduate at a later date onto lenses with roughly the same "standard zoom" focal range, but which have a wider (faster) maximum aperture; these cost more because of the quality of the glass required, but will certainly have improved image quality. Lenses with a fixed focal length (known as "primes"), for example a 30mm lens, or a 50mm lens, tend to have the edge over zooms for image quality, but, of course, you have to do the zooming with your feet! These are handy for particular subjects, for example, a 50mm lens with a wide max aperture on a Canon 450D would make an excellent head/shoulders portrait lens.
 
mooty2 said:
As I have the 18-55mm does that mean that I don't need any others within that range?
Click to expand...
Not necessarily. There might be several reasons for wanting another lens that covers that range:

Quality. The 18-55mm "kit lens" is built down to a price. Generally speaking, more expensive lenses will give you better (ie sharper, more contrasty, less distorted) pictures.

Speed. Your lens is probably f/3.5-5.6 or something like that. You can get zooms which are f/2.8 and primes which are f/2 or even f/1.4. These will be much better in low light and will give shallower depth of field.

Range. Once you've got some experience of what you like to shoot, you might find that having two lenses, eg 10-22mm and 24-70mm, fits better with what you do.
 
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