Lens purchase. Please give advice. urgent...

[Colin Southern]

The only thing ending in olic that I know about starts with an A and I can probably find proof of it.

175° proof?

[DrRamesh Ayurveda]

Dear Bill,

That's been a helpful one indeed. The mind being set on the 50mm was because, its cheap and it's been told of being good for portraits, with nice depth of field etc. Further I was looking at the 1-135STM IS, bcuz I had a feeling that it gives a good reach. I mean, telephoto shoot to my level of expertise (which is very low infact). Well, now you have blown that all up with that fantastic second rate sphygmo example... > Thanks for that though. It did give a chance to re think.

Further, thanks to Kathy, Colin, Shadow man, Richard, Scott Victor and all others for their valuable suggestions and all that have given me more stuff to chew on.. Waiting for more though..

cheers,
Hari

[DrRamesh Ayurveda]

Well, I think, the topic has gone wide from primes zooms and teles to "cystolic, diastolic and alc....olic lenses

[Donald]

Further, thanks to Kathy, Colin, Shadow man, Richard, Scott Victor and all others for their valuable suggestions and all that have given me more stuff to chew on.. Waiting for more though..

Hari - With respect, I think one of the things you have to be careful about is information-overload. What else, in addition to all that has been offered above do you think you still need in order to be able to make a decision?

We can sometimes get paralysed by the sense that we need to keep gathering information and opinions and that, somehow, this will make our decision more easy when, in fact, the opposite is often true - More information, particularly if it is conflicting, can block us from making a decision.

[DrRamesh Ayurveda]

Hari - With respect, I think one of the things you have to be careful about is information-overload. What else, in addition to all that has been offered above do you think you still need in order to be able to make a decision?

We can sometimes get paralysed by the sense that we need to keep gathering information and opinions and that, somehow, this will make our decision more easy when, in fact, the opposite is often true - More information, particularly if it is conflicting, can block us from making a decision.

Dear Donald
Completely agree with what you said. Information over load makes decision making more difficult. But I was trying to find out more about one or two of the lenses. As far as I had in my mind, I was after the 18- 135mm IS STM, as well as the 50mm f/1.8. This did seem cost effective for me. But when I went through the reviews about the former, I was trying to compare it with the 18- 200mm and see which one makes a better choice. I would like you, or any other members to throw some light into this matter and that is just to make sure I'm making a right decision.

Further, it seems i won't be able to afford a tele photo such as a 70-300mm or so, along with another normal zoom, such as a 17-55mm which was suggested by one of our friends. I did have a look and found that it was a really nice one with a USM making it more superior to the 18-135. but I wished to have a longer reach, as I mentioned once earlier. Affordability also is a factor at the moment.

These are the reasons why I was looking for more suggestions. Hope you will be able to throw some light into this one so that I can finalize and go in for the kill .

Many thanks
Hari

[Colin Southern]

The mind being set on the 50mm was because, its cheap and it's been told of being good for portraits, with nice depth of field etc.

Not really - it's a bit on the short side for head and shoulder portraits, even on a crop-factor camera. Once again, a zoom lens give you far more flexibility in this regard.

With regards to "nice DoF", DoF is dictated by both the aperture and the camera to subject & subject to background ratios; you can't just open the lens right up to get a shallow DoF because you run the very real risk of having insufficient DoF on the person you're shooting. In the studio I can STILL have DoF issues with close-up shots even though I'm shooting at F16!

For head and shoulders portraits you'll get the most flattering results from longer lenses like the 70-200mm.

eg 170mm on FF



and 200mm on FF