What Lens?

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Stuboy

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Stuart
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Okay, I'd like to start by saying that im pretty new to photography. I recently bought a sony alpha 550, but the lens that came with it had a really small zoom. I would like to get a lens with a bigger zoom for it, (for taking nature shots, and aircraft at airshows, both of which are often far away) but i dont really understand how lenses work, the numbers and so on. Would it be possible for anyone to explain what the numbers mean or recommend a good lens for the sony a550? thanks,

Stuart :)
 
Thanks :) well thats part of the problem, i dont really know how to tell, but its 55mm and on it it says "3.5-5.6/18-55 SAM" if that is any help?
 
well at airshows it could be anything as far as 200+ metres away, but with nature shots maybe 10 or 20 metres :)
 
Well I don't really know much about alphas, however will try help.

If you're in to aircraft and airshows you'll need to look for a 100-400mm lens or at least 70-300mm thats about f/2.8 to get shallow depth of field.
What's your budget?

Also if there are bits and pieces in photography you don't understand or you aren't sure what something means, YOUTUBE it. YOUTUBE is always helpful, it easier to understand when someone is talking about it rather than writing.
 
I tried to explain the numbers to someone on here once before but kind of melted his head a bit with mentions of the square roots. If you have a reasonable maths/physics head on then its interesting, relationships between equivalent light levels for different fields of view but to be perfectly honest you don't really need to know or understand the how and why.

Just simply
more mm, object appears closer
smaller f number, things appear brighter but also the area in focus isn't as deep (smaller depth of field)

with your lens it zooms from 18mm (fairly wide) to 55mm (little bit telephoto)
at 18mm it will have an aperture of f3.5 but as you zoom in this changes and by the time it gets to 55mm it has an aperture of f5.6 (about 1 and 1/3rd times less light!)

So you want to zoom in more for airshows and such, how deep are your pockets?

I don't really know Sony so wont offer advice on what lens, but a good long zoom will easily pass £1000, they make a 70-400 which is £1430 or so. cheaper 70-300 sort of lenses will be £200-300 but, i try and not recommend these ones. Maybe the Sony one is awesome tho?
 
I also don't know Sony, but for airshows and nature you want a long zoom. Have a look at some the long sigma lenses. 150-500mm, 50-500mm maybe even the 120-300.

There will be a set of numbers you will definitely know the meaning of, and that's price. Long lenses don't come cheap. Expect to pay £500+ second hand for any of the above.
 
Id recommend trying both the 70-300G and 70-400G, in the Sony range. The latter is obviously better for air shows (longer reach) but is priced accordingly and weighs a ton. The 70-300G is a little short for aircraft in flight, but is much more portable and makes a good general walkabout zoom.

Failing that, you might be able to find the now discontinued Sony 500/f8. It has the reach, and is relatively cheap, but really needs good light to shine. It's a mirror lens, so the downside is you get terrible ring-shaped bokeh.

There's a much better, and much more expensive, 500/f4 coming from Sony later this year. I haven't seen any rumours about the price yet, but I doubt you'll get much (if any) change from £5k.
 
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