Best Lens for Your Needs | Roselle Photography

I get a lot of messages from friends wanting to know which lens is best for their needs. The first thing I tell them is this: if you are serious about growing as a photographer, get a lens with a fixed aperture.

I shoot in manual, which means I don’t leave anything for the camera to guess. In many of the lower quality lenses, the aperture has a range; for example, a popular range is 3.5-5.5. If you were to try to shoot manual with a lens with a range, your aperture value would change based on your focal length. To put it more simply, you would have to readjust your settings each time you zoomed in or out. For someone that is trying to learn to shoot in manual, that becomes a hindrance.

If you are going to look for a fixed aperture lens, generally speaking, the lower the aperture capabilities, the higher the quality, and therefore, the more expensive.

A lot of people ask about how to get “the blurry background” (called bokeh) in pictures, like this picture of Aubrey and Mark below. A lower aperture is the way that is achieved. When I shoot, I almost never shoot above a 3.2 aperture, because my style lends itself to more of those bokeh backgrounds. The top-of-the-line zoom lenses only go as low as a 2.8 aperture, and because I generally stay around a 1.8 or a 2.2, I almost always shoot prime lenses (lenses that do not zoom, but have the capabilities for much lower aperatures). You can find really inexpensive prime lenses that go to a 1.8 – like the 50mm 1.8 for Canon, which usually runs at around $100.

This image was shot with the 85 1.2 at 1/800, f:2, and ISO 320