Overview of my newest lens additions!

So today I said goodbye to my old friend, where it all started a little more than 10 years ago.  Today I traded my old Canon Rebel XTi and zoom lens, for three used Nikon lenses. In an attempt to not only better my skills and equipment, but also to make an effort to have more variety as I attempt to start my photography business. Being that I am a photographer, I couldn’t help but take one last picture of my original camera, as I have a lot of fond memories contained in it’s lenses.

So I said goodbye to an old friend, and gained three new ones! I was able to obtain a 20mm manual focus, wide angle lens, a 35mm prime lens, and 17-50mm lens. In the rest of this blog I’m going to show you different pictures taken with different lenses and tell you my experience with each one.

So the first lens I’m going to talk about is the 20mm prime lens. Here is the photo I took for a reference point between the three.

Overall I like this lens quite bit. I won’t lie, adjusting to shooting with manual focus only is tricky, and I often found myself pushing the button halfway waiting for the autofocus beep. But once I started adjusting to it, I enjoyed the freedom I had in being able to better control what object held the majority of my focus. I was a little disappointed that I was unable to get clear pictures closer to my image, it really seems to do better with a little distance between you and your subject. But I was extremely pleased with the outcome of my resulting image. It seemed to handle pretty well in lowlight, just required a little adjusting of my ISO and White Balance settings. Overall I can’t wait to play around with this lens some more, I was really pleased with my initial interaction.

The next lens I want to talk about is the 35mm Prime lens (prime meaning it stays at that distance, no zoom or anything like that)

Honestly, my initial response to this lens was EXTREMELY positive. It was taking incredible pictures while I was testing them before I made my trade. I’ve actually been wanting to save up for this lens for quite awhile now as it has remarkable reviews for how it handles in lowlight settings, ultimately making it a good candidate for macro photography. (which is where my current focus heavily lies) However, after getting home and taking all my lenses out to “play”, I had an incredibly difficult time getting my settings adjusted correctly so that my pictures turned out positively. My first experience I immediately noticed the amazing bokeh (Bokeh has been defined as “the way the lens renders out-of-focus points of light”. aka the blurriness of the background vs. the focal image.) But playing with it at home, I was having a really hard time achieving that effect. I also was unable to get as close as I would like to my target image. Once I decided to use sunlight vs. my less than favorable indoor lights, the shoot began to go much better. It does better with the bokeh effect when there is a group of items in the photo vs. a solitary item (ex. I initially made an effort to photograph my ring, but there was next to no bokeh effect with that set up). It handled great outside with more natural lighting, and my new subject matter allowed me to have more bokeh effect with my finished product. Overall, I have mixed emotions about this lens. I got frustrated with it this afternoon, but I contribute that to my somewhat novice understanding of selecting correct lighting settings. But by the end I remain hopeful. I think it’s a good, sturdy, dependable little lens. And with a little effort, some research, and a better understanding of everything, that it will become one of my favorite lenses.

Lastly! I am going to review the 17-50mm lens I received.

I didn’t really know what to expect from this lens. Getting it was kind of spontaneous as I was originally only supposed to get two lenses for the trade. (but I like photo equipment and I don’t mind asking for free stuff..) So bing bang boom I received a third lens. My level of excitement didn’t really match the level I had for say, the 35mm I had so desperately been wanting, because it seemed very similar to my stock lens I already had. But I figured it was probably already an upgrade (older but originally expensive) and the stock lenses provided with the camera aren’t necessarily the highest of quality. I was pleasantly surprised and impressed! Using the zoom I was able to get slightly closer to my subject matter, the lighting was easy to manipulate, and it didn’t really seem to have any issues focusing. I was impressed with the fact that it has a slight bokeh effect to it as well. And the sharpness of the image quality had me wanting more to photograph. It took a few more stunning photos than this image, but this was the best for the compare and contrast. BUT I am going to upload another one just to show the quality of the finished result.

VERY nice finished effect. I was pleasantly surprised, and quite pleased with the performance of this unexpected lens.

Well there you have it! I hope you enjoyed my little review/exhibit this evening! Please leave questions and comments below! I would love to hear from all of you. If you just stumbled across this blog, and like what you see, please click follow! I hope you all have a great rest of your evening! Until next time! 🙂

All of these photos are the original copy, no edits have been made to any photo included in this blog. Images belong to Jessica Hartman.