Every year around this time I slog through all of my RAW files from the previous year – largely because I’ve learned that I can discover interesting photographs that I originally overlooked. (The most recent photo on this page is one I shot last January.)
One product of this task is my annual “favorites” page. I’m working on creating the list this week, and my plan is to post it here before January 1.
(This has become one of the most-read articles at this site. For some reason, the question of whether or not it makes sense to add these little filters to your lenses generates a lot of interest… and sometimes a lot of lively debate. Portions are now a bit dated — the article comes from 2007 — but the general concepts discussed here still hold. From time to time I make small updates based on new information or questions that have come up. Note that there are links to a couple of related posts listed near the end of the article.)
Sellers sell, and some buyers buy, ultraviolet (UV) filters for their cameras. The main advantages are said to be twofold: some reduction of haze that is invisible to the human eye but which the camera purportedly might register, and some protection for the front element of your lens.
On the other hand many photographers wouldn’t think of putting an extra layer of unnecessary glass in front of their lenses. They would rather accept the (rather small) possibility of a scratch on the front element of a lens than possibly reduce the quality of their images, and/or they prefer to protect the lens by using a lens cap and lens hood.
I’m in the latter camp. I no longer use any UV filters* and I can think of darned few situations in which I’d want to use one. (One possible exception being the use of fully-sealed lenses on which the seal is completed by adding a front filter – and here only if I were to use the lens in an extremely hostile environment and with a fully environmentally sealed camera body.) My preference is to handle my camera and equipment relatively carefully, keep the gear protected when not actually using it, use a lens cap, and to almost always use a rigid lens hood.
Continue reading Lens Protection: Ultraviolet (UV) Filter or Lens Cap and Hood?A common type of photography forum question asks “What lens(es) should I get?” or “What is/are the ‘best’ lens(es)?” It is really impossible to offer the type of answer that the poster is looking for without asking for a lot more detail. Here is a slightly edited version of a reply that I recently offered in response to such a question:
There is not a single “right” answer to most questions like this. Choice of lenses is a very personal thing and factors that affect one’s choice of “best” include: budget, future plans, type(s) of photography, zoom/prime preference, preference for many/few lenses, whether the end product will be electronic sharing or prints, how large the images will be, etc.
Without knowing a lot more about your photography and your preferences, most responses will be along the lines of “here is what I like for my photography” or “no idea, really, but here are some general guidelines that might work.”
With that in mind, here are a few general guidelines:
- For landscape one probably wants wide angle – at least 17mm on a crop body – and doesn’t need large apertures as much since typical work is often done stopped down. Fewer and/or smaller/lighter lenses may be good if one works a lot on foot.
- For sports/action photography one generally may want longer lenses, and larger apertures could be important for low light (e.g. indoors or at night) or permitting slightly faster shutter speeds. Image stabilization could be less important here, and for really long focal lengths primes may be a good choice compared to zooms, but it is hard to generalize.
- For street photography, many prefer to use a small body with a prime or two, though others like to work with a single zoom. Many like wider but not ultra-wide lengths and some like somewhat wider apertures. On the other hand, there is a contingent that likes to use longer lenses and shoot from a distance rather then getting “up close and personal” with the subject.
- For portraits, many like wide aperture primes in the 50mm to 100mm focal length range (on crop bodies), though some also like zooms that cover this range.
Trying to make one or a few lenses cover all or a good part of this range of uses will require some compromises and/or very deep pockets.
For general use, a lot depends on stuff like budget. The 17-55mm f/2.8 IS is a high quality choice for Canon crop bodies; the 18-55mm kit lens is a good starting point if you don’t really know what you want; the IS version of the latter lens is reportedly fairly sharp and is a great value.
Sunset, Mounts Dana and Gibb. Yosemite National Park, California. August 6, 2005. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell
I recently rediscovered this photograph taken on a spectacular evening in the Tuolumne Meadows area two years ago. I think it serves as a good example of the value of going back through old photographs from time to time. (I do this every year around the holiday season.) In this case, I had a particular subject in mind when I shot this scene – Mt. Dana, the peak to the left in this image. For that reason I had kept a version of the scene the aimed a bit more to the left and put that peak more clearly into the frame, and I had pretty much passed over this one in which the foreground creek leads the eye (my eye, anyway…) toward the beautiful light on Dana and the peak to the right, Mt. Gibb.