Joining a cult

So failing with style! Yup I bought a DSLR camera. With a kit lens. All good! But I’m not very smart. Suddenly I was standing in a shop and the clerk started throwing weird words at me, such as: Bokeh, vignetting, focal length, aperture and other things. I did not understand any of the words but I did understand I needed some more lenses. Buying a DSLR is like joining a cult. You transfer all your money to someone and in return you can tell yourself you are better than the rest of the humankind. With a religious cult because you have for sure reserved a seat in heaven, or whatever their marketing team came up with. And with DSLR equipment because you know you are better than the human scum with phone cameras. I won’t go into whether or not it makes you a better photographer when you spend all your cash on DSLR equipment… because of course you are a better photographer. Actually you are even a better human.

Long story short, I now have a handfull of different lenses. Some are long, some are short, some are heavy, some looks like they are broken, some can make stuff bigger (clerk told me it is called “zoom”), and some are just very static. Some have dials you can turn and others have knobs, dials, sliders and switches.

So what is the F****** difference?

Apparently there are many. And there is no such thing as “one lens for it all”. The closest thing to one for it all is a pocket camera or system camera. But you are not a system-camera-peasant, are you?

In this post I’ll be looking at my zoom lenses, and comparing zooming capabilities. I have a 18-135mm kit lens and a 100-400mm telephoto lens. I have used a tripod with the camera fixed, aiming at the same spot and then mounted the different lenses taking the “same” picture in their respective extremes.

For reference I took the first shot with one of mine 50mm prime lenses (yes I have more than one 50mm lens, because I am good at using my credit card). The size of various objects is very close to what I see with my naked eye, when i look through the viewfinder on my camera.

The 50mm reference shot

This is more or less the raw view I have with my naked eye. In the center of the frame is a tree and on that tree is a bird. I’m no bird expert, but I think it is a pigeon. The distance is about 90 meters.

So nice clear day, tree 90 meters away with a bird.

Kit lens @ 18mm

Interesting! The kit lens at 18mm is cramming more details into the frame. And the bird is reduced to a pixel. I also see some of the straight lines are slightly not straight. There is some fancy photography word for that.

Kit lens @ 135mm

Setting the kit lens at 135mm pulls in the bird. Praise the higher powers. I can see the bird again. This was expected.

Telephoto @ 100mm

Mounting the tele lens and setting it at 100mm, and tada.. We can see the bird and as expected it is slightly less closer to us than the kit lens at 135mm.

Telephoto @ 400mm

Extending the tele lens to miniature bazooka at 400mm the bird is now clearly visible. Not really a surprise…

Conclusion

I don’t really have one. Using a lens @ 18mm will give you a different result than using a lens @ 400mm. This post wasn’t supposed to give you a profound conclusion. It was merely meant to give you some idea of various zoom levels. Unless of course you are a system camera peasant. In that case you should just know I am superior to you. And I have wasted more money than you! Peasants …