When piecing together your lens kit for photographing a wedding, a number of ideas should be running through your head in regard to the variety of imagery the clients require and the types of situations that can occur throughout the event. While it would be ideal to photograph a wedding with a single, do-it-all lens, the simple fact is that this is not typically possible.
When photographing a wedding, a variety of lens focal lengths is essential to "get the shot" from different vantage points and in different scales and compositions. Zoom lenses make this task a bit easier, due to their coverage of numerous focal lengths in a single lens barrel. A macro lens can also serve as an ideal prime portrait lens. Tamron’s recent additions to their lens lineup meet these needs.
As the holidays approach, it’s a good time to get your game on, in terms of all those family photos you will be taking. Getting little Junior to smile and Uncle Harry to pay attention may be the most difficult aspects of creating a shareable family shot, but there are some technical elements surrounding quality holiday photography that we should discuss now.
Olympus has just announced a new addition to the Micro Four Thirds system, the M.ZUIKO Digital 17mm f/1.8 lens. This lens offers a 35mm equivalent focal length of 34mm, giving it a slighter wider-than-normal angle of view that is ideal for general everyday use.
Pancake lenses, those small, fixed focal length lenses that barely protrude from your camera’s lens mount, are becoming increasingly common. Based on a simple Zeiss Tessar lens design that dates back more than a hundred years, pancake lenses are popular again due to their size—they extend an inch or less from the camera body—and weight, which is usually about 3 ounces.
As camera technology continues to progress, lenses also continue to evolve. With improved sensor technology and greater resolution cameras, a lens's main progression is to keep up with the amount of data and image quality that can be resolved by an image sensor and processor.
Sometimes technology gets in the way of quality. The convenience of features such as autofocus and optical image stabilization are hard to dispute, but some of the best glass in the world can be found in manual focus lenses that contain no electronics whatsoever. Such is the case with M-mount and M42-mount lenses made by Leica, Zeiss and Voigtlander.
2012 has seen an in increase in all things mirrorless, that being a bit of an umbrella term for compact interchangeable-lens cameras, their lenses and adapters. Canon, for example, released its first mirrorless camera system in 2012 and most major manufacturers have added new cameras to their mirrorless lineups. Of course, a growing list of lenses for these cameras—of all focal lengths—is now available, too.
The new 16.3-megapixel Pentax K-5 II DSLR camera will replace the current Pentax K-5 in Pentax’s DSLR lineup. It features a 16.3-megapixel CMOS image sensor with integrated AD conversion circuitry, which works with Pentax’s PRIME II Imaging Engine to deliver high-resolution, rich-gradation digital images.
How many lenses do you really need? If you’re Henri Cartier-Bresson, one might be enough. But if you’re shooting a complex event like a wedding, you’re going to need a more generously stocked camera bag. The most important tools for any photographer are cameras and lenses. Deciding which ones are necessary requires some serious thought.
Canon’s newly announced EF 40mm f/2.8 Pancake Lens has a focal length that places it squarely in that bland category known as “Normal.” Even used with an APS-C size sensor, it lands on the outskirts of “Normal,” with a view equivalent to 64mm in full-frame format.
Wedding photography is obviously about the bride and groom, and their special day. While that story is told with photos of the lucky pair, and their guests, their memories of the event can be enhanced with images that might not be so obvious.
Further aligning itself with the needs of independent filmmakers, Zeiss announced at NAB two interchangeable-mount additions to its Compact Prime CP.2 family of cine primes. Joining one end of the lineup is a super-wide Distagon 15/T2.9, and complementing the other end is a Sonnar 135/T2.1 telephoto.
Filling a void in Nikon’s current autofocus FX-format lens lineup, the AF-S NIKKOR 28mm f/1.8G is a general wide-angle lens with a fast maximum aperture. This fixed prime lens is ideal for almost any situation, providing a 75° angle of view (on full-frame sensors) that isn’t too wide or too narrow for most applications.
Sometimes technology gets in the way of quality. For example, the finest wristwatches made today are self-winding units with jewels used as pivot points. They’re mechanical works of art assembled by hand, and you won’t find a battery or quartz crystal inside any of them.
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When piecing together your lens kit for photographing a wedding, a number of ideas should be running through your head in regard to the variety of imagery the clients require and the types of situations that can occur throughout the event. While it would be ideal to photograph a wedding with a single, do-it-all lens, the simple fact is that this is not typically possible.
When photographing a wedding, a variety of lens focal lengths is essential to "get the shot" from different vantage points and in different scales and compositions. Zoom lenses make this task a bit easier, due to their coverage of numerous focal lengths in a single lens barrel. A macro lens can also serve as an ideal prime portrait lens. Tamron’s recent additions to their lens lineup meet these needs.
As the holidays approach, it’s a good time to get your game on, in terms of all those family photos you will be taking. Getting little Junior to smile and Uncle Harry to pay attention may be the most difficult aspects of creating a shareable family shot, but there are some technical elements surrounding quality holiday photography that we should discuss now.
Olympus has just announced a new addition to the Micro Four Thirds system, the M.ZUIKO Digital 17mm f/1.8 lens. This lens offers a 35mm equivalent focal length of 34mm, giving it a slighter wider-than-normal angle of view that is ideal for general everyday use.
Pancake lenses, those small, fixed focal length lenses that barely protrude from your camera’s lens mount, are becoming increasingly common. Based on a simple Zeiss Tessar lens design that dates back more than a hundred years, pancake lenses are popular again due to their size—they extend an inch or less from the camera body—and weight, which is usually about 3 ounces.
As camera technology continues to progress, lenses also continue to evolve. With improved sensor technology and greater resolution cameras, a lens's main progression is to keep up with the amount of data and image quality that can be resolved by an image sensor and processor.
Sometimes technology gets in the way of quality. The convenience of features such as autofocus and optical image stabilization are hard to dispute, but some of the best glass in the world can be found in manual focus lenses that contain no electronics whatsoever. Such is the case with M-mount and M42-mount lenses made by Leica, Zeiss and Voigtlander.
2012 has seen an in increase in all things mirrorless, that being a bit of an umbrella term for compact interchangeable-lens cameras, their lenses and adapters. Canon, for example, released its first mirrorless camera system in 2012 and most major manufacturers have added new cameras to their mirrorless lineups. Of course, a growing list of lenses for these cameras—of all focal lengths—is now available, too.
The new 16.3-megapixel Pentax K-5 II DSLR camera will replace the current Pentax K-5 in Pentax’s DSLR lineup. It features a 16.3-megapixel CMOS image sensor with integrated AD conversion circuitry, which works with Pentax’s PRIME II Imaging Engine to deliver high-resolution, rich-gradation digital images.
How many lenses do you really need? If you’re Henri Cartier-Bresson, one might be enough. But if you’re shooting a complex event like a wedding, you’re going to need a more generously stocked camera bag. The most important tools for any photographer are cameras and lenses. Deciding which ones are necessary requires some serious thought.
Canon’s newly announced EF 40mm f/2.8 Pancake Lens has a focal length that places it squarely in that bland category known as “Normal.” Even used with an APS-C size sensor, it lands on the outskirts of “Normal,” with a view equivalent to 64mm in full-frame format. 
Wedding photography is obviously about the bride and groom, and their special day. While that story is told with photos of the lucky pair, and their guests, their memories of the event can be enhanced with images that might not be so obvious.
Further aligning itself with the needs of independent filmmakers, Zeiss announced at NAB two interchangeable-mount additions to its Compact Prime CP.2 family of cine primes. Joining one end of the lineup is a super-wide Distagon 15/T2.9, and complementing the other end is a Sonnar 135/T2.1 telephoto.
Filling a void in Nikon’s current autofocus FX-format lens lineup, the AF-S NIKKOR 28mm f/1.8G is a general wide-angle lens with a fast maximum aperture. This fixed prime lens is ideal for almost any situation, providing a 75° angle of view (on full-frame sensors) that isn’t too wide or too narrow for most applications.
Sometimes technology gets in the way of quality. For example, the finest wristwatches made today are self-winding units with jewels used as pivot points. They’re mechanical works of art assembled by hand, and you won’t find a battery or quartz crystal inside any of them.
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