Get a set of lenses they say… on the internet.

They’re right of course, to cover most bases then a lens set is essential, without lenses, your options for filming/photography are very limited.

Depth of field (blurry backgrounds or not), range, picture quality, etc. are all tricky enough.

Okay, I’m far from an expert, so all I can do is tell you what I did.

I had the standard Canon kit lens (18mm to 55mm) with the camera (Canon 70D), which was fine.
My first port of call was to look at options for a bit longer distance photos.
I read and read and then read some more, just about lenses. I read reviews, I watched reviews, but only searching for negatives, kind of reverse engineering if you will.

Once I’d got a lens in mind, I looked up some photographic work of people using the lens. Often, this would lead me to look up other lenses instead.
Anyways, I came across the Canon 55mm to 250mm.
I shoot some sports photography sometimes and the range was decent enough.

The Canon 70D is a crop sensor camera (aps-c), so the focal length increased.
So a 50mm on a full frame camera = roughly a 75 to 80mm on an aps-c camera.
(The Canon lenses are 1.6 the focal length, but I usually estimate it to one and a half times the focal length of the lens.)

I don’t get too tangled up in that maze, for me as long as it’s approximate then I know what I’m shooting with.

Now I’ve got the distance covered I thought, I need to find a wide angle lens.
This covers a wider angle (surprise) so if I’m in a tight space I get more in view.

Now remember I haven’t got the luxury of L lenses or buying new ones, mine would all be mostly manually operated, as it’s cheaper and the added bonus of me being able to learn quicker and better by using manual mode.

So I first bought a sigma super-wide II, which is a 24mm lens f2.8
Lesson: Although there were warnings about this old lens being stuck in f2.8 and the camera not recognising it in any other setting within the camera, I still bought one second hand, online, for £16
(I’ll do a “review” of this on another post)

I also wanted a wide-angled lens, that I could vary the f stops on.
After much deliberation and searching online for, I came across an Olympus 28mm f3.5 lens
Now I can vary the f stops to get differing backgrounds and sharpness.
At £15 + £4 for the Canon adaptor to make it fit, which gives the pink flashes in the viewfinder to say it’s in focus, I’m a happy bunny.

That’s the distance and close up lenses sorted.
I now started to look at mid-range lenses.
My first port of call was the Helios 44-2 lens, an old Russian? lens, fully manual with a great f stop range. starting at f2.
This 58mm lens is one of my favs, studying all the various different versions of it, it can be tricky to use, but for fun, ace.

I noticed online people were trying to sell for £15+
They post videos on youtube and then up the prices on ebay… easy money.
More hits it gets then the higher the price goes, but I noticed an easier and cheaper way.
I searched out old film cameras that the lens was compatible with.
Many already had the lens missing.
But many didn’t!
For £10 I got an old film camera (a Zenit) with the Helios lens I wanted attached… bonus.
Bought an M42 to Canon adaptor, with the focus flashing option, for £5, screwed it on to the lens, bobs your uncle!

Loads of people online say you should have “A nifty fifty” in your lens collection, especially for street photography.
So I read up on the Canon 50mm f1.8 lens and started searching around online.
I’d noticed while I was reading all these reviews that lenses were often cheaper, where people didn’t realise what they were…

I started looking around carboot sales, in boxes of camera equipment and one of those cash converter or cash generator shops in town.
They had websites, so every couple of days I’d do a general search for camera lenses, see what they had.
I didn’t want their search hits to increase for the exact lens, this way the price wouldn’t increase.

These shops started searching for the lens they had for sale, on ebay, then added on about 10% to the last sold prices.
But in a few shall we say poorer areas, towns, they hadn’t cottoned on to this method and were selling lenses at base prices just to get rid of stock.

I came across a Canon 50mm f1.8 II for just £16, so bought it, not expecting much.
When it came it was almost perfect so does the job.
Friends now brag about getting the very same lens from the reconditioned camera shops, for between £50 – £60
Bargain.

So gradually, with patience, I’ve got distance, mid range and wide angle lenses, which have given me plenty of options on my crop sensor, second hand camera.

I’ve added just one more lens, a Carl Zeiss 135mm (equivalent to around 205mm on aps-c) which I paid a whopping £24 for.
I even bought some lens accessories to open and clean any dust out of it.
Fitted an M42 to Canon adapter, hey presto I’ve got a cracking long distance lens.
It is long, but it is quality.

With manual lenses, if I close down the f stop, it will get everything in focus.

If I buy a cheap second hand full frame camera in the future, then I will have even more options, as all these lenses will work on that also.

A set of lenses doesn’t have to cost you an arm and a leg!