Digital Photographer Gear Awards: our favorite lenses so far in 2021

It’s been a funny 18 months. A lot has changed, for better and for worse, but the photo industry has marched on, revealing some interesting gear trends and exciting announcements. 

At Digital Photographer we’re lucky enough to have the opportunity to test and try a wide variety of photo equipment, from all of the major manufacturers (and quite a few smaller names) giving us some insight into the trends in design and philosophy. 

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With lenses, you would think there was a more restricted scope for experimentation among the companies making them, with a lens being a purely functional part of a camera system – but this isn’t necessarily true. Sure, cameras with exciting headline features tend to get the maximum publicity, but lens design has come a long way in just a few years. 

This is perhaps one of the most overlooked facts in

Photo kit field guide: best gear for macro photography

Most photographers are familiar with what a macro lens does and how it differs from conventional optics, of similar focal lengths. However there are multiple types of macro lens available in the modern age of photography, as well as several options of camera format. This can complicate the choice of gear considerably and it is critical to understand just how various items impact the type of creative macro shots we can capture.

Magnification ratio is the first important factor to consider, as this will directly influence how close you can get to your subject. To clarify, this does not necessarily refer to the minimum focus distance of a lens, rather the magnifying power of the optical design and the resulting reproduction size of the subject in the final frame. For beginners, many lenses have a ‘macro’ function, especially telephoto zooms, such as a 70-300mm. 

This is somewhat misleading as such

Image excellent: Capturing body-worthy hen shots demands patience as considerably, or far more than, extravagant gear | Northwest

Getting fowl photographs you’ll want to body or share needs commitment, patience — and it does not damage to have a top-notch digicam.

Digicam equipment expenses can increase up rapid. Any person wanting to get into chook photography will observe that top rated-of-the-line camera bodies and lenses very easily climb into the hundreds of pounds. If you’re new to hen images, or pictures in normal, as a substitute of breaking the bank on the most effective products, it is improved to go for the much less expensive equipment and study how to use it just before upgrading to the most highly-priced gear.

Canon and Nikon make a range of DSLR digital camera bodies in the rookie range with very good megapixel counts and frames per next for a lot less than $1,000. When on the lookout to order a camera body, I have often bought my possess made use of