Also need help with camera choice

Cmike2780

It depends on what your shooting and how much you want to capture. 50mm (on a d3100 for example) covers about same area as your eyes see. That's why they call them "normal" lenses. We see in perspective and the lens works the same way.

At 10 feet, you will have less distortion at 50mm than you would at 16mm. the more you zoom, the less distortion basically. There's no camera lens available that I know of that can completely avoid this. Perspective control lenses lessen this phenomenan, but that's more usefull for architectural type photography...also very expensive.

A good single 16-85mm or 18-200mm lens just about covers most situations, I do understand what you mean though. Anything more than 200mm, especially with a point and shoot is pretty much useless and will probably use less than 1% of the time, if that. Your camera for example, has a min aperture of f/11 at its maximum zoom. You would have to hold it steady for over a minute in anything other than a really sunny outdoor shot. Either that or boost the ISO so high it creates a lot of noise. Try it indoors and you'll see what I mean. That's the main difference between high zoom point and shoot lenses and those huge zoom lenses you see at sporting events. They have an aperture at around f/2.8.

It pretty much comes down to what you can afford to spend. A fixed prime 50mm prime lens will be sharper, faster aperture at f/1.8 or less (better in low light), cheaper and compact. The draw back is that its fixed at 50mm obviously.

When looking at zoom lenses, they usually trade off maximum aperture (at around f/3.5 for lower end lenses) for zoom capability. Larger aperture zoom lens are available, but they get really pricey. For most people, a good 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 lens covers 90% of what you would normally shoot. A 18-55mm covers about 75% of what you would normally shoot. I would stick to a Canon brand or Nikon brand lens, but that's just me. As a rule of thumb with zoom lens, I would buy the most expensive lens within my budget that's specific to what I would need. I can usually pick up a better used lens at a camera shop than a lesser "new" lens even if its an older model. Image stabilization like VR for Nikon and IS for Canon have a premium over non IS or VR lenses. They're nice to have, but not critical. They do help a little with hand held low light or high zoom shots, but other techniques will yield better results.

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