Quote:
Originally Posted by The Poet
It all depends upon what type of photography you are interested in doing, but my 8+ years of selling lenses for Nikons (in a previous life) taught me one rule of thumb:
A telephoto lens is more impressive, especially for the beginner photographer, but a wide angle is a lot more useful for the types of general shots most people take on a day-to-day basis - interiors, groups, scenery, whatever. Most people have little use for a lens longer than a "portrait" telephoto, which is one about 2X more powerful than "normal". This give one a more flattering headshot of a person, due to the slight flattening of perspective (most noticably, your freakin' nose don't look so honkin' big!).
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Absolutely spot on.
Whether you have a limited budget or you just won the PowerBall, I'd suggest thinking about what you are going to taking photographs of first. Follow this closely with the type of lighting you will be dealing with.
If you are shooting mostly outdoors with bright sunlight to high clouds, then the f-stop is not
as much of a factor, but it is still important. If you are going to be shooting the proverbial "black cat at midnight in a coal bin" then you are going to want high f-stops like 2.8 or below.
Most of the kit lenses will have f-stops around 3.5 going "down" to 16 or 22. (Aside: f-stops are ranked inversely; that is a small number is a high f-stop as opposed to a large number which is a low f-stop. Not sure that you need this, but here's a page that helps to explain it:
A Tedious Explanation of the f-stop)
FWIW, I currently shoot with a D300. My current lenses are these:
Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D
AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED
Sigma 70-200mm F2.8 EX DG APOMacro HSM II