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Be a Great Garden Photographer! A Primer for Taking Good Pictures by judywhite Tips on Buying Camera Lenses Buy the best-quality lenses you can afford. Put the money into good lenses rather than a camera with a million bells and whistles you'll probably never use. I personally prefer Nikon AIS lenses. Choose lenses that have f-stops that go up to at least 22, preferably 32. This will give you the deepest depth-of-field possibility. Rather than buying a zoom lens, consider investing in several higher-quality fixed-focal length lenses. Zoom lenses are handy, but they're not as high-quality as fixed-focal length ones (even though zooms have gotten much better in the past few years). If you must have a zoom, choose one that starts around 28mm and goes to no more than about 105mm, preferably 85. The bigger the zoom, the harder it is to hold it steady when you're not using a tripod, thus more camera shake is likely, and the bigger lens itself will probably decrease in quality unless you spend a fortune. Buy a 28mm lens, a 55mm macro lens, and a 105mm macro, or lenses close to these lengths. These three fixed-focal length lenses will give you great range for garden photography, including close-up. The 55mm macro will be your workhorse, and can be used for 80% of all situations, even many hand-held times. The 28mm is excellent for covering large areas, but is even more useful in limited light, when its depth-of-field is still excellent even if you have to shoot at f-stops of 5.6 and 8. It's also great for hand-held shots when the tripod isn't possible. The 105mm macro long lens is fabulous for close-up plant portraits, particularly for flowers that are at the back of the border, and unsurpassed when you start doing flash photo portraits of plants. (Here's one tip: Always use a remote flash cord to enable taking the flash off the camera body so you can hold the flash wherever you like - an 11 0'clock position relative to the plant often works well. This will help give much better results, instead of flat flash photos.) Buy a circular polarized lens filter, for use in taking reflections off ponds and other water features, and to add blueness to an already blue sky. Buy an 81A warming filter, to use in deep shade to take the blue cast out. Garden Photography Tips Index Garden Photos home   copyright 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001 judywhite/GardenPhotos.com. All rights reserved. Feel free to post these tips elsewhere, but make sure to include the byline and copyright information.