I was recently asked by a young father about some recom­mend­a­tions regard­ing cam­era lenses. I know, gear talk is dry, but then, if you don’t have the right gear for the right job, you may be dis­ap­poin­ted with the image you get oth­er­wise.

If you remem­ber my tips from a while ago, I like to use a macro lens to pho­to­graph little babies, as this allows you to get some really nice up close shots of your tiny little gem without it being lost in the frame (here’s a good example of a frame filling macro shot). Well, the young father already had a macro lens, so what next?

I’d say, get the “nifty fifty”. That’s a 50mm lens with a very bright aper­ture (typ­ic­ally in the ƒ/1.7 to ƒ/2.0 range) which costs you no more than a hun­dred bucks, in any cam­era sys­tem (of course you could also get ƒ/1.4, ƒ/1.2 or even ƒ/1.0 ver­sions, but those will set you back much, much more). In any case, with these won­der­ful lenses — really the first addi­tional lens you should be get­ting bey­ond your kit-​lens — you will be able to achieve some extremely shal­low depth of field, nicely sep­ar­at­ing your little smil­ies from poten­tially dis­tract­ing back­grounds (here’s one such shot). Also, again thanks to the wide aper­ture, you will be able to take pho­tos even in dark­ish light­ing con­di­tions without hav­ing to des­troy the ambi­ence with your onboard super nova.

But apart from that, go wide! Get a wide angle lens. With these lenses you are forced to get in close so that you’re right part of the action, and not just a by-​standing observer. Robert Capa once said “If your pic­tures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.” He was a very wise man (and bril­liant photographer)…

Here’s part 3 (of 5) of my little pan­or­amic pho­to­graphy tutorial series. After shoot­ing and devel­op­ing the images, we will now stitch them together into the final 360×180° fully spher­ical pan­or­ama.