A great way to breathe new life (often at little cost) into your photography is to adapt old lenses to use with your digital camera. There are two main options when it comes to choosing old lenses for your digital camera – using an old manual focus lens, or modern, low-tech glass from Lensbaby, Diana or other specialists. Both solutions mean you will sacrifice some of the automatic features on your digital camera, but that’s part of the appeal.

Manual labour
The advantage of using the Lensbaby or Diana lenses is that to some extent you know what you are going to get, as each lens has been designed with a particular ‘look’ in mind.

So if you want the soft-focus look of using a very basic lens, you can choose the Lensbaby Plastic optic, or one of the original models for the tilt/shift effect.

When it comes to using old manual focus lenses, the results you get will be slightly more random, as each lens will give slightly different results – but that’s half the fun!

A 50mm f/1.8 is a classic lens that’s ideal when you are first starting out with photography. If you’re lucky, you can pick up these high-quality portrait lenses for a song.

Digital Camera magazine’s editor Geoff Harris got a pristine Olympus Zuiko 50mm lens with an equally clean OM10 SLR camera body for just £50 from a charity shop, and he probably could have got it even cheaper on eBay.

The wide aperture can produce very shallow depth of field, while the greater focal length on APS-C (75mm) or Four Thirds cameras (100mm) makes it a great choice for really striking people shots.

Old gear, new skills
But remember, you’ll lose many automatic features when using an old lens on a digital camera, so you have to focus manually (check out our in-depth guide to Manual focus: what you need to know to get sharp pictures).

Because you aren’t able to rely on the camera to set everything for you, it feels much more like shooting with an old-fashioned camera (for more on how your camera works, see Digital cameras: what the manual doesn’t teach you).

There’s also something very satisfying about setting the focus using a large manual focus ring compared with the small control on most autofocus lenses, again adding to the authenticity of your retro photography adventure.

Getting to grips with manual focus, and figuring out how to expose correctly with an old lens, may seem like hard work, but these skills will prove useful whatever gear you use.

PAGE 1: Types of old lenses
PAGE 2: What to look for when buying old lenses
PAGE 3: Which old film lenses fit my digital camera?
PAGE 4: How to use a lens adapter

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Are you thinking about buying a new lens for your DSLR or compact system camera? Remember, the best lens isn’t always the most expensive.

The best lens for your camera is the one with the features that best match your needs as a photographer. These 9 essential lens tips should help give a solid foundation of what you might be looking for when you go to choose the best lens for your camera.

How to choose the best lens for your camera

Lens Tip 1: Speed
Aside from sharpness, this is the key thing to consider. ‘Fast’ lenses have wide maximum apertures – f/2.8, f/1.8 etc. They let in more light and enable you to achieve faster shutter speeds. The downside? They’re heavier and more expensive. ‘Slower’ lenses are cheaper, but you may need to increase the camera’s ISO in order to get action-stopping shots in low light. The speed of a lens is also relative to the focal length – a 500mm f/4.5 lens is relatively fast, whereas a 100mm f/4.5 is slow.

Lens Tip 2: Minimum focus
How close can you get before the lens reaches its near focus limit? This is an important consideration when choosing a telephoto lens. It’s all very well getting a lens which offers a huge magnification, but if you can’t get close enough to make the most of it you’ll have to add extension tubes to get closer.

Lens Tip 3: Floating or fixed aperture?
Another factor that determines whether a zoom lens is cheap or expensive is whether it keeps the same aperture throughout the zoom range (more expensive) or if the aperture gets smaller as you zoom from wide to long (cheaper). The downside of this kind of ‘floating’ aperture (such as f/4.5-5.6) is that, in order to maintain the same exposure, the shutter speed needs to become slower as the aperture gets smaller. So you need to be aware of possible camera shake creeping in.

Lens Tip 4: Handling
How a lens feels in your hands shouldn’t be overlooked. Do the zoom and focus rings fall in the right place for your fingers? Can you hand-hold it? Does it have image stabilisation?

Lens Tip 5: Rotating filter ring
Cheaper lenses can have a front element which rotates as the lens focuses. This causes problems when you’ve got a filter attached – particularly a polariser, the effect of which changes as it turns. The only solution is to focus first before making filter adjustments.

Lens Tip 6: Optical quality
It’s only by testing a lens in a camera shop and reading reviews that you’ll know if a lens’ quality will meet your expectations. Sharpness is key, but so is a lens’ ability to handle flare, vignetting and optical aberrations. Most of those letters after a lens’ focal length – APO, L, ED, ASP – aren’t marketing gimmicks, they do actually signify better glass has been used.

Lens Tip 7: Distance scale
This is useful for calculating depth of field in order to maximise front-to-back sharpness in a shot, and so is particularly good for landscape photography. Many modern lenses, such as this 55-200mm, don’t have one though. Do you think you can live with that?

Lens Tip 8: Type of zoom
There are two types of zoom lens – the push/pull ‘trombone’ style, or the more common ring type. The push/pull type are simpler to use, although longer versions can become unwieldy when zoomed right out.

Lens Tip 9: Lens hood
Not all lenses come with a lens hood. Factor the extra cost in if they lack one – they’re essential. The same is true for a tripod collar for larger lenses.

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This guide is written for anyone who wants to get more from their camera, be it an SLR, compact system camera or bridge camera. It works as a complete beginners’ guide, but is also a handy refresher course for people who’ve had their camera for a while.

I remember how intimidated I was by my first ‘proper’ camera, and how much I could have benefitted from a jargon-free guide like this. In the articles below, you’ll learn all about your key camera controls – what they are, and more importantly, how to use them to get great shots. Read on to discover how to control exposure for perfectly balanced shots, adjust aperture and shutter speed, use flash, and much more. We also explain how to choose and use a lens, and how to get more from your photo-editing software and printer. Enjoy this unique beginners’ guide, and please do share any shots it’s inspired you to take!

Part 1: Set up your camera

Part 2: Explore your SLR

Part 3: Get better exposures

Part 4: Understanding aperture

Part 5: Shutter speed explained

Part 6: Perfect your exposures

Part 7: Focus modes explained

Part 8: Choosing a lens

Part 9: Flash modes explained

Part 10: Image editing, printing & storing

Part 11: Essential accessories

Part 12: Looking after cameras