The most important piece of kit in your camera bag isn’t your Canon DSLR; it’s the glass you put in front of it. This might be a cliche, but it’s true. A high-calibre lens attached to a beginner-level camera will always produce better quality images than a top-end pro body fitted with a cheap kit lens.

That said, there’s an incredible amount of creative potential in the versatile 18-55mm kit lens that came with your EOS camera, and the chances are you may not be fully exploiting it. This guide will give you all the confidence you need to start doing just that.

We’ll explain how you can get the best from the lens you own, whether that’s a standard zoom, a wide-angle, telephoto zoom or specialised macro lens for close-ups (see also our guide DO or Di: your lens markings explained).

We’ll show you how different focal lengths can transform your photographic results, and explain how best to deal with optical problems you might face in the field. Get ready to see things more clearly…

Canon Lenses: kit lenses and standard zooms

‘Invisible’ standard zooms
The standard kit lens that came with your EOS offers a focal range of 18-55mm that’s perfect for everyday photography. On APS-C D-SLRs, it offers the equivalent field of view as a 29-88mm lens on a full-frame camera such as the 5D Mark II, enabling you to take in everything from landscapes to portraits to close-ups.

Pictures produced by the humble standard zoom have a very natural look when the lens is set at 35mm (55mm equivalent), because this is said to match the focal length of the human eye. Used in this way, these lenses become ‘invisible’, enabling viewers to concentrate on the subject of the picture without getting distracted by the kind of optical effects associated with very wide or long lenses.

Portrait distortion
Although standard zooms are capable of capturing pictures that are very easy on the eye, they can still produce less-than-flattering portraits if they’re not used with care.

15mm

Unless you’re a fan of caricatures, don’t stand close to your subject and simply zoom out to the wide 15mm or 18mm setting of your kit lens to take the shot. In particular, avoid putting people’s faces near the edge of the frame as this is where the distortion tends to be strongest.

35mm

It’s much more preferable to take some steps back and zoom in to the longer end of the zoom at 55mm. This will compress their features 
and produce a much more flattering picture.

Lens corrections
All lenses suffer from optical defects such as distortion and vignetting (where a frame’s corners look darker than its centre) but imaging software is now so advanced it can help fix such problems. Canon’s DPP and Adobe Photoshop can perform fixes at the Raw processing stage, so picture file quality is preserved. Keep in mind when composing that correcting for distortion can lose some detail at the picture’s edges.

Focusing
Kit lenses aren’t the fastest focusing lenses among Canon’s EF and EF-S arsenal, and you might find they struggle to lock onto a subject in low light. Rather than relying on the camera to choose the autofocus point, switch to single AF point selection and manually select one yourself.

The centre focus point is the most sensitive, so a good tactic to use for subjects that aren’t likely to move is to first focus on the subject using the centre AF point and One Shot AF, then lock the focus (using either the AF lock button, or by switching the lens to manual focus) and recompose the shot for the best composition.

Fast prime lenses
One of the best kit lens upgrades you can buy is a ‘fast’ 50mm lens. Why should you spend money on a lens that duplicates a focal length you’ve already got built into your standard zoom? Because the wide maximum aperture of a fast 50mm lens means that a very fast shutter speed can potentially be used (hence the ‘fast’ reference), which is incredibly useful for low light and indoor photography.

f/1.4

f/2

f/2.8

f/4

f/5.6

f/8

f/11

The wide apertures on offer in the 50mm f/1.8 (affordable), 50mm f/1.4 (reasonable) and 50mm f/1.2 (ludicrously expensive!) also give a shallow depth of field, meaning beautifully smooth, blurred backgrounds are possible.

Canon lenses: wide-angle zoom lenses

Getting the measure of wide-angle lenses
Lenses in the region of 10-18mm are capable of capturing pictures of vast scale and depth. The trade-off  to swallowing up so much of a scene in a single frame is that it’s more difficult to arrange ‘clean’ shots.

It’s easy for compositional clutter such as branches and lamp-posts to sneak into the edge of a picture, so get into the habit of running your eye around the viewfinder before you take the shot (zoom out slightly to help you spot the intruders).

Wide-angle lenses also frequently suffer from flare, so always fit a lens hood or shield the front element from direct sunlight using your hand or your body.

Finding foreground interest
Wide-angle pictures can lack impact if they’re simply used to try and squeeze as much of a distant scene as possible into a single frame. Everything just ends up too small. The trick is to find interesting foreground detail and get in close to it in order to lead you into the scene and give the shot depth.

Wide-angle lenses also capture more depth of field than telephotos, especially used on EOS models with smaller APS-C sensors. This brings benefits for landscape photography, where front-to-back sharpness is what you’re aiming for most of the time (see our 10 Commandments of Landscape Photography – and how to break them).

Full-frame vs APS-C
The APS-C image sensors most EOS models use are smaller than ‘full-frame’ (same size as a 35mm film frame) ones in the likes of the EOS 5D Mark II, so capture a lesser area of the image. This gives a magnifying effect, or ‘crop factor’, of x1.6 – apply this to the lens to get the ‘effective’ focal length.

This is great for long lenses, where a 500mm one effectively becomes 800mm. It’s not so good for wide-angle lenses, where a 20mm lens narrows to a ‘true’ 32mm.

Fisheye lenses
These extreme wide-angles produce a unique view of the world, in which every straight line becomes curved. The typical 8-15mm focal lengths can resolve a 180° view, which makes them great for shooting interiors, expansive scenery and in-your-face distorted portraits – and you really do need to be up close and personal with the subject to make the most of this effect.

Anything more than a few feet from the front element will look tiny in the final picture. It’s also easy to catch your own feet and shadow in the shot if you’re not careful!

Converging verticals
If you do a lot of architecture photography, you’re probably aware of the curious effect of converging verticals – in which pointing a wide-angle lens up at a building makes it appear as if it’s about to fall over.

Wide-angle shot with converging verticals

There are three solutions here. First (and worst) is to reduce the effect using Photoshop’s Lens Correction Filter. This does mean that you’ll lose parts of the picture as the software stretches the picture to correct the anomaly. Second, if possible, you can simply stand further back and employ a longer focal length in order to flatten out the perspective.

Tilt-shift

Third, choose a tilt-shift lens, which enables you to fix the problem in-camera. These are fiendishly expensive lenses (Canon’s TS-E 17mm f4L lens is approx £1950) so consider hiring one for a weekend instead of buying.

Canon lenses: telephoto lenses

Wide apertures, shallow depth
As well as offering you more reach, telephoto lenses provide you with more blur or, more precisely, with a shallower depth 
of field. A telephoto lens used at f/4 will give a narrower band of apparent sharpness in an image than a wide-angle lens used at the same aperture. You can exploit this fact by sandwiching a sharp subject between a blurred foreground and background for punchy results.

It’s a very simple, but effective, technique that wildlife photographers frequently use. The trick is to make sure that you’re close enough to foreground detail for it to appear blurred, and that the backdrop is far enough from the subject for it to be rendered soft, too (find out how to Master Live View on your Canon DSLR).

Shutter speeds
Telephotos are big and bulky lenses, so they’re not the easiest to use hand-held. There’s a reason many come with a tripod collar, after all. The minimum shutter speed rule of thumb for handholding applies to teles just as it does for shorter lenses – that is, make sure the shutter speed is at least equivalent to the lens’s focal length (so 1/200sec for a 200mm lens) – but faster is best!

Image stabilisation (IS) has been a game changer for hand-held shooting though, with the latest high-end EF telephoto lenses boasting up to four stops of support (so the same 200mm lens in our example could now be used at a shutter speed of around 1/13 sec and still produce sharp shots  in the right hands).

Compressing perspective
Another creative tool for the long lens photographer is the effect of perspective. Telephoto lenses make it easier to compress a picture’s elements so they appear closer together than they are in reality.

55mm at f/22

It’s a great technique for landscape and architecture shots. Perspective depends on your position in relation to the subject rather than the lens used; images shot from the same spot with 50mm and 500mm lenses show the same perspective.

70mm at f/5.6

But the 500mm focal length concentrates the effect as it’s focusing on a smaller area.

Superzoom lenses
For many people, a superzoom might be the only lens they ever need, offering a vast range of focal lengths in a handy take-anywhere compact package. However, there are obvious compromises to be made when you’re squeezing 18mm through to 200mm into an affordable lens.

Superzooms have relatively slow maximum apertures (such as f/6.3 at 250mm) so they’re not as naturally suited to low-light shooting as faster (brighter) lenses. Focusing and image quality is also less likely to hold up to critical scrutiny.

But there’s a lot to be said for convenience, and while other photographers miss shots as they spend time changing lenses, the superzoom user can continue to get their pictures.

Filling the frame with a telephoto zoom lens
Warning: long lenses can be addictive! For frame-filling impact, you can’t beat the reach of a tele. A subject doesn’t double in size when you double the focal length: it appears four times as big.

55mm

70mm

100mm

200mm

400mm

That said, you need to be fairly close for frame-filling shots of small birds and animals. Because images are magnified so much, the effects of camera shake are too. Rock-solid technique (and a rock-solid tripod and head) are advisable.

Canon lenses: macro lenses

Look for texture
One of the most enjoyable aspects of macro photography is that it enables you to reveal a world that’s normally hidden from the eye. And you don’t have to travel far to find suitable subjects.

Texture, whether it’s peeling paint on a door, 
a rusting lock or lichen growing on a wall makes for striking abstract studies. Just remember to keep the back of the camera parallel with the subject in order to maximise the depth of field through the shot.

Choosing the right macro lens
Macro lenses enable you to get frame-filling shots of small subjects, but not all macro lenses are made equal. Some lenses are badged as ‘macro’ to signify that they focus close up. But a true macro lens is one that gives you 1:1 magnification of a subject – that is, it’ll be captured at life size by the sensor. There are various focal lengths on offer, too.

55mm on kit lens

The longer the lens, the further you can be from the subject in order to get that life-size magnification.

100mm macro lens

This is useful when you’re photographing insects which might scarper if approached too closely, and gives you room to light the subject well.

Diffraction stations
Even though you’ll need to use small apertures to buy you as much depth of field as possible when working close up, you should avoid using the smallest on offer on your lens (which is usually somewhere around the f/32 mark).

Light waves passing through such a small hole tend to bounce around and not all get focused in the same place on the sensor, leading to soft pictures. Equally, think twice about using the widest aperture (such as f/2.8) unless you want just a wafer-thin degree of sharpness in your picture.

Macro lenses are more than just for close-ups
Even though macro lenses are optimised for close-focus photography, they can still be used just like any other lens for ‘normal’ shooting situations.

For instance, a 60mm macro would make a razor-sharp substitute for a standard 50mm lens, with the bonus of getting in ultra-close when you need it to. The fast maximum apertures on offer in macro lenses mean a 100mm f/2.8 becomes an excellent choice for low light photography, if a bit slow focusing.

Focusing for macro
Don’t rely on autofocus when using a macro lens (find out How to set your autofocus for macro photography). Depth of field is very narrow when working at such extreme magnifications, and if the AF system gets it wrong by even a millimetre, well, it might as well be a country mile off, and the results will be unusable.

It’s far better to take charge and use manual focus, something which Live View and its focus magnification aid make light work of (find out What is Live View: free photography cheat sheet) . In fact, this feature, twinned with the Vari-angle LCD screens on the 600D and 60D, makes for an unbeatable macro outfit for low-level work.

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Does your lens has more letters after its name than a retired rocket scientist. What do all these lens markings mean?

You can refer to a lens simply by the name of the manufacturer, the focal length, and its maximum aperture – a Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6, say, or Canon 50mm f/1.4. But as lenses have often evolved from decades of development, they usually have a line of additional letters after their names, stamped on the barrel or printed on the boxes.

Some lens markings are about manufacturer branding – defining a more recent range, or a lens that’s built to higher standards than another. Others are to do with the optics themselves, and to highlight specific technologies used in the lens construction.

In the jargon-busting guide below, we’ll translate these lens markings for you.

The ultimate guide to understanding lens markings

AF  Stands for autofocus. Nearly all lenses have this feature, 
but there’s an increasing trend for niche lens manufacturers (such as Samyang and Carl Zeiss) to offer lenses that can only be focused manually.

AF-S  Stands for autofocus-silent. This features on Nikon lenses that use a silent motor to control the autofocus.

AL  Stands for aspherical lens. All camera lenses are made up of a number of individual lenses or elements. Many of these elements are spherical – as if cut from a sphere. Aspherical elements are less rounded – and are used in some types of lenses to help minimise chromatic aberration.

APO  Stands for apochromatic. This features on Sigma lenses that use super-low dispersion (SLD) lens elements to reduce chromatic aberration.

AS  Stands for aspherical  (see AL).

Asp  Stands for aspherical (see AL).

AT-X  Stands for Advance Technology Extra – the branding used on all current Tokina lenses.

D  A type of Tokina lens that’s compatible with full-frame SLRs.

DA  Stands for Digital Auto. This features on a range of Pentax lenses that (unlike some earlier ranges) don’t have a manual aperture ring. They have a ‘Quick Shift’ mechanism that enables you to override focus manually, even when the lens is switched to autofocus.

DA*  Star by name, star by nature. The premium lens range from Pentax, which combines weatherproofing with the advantages of the DA range.

DC  This features on the range of Sigma lenses that are designed specifically for use with crop factor SLRs, and which can’t be used with full-frame models.

DFA  This features on the range of Pentax lenses that will work with full-frame 35mm film cameras, but which are also optimised for use on crop-factor digital SLRs.

DG  This refers to the Sigma lens range that’s suitable for full-frame SLRs (but that can also be used on crop-factor models).

Di  Tamron’s ‘Digitally Integrated’ lenses have a full-size image circle, so they are suitable for full-frame and crop-factor SLRs.

Di II  Tamron’s second-generation Digitally Integrated lenses are designed for use on popular crop-factor SLRs, and are not suitable for full-frame models.

DO  Diffractive Optics is used on a handful of Canon telephoto lenses – the technology allows these long lenses to be made smaller and lighter than equivalents using conventional optical designs.

DT  Sony lens with a smaller image circle, designed for use on crop-sensor cameras.

DX  Tokina’s and Nikon’s way of marking lenses that are only suitable for crop-factor – or APS-C – SLRs.

ED  A lens featuring Extra-low Dispersion glass in one or more of its elements, to help correct chromatic aberration. This abbreviation is used by Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus and others.

EF  Standing for Electro Focus. This is the name of the lens mount that Canon introduced 
on its first autofocus SLRs back in 1987. EF lenses can be used 
on all Canon SLRs.

EF-S  Electro Focus Short back-focus lenses were introduced by Canon in 2003. They have a small image circle so they are only suitable for use on crop-factor SLRs. A modified mount means that they can’t physically be fitted onto incompatible (ie full frame) Canon models.

EX  Sigma’s designation for its premium lens range.

f/X.X  The f-stop number is 
the size of the lens’s maximum aperture, measured as a fraction of the focal length of the lens. On some zoom lenses there may be two apertures quoted – f/4-5.6, for example. This means that the maximum aperture gets smaller as the lens is zoomed in. The maximum aperture on the lens barrel may also be expressed as 
a ratio – so 1:4-5.6.

FA  Pentax lens that’s full-frame compatible, and that features an old-fashioned aperture ring.

FO  Tokina’s Focus-One-touch mechanism allows you to switch quickly from autofocus to manual focus operation, and back again, by snapping the focus ring backwards and forwards.

FX  A Nikon, or Nikkor, lens that’s compatible with its full-frame SLRs, as well as crop-factor ones.

G  Stands for Gold – a designation found on top-class Sony lenses. It’s also used for current Panasonic Lumix compact system cameras and lenses.

HID  Stands for High Index Dispersion, a type of glass used in Tamron lenses that helps to minimise chromatic aberration.

HSM  Sigma’s Hyper Sonic Motor is used in some of its lenses to provide faster and quieter autofocus operation.

IF  Stands for Internal Focusing, and is found on many lenses from many manufacturers. The lens is constructed so that it doesn’t change in length as the lens is focused. It also means that the front element doesn’t rotate – which can help with the use of some lens attachments, such as petal-shaped lens hoods and polarising filters.

iFn  Stands for i-Function, a feature of Samsung NX cameras which allows photographers to access a number of key camera settings via a button and ring around the lens.

II  This stands for second-generation – a classic lens that’s been updated in design by the original manufacturer.

III  Stands for third-generation.

IS  Stands for Image Stabilization – optical camera shake reduction found in a wide number of Canon lenses.

L  Stands for Luxury, and is used to designate Canon’s best pro lenses, which have superior build quality and weatherproofing.

LD  This features on Tamron lenses that use one or more Low Dispersion lens elements to help reduce chromatic aberration.
mm  Stands for millimetres – used to measure the focal length of a lens.

OIS  Optical Image Stabilisation – the system used on Panasonic lenses to reduce camera shake.

OS  Optical Stabilization is 
the system used on some Sigma lenses to reduce camera shake.

PC-E  Stands for Perspective Control-Electronic. Used to designate Nikon’s range of tilt-shift lenses, which enable you to move the front elements on the lens to avoid or exaggerate lens distortion. They are commonly used in architectural photography to ensure vertical lines remain parallel in the picture.

PZ  Stands for Power Zoom, 
a servo-assisted zoom facility found on some Panasonic compact system camera lenses.

PZD  Stands for Piezo Drive, 
a type of ultrasonic motor used in Tamron lenses to provide 
fast, quiet autofocus.

RF  With Rear Focus, the group of elements nearest the camera are used to focus, providing faster autofocus. This feature is found on super telephoto lenses.

SAM  Stands for Smooth Autofocus Motor – used in recent Sony Alpha lenses.

SD  Super-low dispersion – 
the glass used in Tokina lenses 
to reduce chromatic aberration.

SDM  Supersonic Drive Motor, Pentax’s fast, quiet focus motor.

SLD  Super-low dispersion – lens elements in Sigma lenses that reduce chromatic aberration.

smc  Stands for Super Multi Coating, a seven-layer coating used on Pentax lenses to reduce light reflected the lens itself.

SP  Super Performance – a long-standing tag found on top-of-the-range Tamron lenses.

SSM  Supersonic motor – used for high-speed autofocus in top-of-the-range Sony lenses.

SWM  Silent Wave Motor, 
the high-speed quiet AF motor used on Nikon’s AF-S lenses.

TS-E Tilt-shift Electronic – Canon’s range of perspective control lenses (see PC-E).

UD Ultralow dispersion – type of glass used in Canon lenses to reduce chromatic aberration.

USD Ultrasonic Silent Drive, Tamron’s fast, quiet AF motor.

USM Ultrasonic motor – fast, low-noise autofocus motor used by some Canon lenses.

VC Vibration Compensation – optical camera-shake reduction system on some Tamron lenses.

VR Vibration Reduction, Nikon’s image-stabilisation system.

WR Weather Resistant – found on certain Pentax lenses.

XLD Extra Low Dispersion; glass used in some Tamron lenses to reduce chromatic aberration.

XR Extra Refractive – type of glass used in Tamron lenses. It can bend light at bigger angles than normal glass, helping make the overall size of a lens smaller.

ZA Zeiss Alpha – a range of Sony lenses made by Carl Zeiss.

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Most of us start off with a cheap everyday lens when we get into digital photography. The kit lenses that come bundled with camera bodies are versatile workhorses, with decent zoom ranges that will be useful in most photographic situations. However, there will come a time when you want to add to your creative equipment, and expanding your collection of lenses is a great way to do this. The lens you opt to put on your SLR is one of the most important creative decisions you can make. Other than the sensor, it will have the greatest influence over the quality of your images. Here’s a brief introduction to some of the key things you need to consider when choosing a new lens.

Crop factor

The size of your SLR’s sensor affects the angle of view of your lens – the smaller the sensor, the longer the ‘effective focal length’. A ‘full-frame’ sensor, as used in the Canon EOS 5D mark II or Nikon D700, has the same physical dimensions as a frame of 35mm film, but smaller ‘APS-C’ sensors, as used in the majority of entry-level and mid-range SLRs, capture a smaller proportion of the image projected by the lens. This has the effect of increasing the effective focal length by a factor of 1.5x or 1.6x (depending on the manufacturer). On a camera with an APS-C sensor, a 50mm lens effectively provides an angle of view equivalent to a 75mm or 80mm lens on a full-frame or 35mm film camera. This is great news if you want to shoot wildlife or sports, because a 400mm lens effectively becomes a 600mm or 640mm lens. However, it means that for serious wide-angle work, you need to use an ultra-wide lens – which is why lenses such as the Sigma 10-20mm are popular with landscape photographers who use cameras with APS-C sensors.

Lens speed

We’re not talking focusing speed here, but rather the light-gathering capability of the lens. ‘Fast’ lenses have wide maximum apertures, such as f/1.4 or f/2.8, and so on. They let in more light at this aperture than lenses with maximum apertures of, say, f/4 or f/5.6, which enables you to achieve faster shutter speeds without increasing the ISO. The downside is that they are heavier and more expensive. With ‘slower’ lenses you may need to increase the camera’s ISO in order to get sharp shots in low light. The speed of a lens is also relative to its focal length – a 500mm f/4 lens is considered fast, whereas a 100mm f/4 lens is considered slow. The wide maximum apertures of fast lenses also enable you to achieve a shallower depth of field in your pictures – great for portraits, sport and wildlife.

Floating or fixed aperture?

Another factor that determines the cost of a zoom lens is whether it maintains the same maximum aperture (f/2.8, for example) throughout the zoom range (more expensive) or if the aperture gets smaller (f/4-5.6, for example) as you zoom from wide to long focal lengths (cheaper). The downside of so-called ‘floating’ apertures is that in order to maintain the same exposure, the shutter speed needs to be decreased as the aperture gets smaller.

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Telephoto zoom

A telephoto lens is an optic with a focal length of over 70mm. ‘Tele’ means ‘far off’ in Greek, so telephoto lenses make far-off subjects seem closer than they really are. They also compress perspective.

Wide-angle

Anything within the 10mm to 24mm range is considered to be a wide-angle lens (on APS-C SLRs), which makes wide angles a natural choice for landscapes and shots taken indoors.

Macro

True macro lenses will enable 1:1 magnification in close-up photography, so subjects appear life-size on the sensor. This means that you can fill the frame with objects that are an inch or two wide.

Prime

Prime lenses have fixed focal lengths (which means they can’t be zoomed). They tend to have fast maximum apertures and are generally of superior optical quality compared with zoom models.

Superzoom

Superzooms offer an enormous range of focal lengths (such as 18-200mm) in a single lens, which makes them ideal for travel photography. The downsides include narrower apertures and inferior quality.

Back to: Focus modes explained

Forward to: Flash modes explained

Camera lenses don’t always perform flawlessly. By understanding when they’re likely to let you down, and knowing how to take corrective action when taking the picture, or in software later, you’ll get results that meet your expectations. And don’t forget that lens problems can also be embraced as creative solutions in their own right…

LENS PROBLEM 1… Lens flare

The problem:

Include a bright light source in the frame or allow stray light to glance across the front element and you’ll end up with pictures that have a ghostly, contrast-reducing sheen to them. You may also notice polygonal bright spots in the viewfinder, which can be distracting in the final shot.

The solution:

To get the best from your camera lenses, keep the front element spotless and fit a lens hood. If you don’t have one, or it’s not deep enough to be of use, hold your hand or a piece of card out of shot just to the side of the end of the lens to shield it from the unwanted glare.

Before: ghosting and flare are obvious in this shot of a photographer…

After: by shifting position slightly and shielding the front element from the sun, both are removed.

LENS PROBLEM

2… Vignetting

The problem:

This is characterised by a darkening of the corners of the frame, and is caused by the lens actually capturing its own sides. It’s particularly noticeable when you’re shooting a clear sky. The problem is usually associated with wide-angle lenses at wide apertures, although it only becomes a concern when you’re shooting on a full-frame camera, which makes use of the full diameter of the lens. Vignetting can be a positive, creative tool as well, helping to draw attention to the centre of the frame.

The solution:

If you notice dark corners, try zooming in a touch, or set a narrow aperture. Alternatively, Photoshop’s Lens Correction filter (Filter>Distort>LensCorrection) does an excellent job of eliminating (or enhancing) vignetting.

Vignetting can add to the mood of a shot.

LENS PROBLEM

3…

Converging verticals

The problem:

You’ll usually see this when you’re shooting architecture from ground level with standard to wide-angle lenses. Tilting the lens has the effect of distorting the scene’s perspective, causing the building’s verticals to converge towards the top of the frame.

The solution:

Either hire or buy a dedicated tilt-and-shift lens, which can be used to straighten verticals, or apply a perspective tweak with the Photoshop Lens Correction filter.

An extreme example of converging verticals.

LENS PROBLEM

4… Barrel distortion

The problem:

Pictures look like they’ve been wrapped around a barrel, with central areas looking larger than they should be.

The solution:

Rather than standing close and zooming out to fit everythingn in, step back and zoom in. You can also fix subtle distortion using Photoshop Elements’ Correct Camera Distortion filter.

Take a step back and zoom in to reduce the effects of barrel distortion.

LENS PROBLEM

5… Chromatic aberration

The problem:

This is also called ‘colour fringing’, as it produces either red/cyan, blue/yellow or green/magenta fringing around an image’s high-contrast edges – you’ll often notice it when you zoom in on pictures of trees and buildings photographed against white skies. It’s caused by the lens focusing different wavelengths of light at different points.

The solution:

To reduce chromatic aberration, lens manufacturers typically combine pairs of lens elements with different refractive indexes that work in tandem to cancel out refraction. High-quality (expensive!) lenses often include elements made from specialised hybrid glass to minimise the dispersion of light, such as Nikon ED (Extra-low Dispersion) and Canon UD (Ultra-low Dispersion) glass. The effects of chromatic aberration can also be easily reduced when processing RAW files in the likes of Photoshop CS and Lightroom – we used the Adobe Camera Raw plugin for CS to reduce the fringing in the shot of a palm tree below. The Elements version of ACR isn’t as advanced, yet – you can try a manual approach, by selecting the fringing and reducing the saturation of the area using Hue/Saturation dialog to remove the specific colour.

Before: viewed at 100%. the effects of chromatic aberration are noticeable on the left of the trunk and frond edges…

After: by using the Lens Corrections tab in Adobe Camera Raw, the effects are reduced.

LENS PROBLEM

6… Lens diffraction

The problem:

If you’re using good technique and your images are still losing important detail, it may be due to lens diffraction. It’s caused by using a very small aperture to gain a greater depth of field, and results in a slight softening of the image.

The solution:

Pretty simple this – where possible, avoid using your lens’s smallest aperture (such as f/22 or f/29). Many landscape pros set an aperture of f/16 by default for precisely this reason.

Using your lens’s smallest aperture – f/22 in this case – can lead to softer images because of lens diffraction.

The 55-200mm AF-S VR – Nikon’s closest competitor to Canon’s EF-S 55-250mm IS lens – is a ‘DX’ model for APS-C cameras, though it can also be used in ‘crop’ mode on most full-frame Nikon D-SLRs. There are some notable similarities and diferences to the Canon offering. Firstly, the build quality is pretty much the same, with a reasonably sturdy but plastic construction, including a plastic lens mount.

Also, like the Canon, this Nikon lens lacks a focus distance scale. On this lens the manual focus ring looks almost like an afterthought tacked on to the front end of the lens. As well as its small size, the focus ring has very high gearing, making it diicult to use for accurate manual focusing.

Switch to autofocus and the Nikon fares massively better, with a super-quiet, highly accurate AF-S (AF Silent Wave) system that’s a major improvement over Canon’s more humble micro motor. The three-stop stabiliser isn’t the latest and greatest, but it’s pretty efective nonetheless.

The only really limiting factor in this Nikon is its outright telephoto reach, which works out to 300mm when you take the 1.5x crop factor into account. By comparison, the Canon’s 1.6x crop factor puts the EF-S 55-250mm to a much more generous 400mm.

Even so, there are still a couple of extra pluses for the Nikon, as it comes with a hood and soft pouch, which you have to pay extra for when buying most Canon lenses.