Trying the Kit Lens again

[Yebisu]

I've been using the 18-55 kitlens on my D3000 recently. Here are the results.

















Thanks for looking

[David]

Your second shot is amazing. Definitely my favorite of the bunch.

[Rolf]

Nice series and i find always that the kit lenses ae in fact better than their reputation. Nothing wrong with your images.

[56 DIN]

as Rolf said - kit lenses often get bad reputations. My feeling is, that most of the people in internet who write bad about this lenses never used them.

this is a very nice series of pictures.

The "favourite" image - no 2 - itself is excellent, but related to your topic, i personally find here you see that it was done - lets say with a more automatic lense if you look at the light sources

[ChromaticAberration]

Kit lenses are good. Period.

In a very particular way they are the flagship on modern consumer-level cameras. Even if 90% of buyers buy them for all the wrong reasons, fact is that lens makers have to make a good job, sacrificing build quality of course but optically wise they still get great results.

Sure they cannot be as good as "L glass" but that is obvious and no one is expecting otherwise. Most photography enthusiasts who buy a kit already have the intention of replacing that "stupid, plasticky lens that everyone uses" because it sucks big time and won't make them good photographers. Bullshit.

This is similar to "I'm going full-frame because the body looks much serious and heavy and will get me much better pics!", yeah right!

I loved this series by the way.

[Yebisu]

Thanks everyone. Actually my fav is no.7. I like the colours.

I always enjoy shooting with my kit lens. It's light, fairly sharp and covers my favourite focal lengths. My only problem is the zoom ring. It isn't very smooth.

[Aanything]

I recently have been very positively surprised by my new nex 5n kit lens.

I was thinking to spend a lot of money in quite a good zoom for small video work - which is the main reason why I bought the nex . such as zeiss' 16-80, but seeing how the kit lens performs, I'll probably get the OSS 55-210 instead.

[edit]
I forgot the main reason why I answered this thread:
very nice series, I too like number two above others.

[ChromaticAberration]

Problem is also that many vintage manual focus photographers have the illusion that decade old lenses will do a much better job than kit or modern lenses overall, not true. Decade old lenses are also decades behind in coating technology. They are better built, I'll give you that, but other than the real classics which are capable of fetching higher prices than most consumer level modern lenses, will not make the cut.

[Yebisu]

Thanks everyone. Here are some more shots.








Have you ever seen someone taking a big lizard/iguana for a walk? I hadn't so I had to get some shots.

[ChromaticAberration]

Very nice bokeh and sharpness. Congrats.

[Orio]

The iguana series is really funny! In the one with the standing woman it would have been even better if the lens was stopped down more to have the woman in focus too.

[Yebisu]

Thanks

@ Orio Greater dof would have been better in that shot where the iguana is escaping.

[ManualFocus-G]

Awesome!

2, 5 and 7 from the first series for me And all the street photos are great! The Nikon kit lens is actually fairly well regarded I believe, and I can see why

[NikonD]

wow, didn't know this kit was so good, these shots are excellent for a cheap lens...

[Lena]

[Yebisu]

[Katastrofo]

Yebisu, very enjoyable series, both the castle town and the iguana!

[skida]

Nice series. No 3 is my favourite. Great photos are possible with just about any lens if they are composed and exposed correctly, like on these. Lab tests are really quite irrelevant, like Leonardo da Vinci worrying about how many bristles per millimetre his brushes have.

[Yebisu]

[NikonD]

[Lena]

I was thinking about the same Tokina, but it's above my budget for a single lens right now. A minty copy went for around EUR 150 on national auction service recently. My copy of Tamron ( the older version ), as someone pointed out, performs decently in good light conditions. Whenever it gets cloudy, the contrast is down terribly and colours are kind of washed out. Last year I was on holidays with a friend who had a Nikon with a kit and we were shooting side by side. Tamron seemed to be the better lens ( but the better photographer was definitely behind the kit ).