Hi Friends, super mega ultra beginner here, looking for recommendations :)

I’m piss poor but have gotten really into AMATEUR photography over the last year and a half with my tiny Nikon digicam and soooooo…

I semi recently got a used Sony a5000 mirrorless plus sigma 30mm f2.8 for my birthday with which I’m having a lot of fun with just trial and erroring my way through photography :) I had decided on the sigma 30mm as it came widely recommended (by the internet) and it seemed like a good middle ground for everyday things and just getting to know the camera.

However now Christmas is coming up and I’m looking to dip my toes into more specific focal lengths. 

So now I’m looking for recommendations on lenses. Specifically telephoto but maybe also an even wider one. 

I’m most interested yet equally uninformed about Telephoto. I’m interested in shooting portraits, my cat, close ups of makeup and still life and maybe a little mushroom or a bird here and there but wildlife shouldn’t be the focus here because I’m not that outdoorsy. With my limited info I thought an effective focal length of 85-135mm might be good  (or maybe a longer range 200-300 one plus a shorter range 60-85 one? Or a zoom lens?…See I know nothing). Also I’m not sure about aperture on telephoto so feel free to educate me but I figure 2.8 is always good. 

I was also thinking about getting an even wider angle for like cityscapes nature and maybe stars (I’m not looking to become an astrophotographer I just wanna be able to take a photo of the night sky that’s not a black square) but I’m not sure if I need it or how much of a difference it would make comparing to the sigma. 

Sidenote: I would prefer a prime lens as I wish to squeeze all I can out of my camera (unless u can convince me otherwise)

And I would maybe prefer a full frame lens in case I ever wanna buy a new camera in a few years so I can keep using the lenses :)

TLDR: please recommend telephoto and or wide angle or just your favorite lenses for Sony e-mount considering I have the budget of a homeless raccoon (obviously I’m ok with secondhand I’m not completely delusional) 

Also feel free to tell me all kinds of stuff about stuff I’m ready to be educated.

Thank you <3

EDIT: since a lot of people have pointed it out, I am aware of the crop factor when putting a full frame lens on a APS-C sensor, that’s why I stated the effective focal length I was looking for (which was meant to include the crop factor if applicable) 😅 sorry if that wasn’t clear and plus I still appreciate everyone bringing it up in context with specific lenses

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[–] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

Lens reviews are my recent autistic interest.

For Sony (APS-C) e-mount, you literally cannot beat Viltrox at the moment. The 50mm Air is razor sharp corner-to-corner, even if you upgrade to a 40MP APS-C body later, and it's cheap:

https://viltrox.com/products/af-50mm-f2-fe

This is one of the best value lenses of all time, for sure. It's maybe not as sharp as some APS-C lenses, but it's still quite good on APS-C.


The EVO 75/90mm/85mm are fantastic if you want a tighter field of view: https://viltrox.com/collections/evo-series?filter.v.price.gte=&filter.v.price.lte=&filter.p.tag=E-mount&sort_by=created-descending

The 75mm would be best on your camera right now, but it's not a full-frame lens. The 85mm will work better on a full frame camera, but won't be quote as sharp/bright now: https://viltrox.com/products/af-85mm-f2-0-fe

Either way, wait a bit for a sale on these, and stack it with a discount code from some reviewer. Viltrox runs deep discounts often.


EDIT: Since you think you might buy a full frame camera some day, the Yongnuo 85mm is also excellent. It's sharp on either kind of camera, and a "sleeper" brand. Some of their lenses are mediocre, but the 85mm is their gem: https://th.hkyongnuo.com/products/85f18s-df-dsm

I adore my own Yongnuo 23mm, and the 85 is definitely better.


I’m most interested yet equally uninformed about Telephoto. I’m interested in shooting portraits, my cat, close ups of makeup and still life and maybe a little mushroom or a bird here and there but wildlife shouldn’t be the focus here because I’m not that outdoorsy. With my limited info I thought an effective focal length of 85-135mm might be good...

You have an APS-C camera, so listed focal length of 100mm+ would be a 150mm+. That's more "wildlife telephoto" range. Its suboptimal for "portrait" type photos because keeping the camera steady becomes really difficult with so much zoom, and the apertures tend to be slower, it's too tight for many subjects, and the plane of focus is just too thin for many shots.

I'd stay in the 50-90 range.

I was also thinking about getting an even wider angle for like cityscapes nature and maybe stars

And for video! Wide angles are great for all sorts of stuff. For APS-C, this means below ~19mm.

But this is tricky, because a "wide angle" on a full frame and APS-C camera are going to have wildly different fields of view and costs. For example, a 14mm on a APS-C camera is averagely wide, a good focal length, and dirt cheap. 14mm on full frame is extremely wide, so wide it's hard to shoot and looks distorted, and hideously expensive.

In other words, unlike telephoto lenses, it's hard to buy a good value wide-angle lens that works on APS-C AND full frame cameras, due to the way the optical engineering works out.

TBH I would recommend buying an APS-C wide lens, then just selling it and swapping to something else when you upgrade in the future. Depending on if you wish to do this or not, I have different recommendations.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (1 child)

    Second endorsement for the viltrox 50mm f2 air. It's tack sharp, autofocus is really good, it's light, well made, all around a really good lens. Got it since a year and love it.

    I'd say it depends on your budget and whether or not you need autofocus. I got a vintage Minolta rokkor lens for 70€, added an adapter for 15 and have a 50mm f1.4 lens for 85 bucks. But! Try and focus by hand on f1.4 and you'll notice that one in 10 images is sharp. On the other hand once I close it down to f2 or more it becomes an excellent lens. So that's a cheap option for premium glas. You can also get 85mm, 100mm 130mm etc, so there's some tele options. Mind though, that they have no oss, you need to focus by hand, set aperture by hand,... So it's lenses that require a lot of concentration and being able to prepare.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 1 week ago (4 children)

    Wow thank you that’s so helpful ☺️

    I’ll look into Viltrox I think someone else mentioned they have regular sales so maybe I’ll be able to catch one with Black Friday and Christmas coming up 🤞🏻

    I’ll have to look up what 50-90mm looks like (I’ve seen so many comparisons between so many things I hardly remember any of them) but it’s nice to have a place to start so thank you for that ✨

    I’m excited to click through the lenses you linked 👍🏻

    Thanks for taking the time

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (1 child)

    Check out dofsimulator:

    https://dofsimulator.net/en/

    FYI your camera crop factor is 1.5. Enter that, and you can see how “tight” various focal lengths are, as well as how much background blur you get at different apertures.

    For something simpler: https://morn91.github.io/exx/focal-length/

    This just compares the framing of different focal lengths. For example, you could compare 14mm on full frame and APS-C (eg a 1.5X crop factor) and see how different that field of view looks.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 child)

    Also, just sharing a bit of experience, I went down the rabbit hole of adapting old lenses to a new camera. Some of the most widely praised glass ever, in fact: Canon EF lenses. I got a good range.

    …TL;DR. It’s not all it’s cracked up to be.

    They’re big, they focus slow, and they are too noisy for video.

    They were fine on old sensors

    But honestly, new lenses beat the snot out of them, optically. Lens design has advanced dramatically. Hence I’m selling all of them, every one I own.

    The Chinese brands are where it’s at this second. Viltrox, Sirui, Laowa, Thypoch, sometimes TTArtisan/7Artisan, Meike. You have to look up reviews of them individually to avoid lemons, but many are sharper than 1st party or “high end” brands like Sigma for a fraction of the cost. They are so cheap it’s easier to just buy them new than hunting for a used copy.

    Hence, I have literally not touched another lens since I got my 23mm Yongnuo prime. It’s so sharp, it’s honestly not worth it; I get a better image cropping in, and it just operates so much better and feels higher quality.

    I am not trying to shill Chinese lensmakers or anything. ALL lens brand have improved. Some Used Sigma lenses are gems in particular. But for most prime lenses, the cost for the quality is just so dramatically in favor of the Chinese startups.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 1 week ago

    A lot of people online and also in this comment section seem to really like the Chinese third party lenses so it’s definetly something I’ll look into.

    I don’t subscribe to the notion that anything third party is worse than the brand name.

    So thanks for the info :)

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