Hey Everyone! How's it going this week? Hope you're having a good one. This week will be a bit controversial for serious photographers and I might get some flack but I think what I think. This week I want to talk about kit lenses and how I use them in my photography. So what is a kit lens? A Kit lens is a less expensive zoom lens that manufactures put with cameras so they can sell them as a kit. Usually not great lenses and are usually the first lenses put out to pasture after someone really gets into photography. They want the professional lenses that all of the YouTube and inter web people say is the best lens to get. And make no doubt these professional lenses are better lenses but are they worth the money? To me it depends. Let me give you my situation. I have a crop sensor lens camera that I use for landscape and have very high quality zoom lenses that I use with it . (I think Zooms are a must for Landscape) Then I have a full frame camera that I use mostly Prime lenses with and I love the way a prime lens looks on a full frame sensor.  When you take a portrait with an 85mm f1.8 lens the background just melts.  Now my full frame I use for everything except Landscape/Wildlife.  So portraits, Street, product every thing in between.  I recently purchased a kit lens for my full frame a 28-60mm lens that works great for just kicking around and taking photos around town or street photography.  Its small and compact. Now its not as bright as my Primes but does great for daylight and well lit shots. So why didn't I get the professional lens for my Full Frame? Cost vs Quality ratio.

Cost of Kit lenses.  The price of a kit lens can be as much as 1/4 the price of its professional lens equivalent.  I got my 28-60mm for less than 300 used and if I had gotten the professional one say a 24-70mm f2.8 it would be well over 1000 dollars used. Thats a big cost savings. I don't think the photo quality between the kit and the professional lens is a big enough difference for me to get the professional one. Plus the professional one is twice the length and probably 3 times the weight.  Again I don't need the weight I like to be as nimble as I can be. So for me it was a no brainer to get the kit lens for casual shooting. If I want to get serious I can pull out my primes.

Solved a problem.  Getting this kit lens solved the problem I had when doing street photography and that's changing lenses every 5 seconds going from a 35mm to a 55mm or a 85mm this 28mm-60mm kind of put me in a good sweet spot but not being large and protruding like say a 24-105 would be.

Now I would not use this lens for my main Landscape or Portrait lens especially if I were selling stuff. But if you're just starting out a kit lens is the lens you have with you so shoot it.  Every camera Manufacturer has their kit lenses and some are really good.  I've heard good things from the Fuji line of lenses and I'm sure Canon and Nikon have great kit lenses also. The one I've been talking about is from Sony and was made for the A7C model camera that came out a couple of years ago. I purchased my copy used from MPB for around 250 dollars and it was like new. I always suggest buying used to save a little dough. I know a lot of professional and high end photographers trash these little lenses but I do think they serve a purpose and can be quite handy little lenses. So until next week get your kit lens out and keep shooting!