Canon General Purpose/Event Lens

inevitablyissie wrote:

Thank you for clarifying that in simpler terms, I have a much better understanding of it now!

Do you think a prime lens would be a better choice for a primary lens? I've heard the sharpness on them is incredible, perhaps they're a lot sharper on crop sensors than zoom lenses are? But I could be wrong.

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Your Camera is Your Companion

I think a prime lens can help a beginner learn some principles of photography more quickly. Whether a prime lens is a "better" choice than a zoom for one's primary lens is not so easy to answer. I believe a Tokina 100mm f/2.8 macro lens, and then a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 lens, really helped me understand photography. Part of it was that both were of better optical performance than the "kit" lens. The Tokina macro lens was part of the bag of pre-owned gear my wife bought from a co-worker, and I bought the 50mm f/1.8 soon afterward.

A zoom lens tends to be a compromise, optically, except perhaps at one 'sweet' spot. This is true of my zooms. Some have broader areas of high image quality than others. A fixed-focal-length lens, a.k.a. prime lens can, probably, therefore be "sharper" than a zoom with equal-quality glass elements, except perhaps at the zoom's best setting. To be clear, I may be saying this in overly-simple terms, perhaps to the point of error. I am not an optical engineer, or any kind of expert.

There is, also, more to image quality than "sharpness," and a skilled photographer can produce amazing images with a rather mundane lens.