Having to get another camera! Which?

[E65Ross]

LC2 said:

You'll want the continuous servo mode which allows the camera to maintain focus as the subject moves.
You'll also want to restrict the focus area to a small group (as opposed to all focus points) or a single point *IF* you can keep the single point on the subject (which for a bird you probably won't be able to).

I don't know your camera, but if there is an option to reduce the chance of it changing focus target (say if a branch that is closer gets in the way), then you are likely to want that on too.

Perfect, thank you, sir!

[Mr Will]

It's quite rare for me to recommend buying more gear but if and when you have the money the Nikon 35mm 1.8 is a little gem. It doesn't zoom but the pay off for that it that it is tiny, very sharp and can let in more than four times as much light as your current lenses. It will revolutionise your ability to shoot indoors without flash and is well worth the ~£130 it costs.

[E65Ross]

Mr Will said:

It's quite rare for me to recommend buying more gear but if and when you have the money the Nikon 35mm 1.8 is a little gem. It doesn't zoom but the pay off for that it that it is tiny, very sharp and can let in more than four times as much light as your current lenses. It will revolutionise your ability to shoot indoors without flash and is well worth the ~£130 it costs.

I will look into this. I am after smaller lenses too....

I was told by the chap who sold me it "use the 18-55mm for indoors, and the 55-200mm for outdoors". Now, I'm finding that for doing scenery where you want to get lots in the 18-55mm is better. If you're trying to shoot something a little further away then the 200mm is clearly better. Does anyone know what 200mm works out in terms of zoom?

I see people on here do some amazing shots with what appears like a very wide angle, and get an awful lot in view... Is that a small lens (eg smaller than 18mm)? Or something else?

Many thanks!

[Mr Will]

E65Ross said:

I will look into this. I am after smaller lenses too....

I was told by the chap who sold me it "use the 18-55mm for indoors, and the 55-200mm for outdoors". Now, I'm finding that for doing scenery where you want to get lots in the 18-55mm is better. If you're trying to shoot something a little further away then the 200mm is clearly better. Does anyone know what 200mm works out in terms of zoom?

I see people on here do some amazing shots with what appears like a very wide angle, and get an awful lot in view... Is that a small lens (eg smaller than 18mm)? Or something else?

Many thanks!

"In terms of zoom" is a meaningless phrase. Your 18-55 is a 3x zoom lens (55 is ~3x 18) and your 55-200 is a 3.6x zoom lens (3.6x55 ~ 200) but they cover entirely different ranges. All the "zoom" number tells you is how big the difference is between zoomed all the way in and zoomed all the way out - it doesn't tell you where either of those ends are.

The mm numbers are absolutes; smaller means a wider field of view, larger means more zoomed in. If you want to go really wide then you are correct, you'll need a lens that goes lower than 18mm. The focal length (mm value) have very little to do with indoors vs outdoors, it is all to do with zoom and perspective. What does make a difference indoors is the aperture (f/ number). This is how much light the lens is able to let in at once.

Now, there is one small complication in all this. Sensor size also affects field of view. This means [b]if you are comparing between cameras with different sensor sizes[b] the mm number alone is not enough. This is where you will hear people talk about crop factors and 35mm equivalents. Your camera has a 1.5x crop factor, which means that if you multiply all the mm values by 1.5 to get one with the same field of view on a film camera. For example your 18-55mm is a 27-83mm equivalent. Your RX100 had a smaller sensor (2.7x crop factor) and a smaller lens (10.4–37.1 mm) but when converted to 35mm equivalent it ends up not far off - 29-105mm. Not quite as wide at the small end, and a little bit more zoomed in at the long end but pretty similar. This shouldn't be a surprise as they both good general purpose every day lenses. I much reiterate though, this is only important when comparing between different cameras.