If you own a digital SLR you can buy a lens that’s the same brand as your camera–but you don’t have to. Sigma, Tamron and Tokina all offer outstanding optics. All three of these “majors” have been in the lens making business of many years and all have sterling reputations for quality.
From Sigma comes the Twin Zoom Kit. It consists a “standard” 18-50mm f/3.5-5.6 and tele-zoom 55-200mm f/4-5.6 lenses packaged together at a very attractive price. The 18-50mm zoom was designed and built exclusively for digital SLR cameras. It’s very compact (about 2?? inches long) and light weight (about ?? pound). Despite its small size it delivers top performance, thanks to aspherical lens elements which provide correction for various aberrations. The 55-200mm zoom is scarcely bigger (about an inch longer) and weighs about 11 ounces. Minimum focusing distance is 43.3 inches, which provides a macro ratio of 1:4.
The Tamron AF 18-200mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di-II LD Aspherical (IF) MACRO has a very long name and covers an even longer zoom range–the 18-200mm is equal to a 28-300mm on a traditional 35mm film camera. That, plus its compact size, makes it the perfect all-in-one lens for travel and general photography. It uses an advanced optical design incorporating XR (Extra Refractive Index) glass to optimize the optical performance, reduce aberrations and diminish distortion. It also utilizes three aspherical lens elements and two LD (Low Dispersion) glass elements to counteract on-axis and lateral chromatic aberrations. In other words, it produces tack-sharp images.
The new Tokina AT-X 124 AF PRO DX lens provides exciting 12-24mm zoom coverage (18-36mm equivalent) to give photographers a true ultra-wideangle zoom and maintains a constant aperture of f4 throughout the entire range. Its optical design includes two aspheric elements that correct the spherical aberrations that often plague ultra-wide angle lenses. The lens exudes a high-quality feeling and is built to withstand heavy professional use. There are many other lenses, many different focal lengths, zoom ranges, etc. Some provide special capabilities like close-focusing macro lenses, and some extend the zoom capacity into the extreme telephoto zone. The reason you bought a digital SLR camera was to enjoy the versatility of changing lenses. There’s never been a better time to take advantage of the advanced technology.
