Online you will often see people say “why put a $300 lens in front of a $3,000 camera?” In some cases, this can be a valid point, but it often is not. Most of the time you get what you pay for, but not always. Take the old Nikon 75-150 “E” at one end of the spectrum. Beautiful manual focus lens that I paid $70 for. Takes brilliant images, nice contrast, color and sharpness, plus it’s pretty small. Not the most amazing zoom range, but compromises must be made. On the other end you have the Nikon 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G ED IF VR, which besides having a slew of acronyms costs a pretty penny around $550 and is a notoriously bad performer. Monetary might doesn’t make right, the below is shot with another cheap classic, the 24mm 2.8 AIS, $120.

My next brief tutorial will go over another budget setup in low light technique, stay tuned!

Daniel Brasuell

Nikon D700, Nikkor 24mm AIS @ 1/800 F5.6 ISO 400