Many new to the DSLR world fuss over pixel count and automated features, while serious photographers find their favorite lenses and buy a digital camera to fit.
A lens is a complex engineering masterpiece for collecting light from a scene and focusing it onto the camera’s image recording surface, either film, or digital sensor.
One of the defining features of the SLR camera in film and digital versions is the ability to change the camera’s lens.
This also means the same lens fits on a range of camera bodies. The use by most camera manufacturers of proprietary lens to body connections does limit the versatility of a DSLR lens.
This means having chosen a lens, or family of lenses, the photographer must choose a camera body that supports those lenses.
Professional and serious hobby photographers use a variety of specialist and general lenses to cater for a wide range of photographic situations.
For photographers upgrading from a film SLR to a digital version should consider a camera from the same manufacturer so they can keep using their favorite lenses.
I still use my very first SLR lens bought in 1975 on my twenty first century Digital SLR. It was a quality optical instrument then, and its ability to focus light accurately has not diminished. A quality lens will still be around long after the latest electronic marvel is an outdated curio.
Respected photographer Michael H. Reichmann is one example of someone choosing the lens over the camera.
“For some 30 years prior to switching to Canon in the late 90's I shot with Nikon (F, F2 and F4). I switched platforms in the just-pre-digital days because there were certain lenses from Canon (T/S and IS) that simply didn't exist from Nikon at the time,” said Reichmann on Luminous Landscape.
Another top professional, Carl Lyttle, chose a different camera system although lens quality was the key factor.
“I originally chose Hasselblad because they have the best lenses on the market.”
