Want Ultra-Sharp Photos? Try These Lenses
- 3 Essential Lenses for Landscape Photography
- The Best Camera Lens for Under $500 - and Why You Need One
Photo by Trevor Brown on Unsplash
When shopping for photography gear, the old adage is that you should spend as much as you can on a really good lens.
In fact, if you wish to upgrade your camera and lens, forget upgrading the camera and put all your money toward quality glass. That's because the lens has a greater impact on how your photos look than the camera.
And while some really good lenses cost well over $1,500.00, there are a variety of excellent options for less than $1,400.
That might sound like a steep price, but when you consider that a lens is essentially a lifetime investment - as opposed to a camera which you'll likely replace over and over again over your lifetime - it's actually not a bad price at all.
That being the case, here's a few of the sharpest camera lenses to consider.
Editor's Tip: Ready to upgrade your lens but don't know what focal length to get? Consider why you should have a 35mm lens in your camera bag.
What is the Sharpest Camera Lens? The Sigma 135mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art is It...
Not only is this lens incredibly sharp, but there's versions of it for Sony, Nikon, and Canon full frame cameras, which run from $1,149.00 to $1,399.00.
Sigma knocks it out of the park with a beautiful design and sophisticated optics that make it one of the very best lenses on the market right now.
It has both FLD and SLD glass to keep chromatic aberrations and color fringing to a minimum. Likewise, there's a Super Multi-Layer Coating that suppresses lens flare and ghosting while boosting color fidelity and contrast.
The huge f/1.8 aperture makes it an excellent portrait lens as well given the quality of the bokeh it creates.
The lens also sports a Hyper Sonic Motor that produces fast, quiet, and smooth autofocusing action. For those occasions when you want to focus manually, there's full-time manual focus override.
The build of the lens is off the charts, too, with Thermally Stable Composite materials that make the lens durable and useful in a range of environmental conditions.
The brass bayonet mount also ensures precise mounting to your camera and durable performance for years to come.
Learn More:
Samyang XP 85mm f/1.2
Showing just how far third-party lenses have come in recent years, one of the sharpest lenses out there today is this Samyang XP 85mm f/1.2 for Canon EF mount cameras, which runs about $720.00.
If you shoot portraits, an 85mm lens is a must. And if you're buying an 85mm lens for a Canon full frame camera, this is a great lens to consider.
The huge f/1.2 aperture means excellent performance in low light situations. Naturally, the possibilities for bokeh and selective focus are there with such a wide aperture.
Speaking of wide aperture, this little lens produces beautifully sharp results throughout its aperture range, even when shooting wide-open.
The lens has ten elements in seven groups, which includes one aspherical and two high refractive lens elements. This ensures top-notch image quality from the center of the shot to the corners.
This is a manual focus lens as well, and with a precise, damped, and easy-to-use grip, manual focusing is a breeze.
Better still, this isn't just a portrait lens. Instead, at this focal length and this aperture, it's an ideal choice for low-light shooting like astrophotography.
The only downer? It's only available for Canon cameras.
Editor's Tip: In the market for a zoom lens? Find out why a 24-70mm lens is a great option.
Sharpest Lenses of 2019: Other Options to Consider
The lenses outlined above are just a couple of options for ultra-sharp lenses.
The Sigma 135mm lens and the Samyang 85mm lens were crowned the sharpest of all in the video above by Christopher Frost.
He offers eight other options to consider if you want the ultimate in sharpness from a lens, ranging from more Sigma models to Zeiss to Tamron.
There's prime lenses and zooms too - something for everyone!
Have a look at the video and learn which lenses are the sharpest and which one might be ideal for your particular needs!