Mastering Your KIt Lens - Part 3

It's often macro shots like this that cause you to curse the mechanics of your kit lens, hunting and rough focusing are just annoying, but with patience you can work around the deficiencies, this shot was taken with a cheap and very short auto macro tube and a Sony 18-55 OSS kit lens. 

Last blog entry we looked at the optical issues with kit lenses, now we move onto the mechanics.

Kit lens issues related to mechanical construction may prove very difficult to resolve, in short these include lens de-centering ( which really grates on my pixels), poor focus due to sloppy lens fit inside the lens barrel, poor cross frame clarity due to misaligned mounting faces and perhaps a few other mechanical oddities, like misshapen apertures.

All of the above will conspire to place the focus in unpredictable places that are always challenging and often impossible to fix in post production. Most of these mechanical problems are due to sample variation, so if you get a dud, see if you can get it swapped out for a good one.


De-Centering

Lets pull the problems apart, first off, de-centering. In practice all the lens elements of the lens should be perfectly aligned and in a well made lens they are. In other words the absolute centre of each of the lens elements are aligned perfectly and the lens will perform as designed. If one or more of the elements are misaligned you can get uneven clarity across the frame, with perhaps one side sharper than the other, soft spots, blurry corners and a sharp centre, flare spots or perhaps in extreme cases just mush all over the place.

Good quality lenses are constructed in such a way that the centering of the elements is adjustable in manufacture, but many cheap kit lens are just simply fixed in their construction.

High quality lenses can normally be realigned, generally kit lenses cannot.

I suspect that more often than not de-centering issues are caused by the lens being dropped, which gives you a hint as to why I won’t buy a second hand lens with a dented or chipped filter thread ring.

The good news is that kit lenses are not designed to be de-centered from the outset, if everything is put together correctly then it should work fine. The bad news, if yours is de-centered, it is not going to be economical to fix it, so unless covered by warranty, buy another copy.

And the other good news, another copy will probably cost very little anyway, as there are a huge number of “up graders” selling their cast off kitties on eBay for next to nothing. Hell it might be worth your while to buy a couple, keep the best one and sell the other....or perhaps keep one in case you accidentally sacrifice the other one to gravity. Mind you I have noticed that gravity seems to be far worse (sucks more) with more expensive lenses. There are also well known high gravity spots, these include Canyon edges, the tops of buildings, any area where concrete covers the ground, I also have it on good authority that the sides of cruise liners and other boats are subject to especially high gravitational fields.


Now moving on to more insidious mechanical nasties

I have actually used lenses where once you cranked the barrel out for close focus or telephoto settings the front of the lens gets lazy and droops. The inevitable result of such misbehavior is poor focus across the top or bottom of the image (dependent upon where you have focused). This effect usually gets worse as the lens ages and becomes sloppier in the barrel, such lenses are a total annoyance but you can often even things up by applying just a little upward pressure on the front of the lens. Nonetheless a lens like this is just frustrating to use and probably should be replaced with something better or newer or perhaps you could discipline yourself and not focus too close or zoom to far out. Or here is a thought, turn you lens into a fixed focal length one by gluing the zoom to a fixed optimal setting, which is likely somewhere in the mid range.

Most modern kit lens do not have smooth metal helicoils inside to give that tight but buttery smooth focus action of old, instead they use clever plastics which work OK when new but eventually develop slop and make precise manual focus difficult or impossible. Naturally this can’t be fixed but a lens will usually need a lot of use before it gets to this point. Sadly, a good number of lenses seem to come out of the factory in a rather loose state so it is something you should check before you take your new baby home.

Some kit lenses also have plastic mounting flanges, again these can wear in high use samples leading to slop and misalignment at the mounting faces. I must say the slop is pretty rare as a lens would need a lot of un-mounting and mounting to wear enough to become lose, so its just a little thing to consider with second hand kitties.

Finally and thankfully rare, you can occasionally get a lens that refuses to focus to infinity, this is a manufacturing defect for sure but if you are not aware of what is going you will likely think the lens is just not sharp. The fix, get it swapped out or buy a new one, old school kittys like the 35-70 Minoltas and Nikons can probably be sorted via a quick adjustment by a tech person.


Flare

A final issue is flare resistance and indeed many kit lenses are less than perfect in this regard, but I humbly suggest that for most instances, actually placing the lens hood on the lens and/or shooting a little more carefully would have negated the issue. Any lens can be made to flare if you shoot into the sun or other bright light sources, the issue is not “will it flare”...but “how bad will the flare effects be”.

Older lenses are typically much poorer than new lenses due to radical improvements in lens coatings over the last couple of decades. I have many older lenses that have flares like a seventies disco given the right circumstances but regardless are still terrific lenses 99% of the time. Despite my Sony 18-55 OSS being touted as a bit flare prone in tests, I really have never had an issue, so don't sweat it yours is probably fine too.

BIG TIP: More often than not in classes when someone says their lens is soft and flare prone the problem is dirty haze and mushy prints on the front element, so keep it clean and fingers off.

Back in the hood.....If you didn't get a hood with your lens, (and oddly some makers skimp on this essential piece of kit hoping you will pay through the nose for one as an accessory) you can pick one up on eBay for just a few dollars.

The kit lens hoods are a bit of a compromise, typically having a petal shape that prevents vignetting when you adjust the lens to the wide angle setting, but providing minimal protection at the longer focal lengths. If you like me you find yourself using your kit lens at predominately the one focal length you could purchase a far more efficient hood than the standard petal one.

As a tip I often use a foldable old style rubber lens hood that can be adjusted to suit the different focal lengths.......and there is a big bonus with it. Should you need to shoot through glass it can be held up against the glass and will both act as a shock absorber and cut out reflections of the glass.....oh and they are very cheap on eBay too, like less than $5.00!

To conclude todays blog entry, from my perspective a good kit lens is one that has the mechanical criteria well under control but may display some of the fixable optical issues we discussed in the previous blog entry.

Ultimately your technique and artistic flare and editing skills will prove far more important than the actual quality of your lens, with the next entry we will explore the positives of your kitty.

Mastering Your Kit Lens - Part 1

My Mother in Law, Ivy, one of the nicest ladies you could ever meet, captured with my Sony 18-55 whilst waiting at a bus stop

So your kit lens is rubbish, you know this for a certainty because numerous photo blog sites and test sites have told you so. 

Don't worry most kit lenses are not great when measured or assessed in any empirical way, but realistically your kit lens was almost a freebie so what have we got to moan about.  In any case, without meaning to insult anyone, most kit lenses are capable of better results than most photographers are able to deliver.

Now I have seen a few articles on the web regarding “using your kit lens, getting more out of it” but most seem pretty token at best so I thought “how about I do a series of blog posts that really give you something to chew on, something that will really help and hopefully inspire you”.  There will be lots of words and lots of pics to show you just what you can do, today we will set the scene, but make sure you come back now.

In the words of a past Australian Prime Minister, John Howard, I want you to feel “comfortable and relaxed” about your kit lens.

This blog series might seem misplaced, after all, almost every photographic website will have articles telling you that you simply must replace that “hound doggy” of a lens with something better and the inference being that you cannot possibly get great results until you do so.  

What a crock!

Sure it’s a good idea to buy a new lens if the current one is limiting you, but being brutally honest you’ll gain more by really coming to grips with what your current kit lens can do.  The whole world of consumerism is built upon the premise that any shortfall or problem can be resolved by throwing more money at it.....your money of course.  Truthfully, skill, technique and artistic application will drive you much further than a new lens.  I think I can confidently say that the overwhelming majority of world famous images from the start of the photographic period right up until a few years ago were taken with lenses much less capable than most kit lens found on any new camera!

Yes it's true that your kit lens will not give you that beautiful shallow DOF and the Bokeliciuos Blur you hear so many Photographers waxing about on web forums,  but realistically that look has limited applicability and in any case the lenses that will really sing in such applications are very expensive primes.  Look I would love to occasionally get the look of the Ziess Otus but at $4500.00 Aus, it ain’t going to suddenly appear in my camera box and if I find I actually need that look commercially, I will hire one and charge it out accordingly.

There are so many better things you could spend your dollars on if you are in the early stages of your photographic journey, like a good workshop or on line course, travel to some nice location to use what you currently have and in more practical sense and really good tripod or flash will open up far more possibilities for you than a better lens.

Back to the kit lens.....

I have had a few kit lenses, of those, my Sony E series 18-55mm has proved to be a fine example of the breed and is in fact my most used out of the 50 or so lenses I own.  A Canon 18-55mm I owned for several years produced images that looked a little like they were shot through the bottom of a beer glass and I think my Sony "A" series 18-55 actually was the beer bottle that originally contained the beer in the bottom of the Canons glass, but nonetheless even they redeemed themselves with plenty of good shots.

I have 3 Minolta 35-70 f4s from film era Minoltas, two were really good and one was stellar, that is until I dropped it on a cement floor and misaligned its innards. It still works fine but is soft on one side at the wide end in the now “post flight state”.

The main issues with kit lenses in my experience is "sample variability", which goes a long way towards explaining why user experiences reported on forums are so.....well variable. 

And perhaps why some test sites will call a lens a sours’ ear and others a silk purse.

Of course kit lenses are generally slow of aperture, slow to focus and slow to sell on eBay, but they are not without their virtues either.

Build quality is generally pretty average, lots of low grade plastic, sometimes even in the lens bayonet itself and in many ways it has got worse over the years, trust me on this, there is a world of difference between say a Minolta or Nikon 35-70 of 20 years ago and a new 18-55 kitty of today.  A single turn of the focus ring will lay bare the rough approach of most new kit lenses in comparison to their forebears.

Speaking of the Nikon 35-70, the one I have has consistently proven itself to be a stellar performer on my NEX 5n, in fact it is probably one of the best lenses I have ever put on that little NEXY including fixed focal length jobbies. Note there have been an enormous array of Nikon 35-70s so don't take this as an automatic recommendation.

So are modern kitties all rubbish, are there no redeeming factors?  Actually there are quite a few, the modern kitty whilst no paragon of constructional perfection or optical excellence can be a very useful device indeed.

I must say up front I have found from playing with hundreds of kittys belonging to thousands of past students cameras, some brands and models are much better than others.  The best in terms of optical consistency are the Nikons, no doubt about that at all from my experience, in fact some have been bloody impressive in terms of the rendered files, the worst, no that would be telling, besides my flameproof suit is at the dry cleaners today.

In constructional terms the M4/3 versions all seem pretty solid and the Fuji "x" series are very nicely done and apparently the new “light as air” kit lens attached to the Panasonic GM1 is a bit of a revelation.

In the next blog entry I will examine the optical factors with kit lenses that we can actually do something about.