To Be Titled

Photography is an expensive hobby. I can think of more expensive hobbies—e.g. piloting airplanes—but photography certainly costs more than reading or scrap-booking. While the advent of cheap digital photography has lowered the cost by obviating film development, SLR camera bodies and, more importantly, lenses still cost quite a bit. This implies that sustaining the equipment side of a photography hobby entails making trade-offs, especially about lenses—trade-offs about quality, strengths/weaknesses and price.

A new web site—LensHero—helps photographers do exactly that. The site is by the creators of one of my other favorite photography reference sites—SnapSort—which helps photographers of all levels compare digital cameras of all types.

The interface of LensHero is simple, attractive and intuitive. First, the site asks for your camera model and to specify a budget. Then, one gets to specify what type of lens one is interested in. Here is the main strength of LensHero. One can specify the type of lens in one of three ways—by photography style (e.g. macro, landscape, action, etc.), focal length (15-300mm) or letting LensHero know what lenses one already owns and having the site make recommendations.

The resulting page based on choices of photography style or focal length should be familiar to those who have used SnapSort. One can easily specify more criteria (e.g. brand, price, focal length, image stabilization, focus motor) to narrow the results. Each lens fitting the search criteria is displayed with easy-to-compare characteristics and a link to a page with more in-depth information about the lens. On the detailed information page, lens characteristics such as minimum and maximum focal length, aperture, and angle of view are rated as above or below average.

The “suggest” feature is interesting and helpful. I entered the two lenses I own: a Nikkor AF-S DX 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR II and a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D. The resulting suggestions were Nikkor AF-S DX Micro 85mm f/3.5G ED VR and Tokina 10-17mm f/3.5-4.5 AT-X 107 DX Nikon-f. The first suggestion was especially intriguing as I had been considering a macro lens.

Two small improvements I can think of. First, enabling users to narrow down the lenses by sensor-type—i.e. lenses for full-frame sensors vs. those for cropped sensors—would be helpful. In Nikon parlance, it’s the FX- vs. the DX-format lenses. Second, for the “suggest” feature, it would be better to let users to add in all the lenses they own first, rather than jumping to the suggested lens after entering each lens.