"Jon Anderson" wrote in message
...
After years of dreaming and lusting, I finally have a quality camera, a
Sony A700. Bought the body only, but my brother has loaned me several
lenses until I can get my own. My overall interests are scenery and
closeup (flowers, insects, etc). But I'm also quite interested in taking
great photos of airplanes, static and in the air. I don't have a lot of
money to blow on fancy lenses. And boy in looking around, cameras are like
a Bridgeport mill. Machine itself may not be cheap, but tooling up to make
it useful is where the money really is...

But this group inspires me, and so I thought I'd inquire here.
So looking for recommendations on some good basic lenses. Zooms are a
given, but also quite open to fixed focal.
And, any sites to recommend with tips on getting good aviation shots?

Looking forward to finally taking shots worthy of sharing here.

Thank you,


Jon

Congrats on the new camera.

To deal with the range of photography that you are contemplating, I doubt
that a single lens would be fully satisfactory. For flying aircraft you will
want a zoom lens that goes at least to 200 or 300mm, Fixed aperture would be
much more $$$ than variable aperture, but the latter would be OK provided
that there is a reasonable amount of light.

For close ups of flowers and insects, you would ideally have a macro lens of
about 90mm focal length. A zoom lens would produce fairly good images
provided that the lens can can focus from a close enough distance.

For landscapes you will need 18mm focal length, or less.

I recommend that you check out the forums at dpreview.com for lots of advice
on lenses and photo techniques.

Cheers,

Indrek Aavisto


--
Criticism is easy; achievement is difficult W.S. Churchill