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Lenses

Lesson 15 from: Canon EOS 77D Fast Start

John Greengo

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Lesson Info

15. Lenses

Next Lesson: Menu Overview

Lesson Info

Lenses

Let's talk for a moment about some of the lens options you have with the 77D. You can use EF lenses from Canon, or you can use EFS lenses. The EFS lenses are a little bit different than the EF lenses, as I will note right here. You will see either the red circle or the white square, for the mounting of the lens. The difference between these two lenses, is that the EF is designed for their full frame line up of cameras and sensors. As light comes through the EF lens, it produces a large image circle, big enough for the entire sensor of that full frame sensor. The EFS lens, on the other hand, is designed differently, so that it produces just large enough of an image to cover the smaller sized sensor on this camera. This saves them production cost, the lenses are a little bit smaller, a little bit lighter weight. But, where things get interesting is where you wanna switch lenses back and forth. Now, you physically cannot mount an EFS lens on an EF body or a full frame body. Canon has made...

it so that you can't do it. But if you could, if you somehow forced it on there, it would not produce a large enough image circle and you would have these dark black corners coz there's no image coming through the lens. Now you can take an EF lens and put it on your 77D and it will work perfectly fine. The thing is, is that you are only using the middle portion of the lens, which is often the best portion of the lens, but there's a lot of the lens that's kind of going to waste. You're not utilizing, kind of the full effect of what that lens is. But what you will find, is that there is a lot of telephoto EF lens options, that are available to you. When it comes to wide-angle you'll be looking mostly at the EFS options. So, EF lenses with the red dot for full frame. EF-S is for this crop frame, and just to forewarn you, there is a third option called EF-M, and this is for their mirrorless line up of cameras. And they're not gonna work on this one or any of the other SLRs at all. That's kind of a whole different thing there. So be aware if you're buying a camera used some place, you do not want an EF-M lens on this camera. EF is okay, EF-S is okay. On the lenses themselves there'll be lots of different controls and features. We'll have stabilizers and auto-focus switches on many of the lenses. If you have a zoom lens, you'll have a zoom ring. On almost all of the other lenses, you'll have a manual focus ring, if you do wanna manually focus. On a lot of their lenses, turning the focusing ring will do nothing when the camera is in the autofocus mode. It depends a little bit on the lens. Filter threads are a little bit different depending on each lens. This 18-55 is a 58mm thread, that's the diameter symbol, so if you wanna get a UV filter or a polariser, that's the size you get. The hood is something I recommend using most of the time. The exception is when you use flash. It could potentially block the flash, but is a great protector for the front of the lens. It can keep a little bit of rain off, and it's mainly designed for keeping bright lights from hitting the front of the lens which may cause flare problems. Each lens has its own designated, unique lens hood. So you don't buy one lens hood for all of your lenses. Each lens has its own specific lens hood. When you look on Canon lenses, the top L-series of lenses come supplied with lens hoods but their general lenses generally do not come with lens hoods. So they are gonna be an extra 20, 30 or dollars, depending on the lens. You may find this packaged with the 18-55 lens. Now there's a couple of different 18-55's and I'll talk a little bit about some of their naming systems here. The STM lens is a Stepper Motor which is very smooth focusing for shooting video. The standard lens is not quite as smooth when it comes to focusing in video, but is still a quick-focusing lens. The 18-135, which is what I have on the camera here is a larger range, it's kind of the one lens does almost everything type lens, and if you do want to get even further, there is an 18-200. Here is a little key code to some of the more common letters you're going to see on these various lenses. Now, I don't have time to get into all of the lenses but I'm just going to go quickly over a few of my favorite for this particular camera. I think, beyond the first lens, whatever it is that you get with the camera, the first lens most people are gonna wanna get is something that has more telephoto capabilities. The 55-250 is a great lens, it's gonna match up very well with the kit lenses. It's a little bit bigger in size and gonna allow you to get in quite a bit closer. The 70-300 is one of their EF lenses, and that's gonna get you out a little bit further. But it's also gonna get you a metal lens mount, a little bit better construction, and I think a little bit sharper optics. Primes are the opposite of zoom lenses. They're also known as fixed lenses and there's a great number that Canon has, but here are a few that I think are affordable and interesting and good to work with on this particular camera. They make a couple of what are affectionately known as pancake lenses. These are really small lenses, I think they're more about the size of a cookie than a pancake, but the is a nice, slightly wide-angle lens, a good lifestyle lens. If you were mum or dad taking the kids out and you just didn't want to have a big, heavy camera, I would think putting on that 24 would be a really nice small, lightweight set-up. The 40mm is gonna give you a short telephoto. So if you want to shoot a little bit more in the portrait range, that would be really good. But if you're serious about portraits, you might look at that 50mm 1.8. It's only about $125, and that 1.8 aperture is much much faster than all the kit lenses and would be a perfect, beginning portrait lens right there. So if you wanna shoot head and shoulder portraits with the background out of focus, that 51-8 is a really good choice. A few other specialty lenses that you might wanna know about for you landscape or travel photographers who like wide-angle, the 18 on the 18-55 kit lens is sometimes not quite wide enough. So the 10-18 is a new lens from Canon that is relatively inexpensive, it's around $300, and it gets you all the way down to 18 and it's a lightweight package. Optically it's pretty good, construction wise, not the roughest lens out there, but it should be fine for most people's needs. If you're interested in close-up photography, whether its flowers or jewellery or anything else really small, the 60mm would probably be my first choice with this camera. It's gonna run around a little over $400. If you are very serious into portrait, and you're going to be shooting maybe outside, we have a little bit more room to work with. The 85-1A is a very popular portrait lens. Whether it's for full frame cameras or crop frame cameras like this one, it gives you a good working distance and can really throw that background out of focus. Now there's a lot to talk about on lenses and I definitely don't have time here. I do have a special class that is a two day class, about 10 hours of instruction, that goes through all of the Canon lenses, talks about how you would use each of the different styles, the different lenses, for full frame and for crop frame. A lot of different advice on lenses, and I think it's a great companion class to go along with a camera class like this one. So do take a look at that one. I love lenses, it's one of my personal favourite classes coz I really get to geek out on a lot of the lens technology, and show a lot of different sample photos from the different types of images you can get with different lenses. And that's probably one of the reasons why you've got an interchangeable lens camera, it's so that you can have more than one camera. Because when you change the lens, you change the camera. That's one of the great benefits of this camera.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Canon77D Recommended Settings
Canon 77D Slides

Ratings and Reviews

Nikita Sokolsky
 

Must have for all 77D owners. Thanks, John!

Dara Pkyprek
 

Hello, is it hand-on practice or just show how to use the menu in the camera, plz B.R Dara

John Greengo
 

Student Work

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