as a beginner, should i buy a 55-250mm lens or a 50mm lens? i dont know specifically what i want to shoot yet.
>>4525248Nifty-fifty is the way, it's cheap and has more artistic potential.
>>4525248as a beginner you should read the sticky and post your questions in the gear thread
>>452524850mm is good for taking artistic pictures of your own butt hole, but if you want to take interesting pictures of wildlife a zoom that reaches out to at least 300 is necessary.
The 50mm will be really helpful for low light if you're using an older Canon DSLR, you probably won't want to crank the ISO too much so f/1.8 helps a lot. You'll also be able to get sharper photos than with a zoom, and the fixed focal length forces you to work on your composition. Playing with depth of field is also a lot of fun when you're a beginner. You can't go wrong with it.That 55-250 is obviously more versatile, but that's its only strength. It does an OK job throughout the zoom range. It's fine for what it is, but most people don't need 250mm and if they do they should buy something nicer. Trying to get into bird or wildlife photography with that specific lens will probably leave you frustrated.Personally, if I could only have a single cheap EF lens to experiment with, I'd get a 28-105mm f/3.5-4.5 II USM. It performs unbelievably well for the price and when you pair it with a crop sensor the zoom range is much more useful than a 55-250. The only problem is that the manual focus ring isn't great. If you dig through ebay you can get one of those AND an STM 50mm for less than the price of an STM 55-250.
>>4525248On APSC 50mm is more of a portrait focal length, 75-80mm equivalent. I would rather recommend a 35mm or the 24mm pancake instead.The 50-250 is a good beginner telezoom but if you get into birding/wildlife be warned, it is a slippery slope with expensive telezooms and telephoto primes but they are fantastic.
>>4525248>i dont know specifically what i want to shoot yet.then don't buy anything stupid
>>4525248As a beginner it depends.Do you want to be a superb art photog? Get a prime and kneecap yourself intentionally so you either sink or swim. You'll most likely sink because the actual volume of effort and learning is normally more than most newbies can handle.If you want to just take pretty pictures and want something that looks better than your phone while avoiding AI bullshit, get a zoom. You'll hit better shots out of the gate.You can train yourself to do both over time, but each school of thought has hardliners that'll tell you there is only one path.
>>4525263personally for someone like op i would prefer a cheap prime over a cheap zoom. at least the prime will give you appreciable improvements in quality over a phone where it'll make you want to use a camera. plus a 50mm f1.8 or even f1.4 is what? $50-100 in canon ef?
>>4525277Yeah you're not wrong. For OP's sake, I got my EF 50mm f/1.8 STM for $95 Diggerydollars, which is probably about $70 freedom shekels. No matter how much I might use my f/4 zooms more, the sheer value of a cheap prime is very high.Sure, zoom is nice to have for convenience, but my old EF-S 55-250 STM was $210. Is the 55-250 @50mm even half as good as the 50mm STM? Nope, the prime smashes it in terms of IQ from about f/2.5 onwards, and the wider apertures are still useful for other reasons. The 50mm is literally an afterthought in terms of monetary investment.
>>4525248Get the cheapest zoom you can to dick around with until you figure out what you're actually shooting (which can and probably will be very different than what you think you're shooting.)Then save up for a nice used prime in that range.
>>4525248As a creep, I 100% recommend buying a zoom lens with good range. Zooming all the way to the top end, and having like a 4 degree field of view on your sensor is really fun.
Both good starter lenses, but I recommend the 55-250 (STM version). Sure, the 50mm will give you that shallow DOF effect you are probably going after, but the 55-250 is very versatile for travel, portraits, automotive photography, etc. It's also super sharp and has great stabilization. You can get shallow DOF as well, you just have to use it correctly - wide open at longer focal lengths. I feel like you'd learn a lot more from the zoom.
>>4525263My first lens was 50mm f/1.8 and I used it exclusively for a few months before the gearfaggotry struck me. A friend's son wanted to start photography so I loaned him an APS-C Canon with and a Sigma 17-50mm f/2.8. Hopefully he'll figure out faster what he wants, as a gearfaggot it kinda bothers me how he's apparently happy with that gear as is
>>4525288Shot with a 55-250, for good measure.
>>4525290Another with the 55-250.
