With a plethora of lenses to choose from in the Canon range, it can often be a difficult task to decide on which lens will best suit your requirements.

I run a camera website which contains reviews for most of the lenses currently available, so I thought I would share with you some of the more popular lenses on my site. Not everyone has lots of money to spend on the latest kit, so sometimes it’s worth looking out for good quality second hand lenses, as you can often save yourself a fortune. With that in mind, I’ve listed a guide price next to each lens stating how much the lens would cost brand new or second hand.

Hopefully this will give you some guidance when deciding which Canon lens is best for your photography style.

Lenses for landscape photography

Landscape photography generally works best with wide-angle lenses

If you’re into landscape photography, a wide-angle lens is generally the lens of choice with this style. This is because, with a wide-angle lens you can fit a lot more into the frame than with a telephoto or zoom lens: To get the maximum wide-angle, it is best to use a digital camera with a full frame sensor. Unfortunately this means the Canon 1D or 5D range. All the other digital cameras in Canon’s range use a cropped sensor which leads to greater magnification but less field of vision. Saying that, a wide angle lens on a cropped sensor camera can still produce excellent results!

Canon EF-S 10-22mm F3.5-4.5

Brand new: £442 or $699 | Second hand: £350 or $465

The 10-22mm is considered to have good image quality (sharp and low distortion) and build. The optical construction is similar to L-series lenses, but it is not designated as L-series (as reflected in the build quality), which some have argued is for marketing reasons. It is an excellent wide-angle lens, ideal for landscape photography

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 10-22mm lens:

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Canon EF 17-40mm F4 L

Brand new: £481 or $699 | Second hand: £400 or $659

The EF 17-40mm f/4L USM lens is a wide-angle lens made by Canon Inc. The lens has an EF mount to work with the EOS line of cameras. The L range of Canon lenses are signified by a red ring around the rim and is meant to symbolise superior quality. The Canon 17-40mm is one of the cheapest of the L range and due to the excellent zoom, is a very versatile lens.

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 17-40mm lens:

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Canon EF 20mm F2.8

Brand new: £339 or $549 | Second hand: £220 or $275

The Canon EF 20mm lens is an ultra-wide-angle prime lens featuring rear focusing. Fixed focal length lenses are generally considered to offer a superior image quality over zoom lenses.

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 20mm lens:

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Lenses for nature photography

A telephoto or super telephoto lens is ideal for nature photography

Nature photography often requires plenty of patience waiting for the right moment. Often this means taking a photo of a subject some distance away. That’s where telephoto and super telephoto lenses come in.

To get the top end magnifications, say 400mm+ the lenses will cost a fortune, however in the 200mm to 300mm range there are a number of lenses which are affordable well under $1000.

It is also worth remembering that if you own a Canon digital SLR with a cropped sensor (which includes all models except the 1D and 5D models), a magnification of 1.6x is already applied to your photos therefore boosting the zoom.

Canon 70-300mm F4.5-5.6 IS USM

Brand new: £364 or $519 | Second hand: £299 or $499

The EF 70-300mm lens is a telephoto zoom lens made by Canon Inc. The lens has an EF mount to work with the EOS line of cameras.
Two Canon EF telephoto zoom lenses carry the 70-300mm designation. These are the EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM and the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM. Both versions offer IS and USM and both have nearly the same maximum aperture of 4/4.5 to 5.6 over their entire focal range.
The DO lens stands for ‘diffractive optics’ and is typically a shorter lens, the downside being it is also more expensive. Both lenses have image stabilisation.

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 70-300mm lens:

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Canon EF 70-200mm F/4L USM

Brand new: £443 or $608 | Second hand: £394 or $400

The EF 70-200mm lens is a telephoto zoom lens made by Canon Inc. The lens has an EF mount to work with the EOS line of cameras. The lens comes in four different versions. All four have a constant maximum aperture over the whole focal range and all four are L-series lenses. f/2.8L IS USM f/2.8L USM f/4L IS USM f/4L USM All four lenses have an excellent reputation for providing optical quality comparable to various prime lenses at all focal lengths in the zoom range.

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 70-200mm lens:

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Canon EF-S 55-250mm F4-5.6 IS

Brand new: £130 or $140 | Second hand: £100 or $100

A temptingly cheap Canon lens. The Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4-5.6 IS lens is a telephoto zoom lens for Canon EOS digital single-lens reflex cameras with a Canon EF-S lens mount. It provides a 35 mm equivalent focal length of 88-400mm.

Examples of photos taken with the Canon 55-250mm lens:

Full review and check prices

I thought I’d share with you today a few post processing techniques I use when importing photos. It’s possible to make some subtle and in some cases not so subtle enhancements to your image to really make them stand out. A potential danger of post processing is to go too far in making alterations which can make the photo look false and unrealistic (if that’s not what you’re aiming for), so it’s important to bear that in mind.

You might have already come across the tips I’m going to list below but if you have a great postprocesing technique that I haven’t mentioned, please post a response at the bottom of this post.

Take RAW Photos

One of the most versatile ways to alter your photos is to take pohtos in RAW format. I use a CanonEOS 20D and I’m sure it’s similar with many cameras but you have the ability to take photos in RAW & Jpeg mode at the same time. This takes up more space on your card naturally but it means you have ajpeg image for immediate use and then a RAW photo for making alterations at a later date.If you open a RAW image in photoshop, an editor window will apear (as shown below).

From this window you can change virtually all characteristics of the image ranging frombrightness/contrast & colour alterations to vignetting and sharpness.Once you are happy with your settings, you can then save you settings and/or open up the image inphotoshop and then make further alterations if you so wish.

Sharpen using the High Pass filter

This can be found in the menu Filter > Other > High PassTo use this filter, open up an image that you wish to sharpen. In the example below the butterfly isslightly blurry.

If you duplicate this layer(control/cmd +j) and then run the high pass filter, a box will appearwith a radius slider. The image will be mostly gray. To achieve the optimum sharpness, move theslider so that the edges of the image are starting to come through the gray, in this case 1% seemsto work well.

Hit “OK” and then set the layer mode to overlay. This enhances the edges of the image and makes thephoto look sharper. If you want the image to be sharper still, simply duplicate the high passlayer. If that makes the image too sharp, then simply reduce the layer’s opacity. The finishedeffect is shown below

Remove artefacts using the clone stamp tool ( S )

The clone stamp tool is useful to remove unwanted elements in a photo. This could be anything from facial blemishes in a portrait photo, to unwanted elements in a landscape scene.Clone stamp copies an area which is artefact free and pastes it on top of the unwanted element inphoto.In this example, I want to remove the leaves on the ground.

Simply select the clone stamp tool (s), adjust the brush head ( using [ or ] ) to get the right sideand then hold down the alt key and click near to the area you wish to hide. Release the alt key andthen proceed to brush over the unwanted element. The result is shown below

Soften a photo’s background using gaussian blur

This is useful when you wish to improve the blurred background of the image. It’s often the case that noise will creep in when taking photos at a high ISO level and that is particularly noticeable if it is noise within a blurry background.

I’ve found this also useful when taking photos in Zoos, when you dont want the blurry cage in the image. Below is such an example.

So here, I want to blur out the cage. In order to do this, duplicate the layer (ctrl / cmd + j) and select filter > blur > gaussian blur. Next, add a layer mask to this blurred layer and then proceed to hide the blurred layer where the owl is in focus. Use a brush with 100% opacity for the centre of the owl and then use a lower opacity for the extremes where the owl and the background meet.The end result will look like something like this: