Three Tricks To Get The Most Out Of A Cheap Kit Camera Lens

The lens you use with your camera plays a huge part in determining the quality of photos you get, but a lot of casual photographers don’t want to invest in expensive lenses and stick to whatever comes with the camera. Here are a few ways to eke out a little more functionality out of a kit lens.

The entry-level lens that it comes with an interchangeable-lens camera is what they call a “kit” lens, and is generally designed to be cheap, multipurpose and functional — that is, it’s nothing fancy. In this video from the Koldunov Brothers, we learn a few tricks that can get a little more mileage out of a cheap kit lens.

Their first suggestion is shooting a portrait in multiple shots and them stitching them together in Photoshop. This will make your photos look like they were shot on a larger medium format camera and is similar to the Brenizer method, though less panoramic.

You can also try reversing your lens if you want to get some macro shots, and you can even achieve a rudimentary tilt-shift effect by simply holding and angling your lens in front of your camera to tweak the plane of focus. (Beware of dust and fingerprints when trying those methods, though.) Nothing will give a cheap lens the performance of an expensive piece of glass, but a little experimentation can go a long way to adding some new flavour to your photography.

How to Increase the Performance of Your Kit Lens [Koldunov Brothers via PetaPixel]