Need help with lenses (clueless beginner)

[samgrove17]

I am a beginner in photography and I have chosen the Nikon D5600 as my new camera, I am looking for lenses to compensate for my needs, which are landscape, astrophotography and general city photography, I have absolutely no idea about any of this stuff and I've ended up with these lenses excluding the 18-55 standard: Rokinon 14mm f/2.8 IF ED UMC Ultra Wide Angle Fixed Lens w/ Built-in AE Chip for Nikon, Sigma 70-300mm and Sigma 10-20mm, which seems like its way too much and I can't imagine people having all this for that. I just want to know if this is actually correct because if so I've massively underestimated how much this will cost and will have to downgrade to a Nikon D3400, which is not ideal. I am sorry I am so clueless about this stuff but if anyone can help and show me a cheaper way to get this quality I would MASSIVELY appreciate it, thankyou.

 

[USAFRet]

The cool thing about DLSr's, is that you do NOT need all of those lenses at once.

As noted earlier...get the camera. Whichever one.
Play with it.
Take LOTS of pics with that kit lens.
See what works and what didn't.

Later, you'll have a better idea of what extra lenses you want to go with.

In the hands of a good photographer, $300 of equipment can take gallery quality pics.
In the hands of the inexperienced, $20,000 of equipment will take mediocre cameraphone quality pics.

 

[EdBakersfield]

If I am correct that you plan to buy a 5600 kit that comes with two lenses, that is just fine. Use these until you have exhausted all understanding of technique and composition. After these ten years have passed, you will know what you need to advance your style.

 

[gondo]

The Rokinon is great for astrophotography. Being a wide angle you can also use it on some nice landscape/cityscape shots. Being not too expensive it may be a worthy purchase. Being rated the best lense for astro and relatively affordable under $500 I bought it for use with my pentax camera and the astrotracer feature.

However you could go with a zoom lense in the wide angle range and cover both Astro and general Landscape photography. The Nikor 14-24mm F2.8 is great and there is the Sigma Art Lense 14-24mm F2.8 for a bit less money. F2.8 is what you want for Astro so these work great and you have the zoom range ideal for a walkaround/landscape lense. Kill 2 birds with one stone. Many consider the Nikor the best Astro lense for Nikon. Being F2.8 it's fast enough for city photography in the evening/night.

The kit lense would work great as a general walkaround lense and to learn the craft.

The only thing missing is the telephoto. Keep in mind that if you want to do some bird/wildlife or even the moon 300mm is the very beginning. You ideally want 500mm+. It's going to be a large lense and taken out for those specific cases only. If you want a good walkaround telephoto for landscape a good 70-300mm is great. Don't go too low like an all purpose 18-300mm. Keep the widest setting around 70mm. And then go up to 250-300mm for telephoto. This makes a great lense for walkaround large landscape such as mountains in the distance. It also covers the range your kit lense doesn't so it's not redundant. For cityscapes up close like right downtown at street level you'll want the wider angle in the 14-50mm range. You can get away with an F4 or more for this lense since you won't being using the telephoto at night. You usually do landscape during the day and stopped down to F8 or more for infinite focus and no Bokeh. Watch out though cause in the forest if you're hiking or on walking trails there is less sunlight and pictures can get dark. And it's nice to have the zoom to get in on birds, squirrels, flowers, dragonflies, etc... so a good F4-5.6 would be the slowest I'd go. A constant F4 or F2.8 even better. And the F2.8 allows you to use a faster shutter speed when photographing moving subjects or waterfalls.

The cheapest way is to get a kit lense off the bat at a reduced price and learn the craft. If you have the cash then the cheapest way is to buy the camera body only and save the money by not getting a kit lense. Do not cheap out and get 2 good F2.8 zoom lenses such as Nikkor or Sigma Art series. By getting 2 zooms you cover the wide range of 14-24mm and the landscape/telephoto of 70-200mm. You can do everything with those. By spending a bit more and going F2.8 right off the bat you won't be itching to buy more lenses in the future and wasting money. By getting zooms that cover your ranges you won't really need to buy a prime that costs lots of money. It's a bit more upfront but a one time purchase.

Personally I'd be going for the 14-24mm F2.8 for the city and astro. And the Nikor 80-200mm F2.8 for a walkaround/landscape lense. 2 lenses covers most of your needs and both are 2.8 and neither lenses is super expensive. This can hold you over for many years while you learn the craft and hopefully you never want to buy primes cause you'll need a second mortgage for some of those.

Also in case you didn't know. Put the money into the lense not the camera. It's frustrating having a slow lense that takes dark pictures no matter how good of a camera you own. Better cameras will add better autofocus abilities but for the beginner not much more. You can have just as much fun with a $750 camera body as you would with a $2500 body. But without the right lense your just frustrated and limited. The $2500 body is for professionals that demand and require and will take advantage of the extra features, and actually know how to use them. Learn on the $750 body.