Home › Forums › Photography Q&A › Nikon 18-140mm or 18-200mm lens?
- This topic has 29 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 5 years, 8 months ago by Amber Nelson.
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July 25, 2018 at 2:55 pm #32365James StaddonKeymaster
What free software do you use? I wonder, @buddingphotographer, if there would be a program that could be downloaded that would read the exif data to show the most-used focal lengths of a selection of photos?
I think my most used lens is the 17-40mm 4.0 (I would love to upgrade one day to the 16-35mm 2.8!). 17mm on a full frame camera (equivalent to like 11mm on a cropped sensor) creates the kind of effect that I like best. 🙂 Lightroom says I’ve taken 24K pictures at 17mm!
The second most used focal length is actually 200mm (14K). I like the stacked look, and it’s also as far as my current zoom range reaches so I find myself taking pictures as far as I can a lot I guess. 🙂
July 26, 2018 at 12:35 pm #32407Ezra MorleyModeratorI wonder, buddingphotographer, if there would be a program that could be downloaded that would read the exif data to show the most-used focal lengths of a selection of photos?
There definitely is free software available for doing that, but it’s command line only, and unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a nice GUI for it. 🙁 I’m thinking about it though; I might be able to come up with a solution… I’ll be back with more details. 🙂
July 26, 2018 at 1:05 pm #32408Ryan MadarisParticipant@freedomphotography, I’ve had some experience with the 55-200mm, but not the 18-200mm. I would suggest the 18-200, though, because it would expand your ability a lot more. I use a 70-300mm on my Nikon D7000, and if you wanted a lens that would be good for some minor wildlife photography, that would be a good one.
Over all, though, I would suggest the 18-200mm if you want it for everyday use.
July 26, 2018 at 8:44 pm #32421Amber NelsonParticipantI use Picasa and Nikon Transfer ViewNX2 and between both of them, I can generally get the effects I’m going for. My Nikon software came with my camera years ago and it does a really good job…I probably ended up paying for it after all when I bought my gear. 🙂
The 16-35mm lens would be so nice to have, especially at f/2.8! I use that aperture number all the time on my 50mm.
@buddingphotographer, It would be great to get some free software to categorize all of the pics by focal length! Thanks for looking into that!
July 26, 2018 at 9:12 pm #32422Amber NelsonParticipantHi @rmadaris,
A couple of weeks ago, I purchased an 18-140mm lens, which I really like. Unfortunately, at that time, there wasn’t a refurbished 18-200mm for sale (that I could find), so I went with the 18-140. If there would’ve been one available, I probably would have purchased the 18-200 to completely replace my 55-200mm kit lens, but this one suits my needs quite well. 🙂
I was wondering about the 70-300mm and might look into that lens sometime, just to have an extra long lens on hand. How does the image quality compare to the 55-200mm?
July 26, 2018 at 9:36 pm #32423Ezra MorleyModeratorOh, DUH! I just realized that Windows has a built in way to sort by focal length!! (At least my Windows 7 computer does)
Here are a couple of screenshots to illustrate what I mean. (I borrowed the Win 10 screenshot from here, since I don’t have a computer with Win 10 handy.)
Open the folder of pictures you want to sort and follow the pink highlights above. After clicking on “Choose columns” you’ll want to scroll down the list of options that comes up till you find “Focal length” and check the box beside it. Then you need to make sure your folder is set to “Details” view so that the columns will show up. After that you should see something like this:
You can select all the files with a certain focal length by clicking on the first one in the list, then scroll to the last one, hit SHIFT and click on the last one. That should select all the files in between the first and last ones, and then you can look in the bottom left corner of the window to see how many files you have selected. That will tell you how many photos you took with that focal length.
July 26, 2018 at 9:53 pm #32426Ryan MadarisParticipant@freedomphotography, the image quality with my lens is about the same as the 55-200 as far as I can see, but it makes up for that with the extra 100 millimeters.
July 27, 2018 at 10:48 am #32443Lydia-BParticipantWindows has a built in way to sort by focal length
@buddingphotographer, thank you so much for sharing this! This was extremely helpful to learn!! …and the screenshots were great too! 🙂July 27, 2018 at 12:56 pm #32455Ezra MorleyModeratorbuddingphotographer, thank you so much for sharing this! This was extremely helpful to learn!! …and the screenshots were great too! 🙂
You’re very welcome, @bennett-family, glad it was helpful!
July 27, 2018 at 3:54 pm #32464Lydia-BParticipant@buddingphotographer, do you know if there’s a way to automatically set all folders to add those columns? It seems like I have to go through each folder individually and set the extra columns, which is a bit tedious! …My computer is new, too, so I’m just working on finding my way around it.
July 27, 2018 at 4:57 pm #32467Ezra MorleyModerator@bennett-family. Absolutely! See the instructions here: https://superuser.com/a/1128443/385855
Make sure you configure the columns how you want them before you apply the steps above. 🙂
July 27, 2018 at 6:19 pm #32468Lydia-BParticipant@buddingphotographer Thank you SO much!! Really appreciate it! 😀
July 28, 2018 at 12:02 pm #32476Amber NelsonParticipant@buddingphotographer,
Thank you for sharing how to categorize photos by focal length on Windows! Your instructions were easy to follow, especially with the screenshots! 😉 I’ve been having fun going through some of my old folders.July 30, 2018 at 11:17 am #32518Ezra MorleyModeratorYou’re very welcome @bennett-family and @freedomphotography! If you have any more questions, just ask! 🙂
July 30, 2018 at 2:46 pm #32524Amber NelsonParticipantOk, thank you! 🙂
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