Sony 16mm-50mm kit lens

The Sony 16mm-50mm kit lens is a power zoom lens that is one option you can choose if you buy a Sony APS-C camera as part of a "kit," thus the name. It has an aperture of f/3.5 at 16mm and f/5.6 at 50mm. This lens does have very useful focal length coverage for landscape photography, street photography and portraiture. The aperture on this lens is limiting when it comes to low light, and the quality of the glass is at the lower end for a zoom lens. It has autofocus and Optical SteadyShot stabilization which helps greatly for taking hand-held shots, especially if you have an APS-C without built-in stabilization. If you are taking pictures of your child's birthday party or of the family trip to your favorite amusement park, this lens is just fine. If you do plan to try and up your photo quality, you will want to replace it at some point.

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If you are looking to buy your first APS-C camera and are trying to decide whether to get this or not, let me give you this advice: if your budget allows you the choice between a camera with this lens and a telephoto, or, buying just the camera body and getting a higher end lens in the approximately the same focal range, I would take this and a telephoto lens. Having both this lens and a telephoto lens like the 55-200mm will give you a lot of options when it comes to what kind of pictures you can take, and you can always resell this later and replace it with a higher quality wide angle zoom lens with a faster aperture. If you can only afford one lens, consider buying just the camera body and finding another lens of higher quality or at least with a wider range of zoom, like an 18-70mm.