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Essential Lenses under $500

If your camera does support interchangeable lenses, you’ll need at least one kit lens or a basic zoom. A whole set of high-end cine primes is a bit much for any aspiring filmmaker for a variety of reasons, cost, of course, but also bulkiness, on-set efficiency, and so on.

Most lenses on the affordable side of things tend not to be lightning fast in terms of aperture, and some may lack certain features or image quality, but in the end, only one thing matters: Does a particular lens get the job done? If so, that’s it! No one will ask what kind of lens you used if the resulting video is just gorgeous.

In this category we list some decent entry-level and basic lenses for under $500, which isn’t a lot, but in most cases these lenses will get you pretty far.