IS KIT LENSES GOOD OR BRUTALLY BAD IN 2020?

Whazzup everyone! How's your Quarantine Life? Stay safe and stay healthy! One question during this Enhanced Community Quarantine, is kit lenses good or brutally bad? When you buy an interchangeable lens camera like DSLR or Mirrorless camera, any lens bundled with it is called kit lens, be it 18-55mm, 18-105mm, 16-50mm, etc. Generally, kit lenses are cheaply made lenses so you can buy a camera a bit cheaper. Kit lenses have variable apertures, meaning your aperture changes when you zoom in and zoom out. Generally, kit lenses are made in plastic not metal, not that durable compared to high end lenses; only designed to take pictures with your DSLR or Mirrorless camera while being inexpensive.

Sony A6000 with 16-50 kit lens

... But are these lenses okay in 2020? Should you immediately disposed it and buy new expensive lenses?

Fuji X-A5 with 16-45 kit lens

Before throwing that kit lens away, read this first. for me, kit lenses are also powerful lenses even though very limited in functionality. It can still capture powerful images. All you have to do is:

First, know your camera very well. Know its limit too.

Second, learn the basics of photography like composition.

Third, let your imagination fly and materialized it. You need to be creative in photography.

Taking and making a better photograph is not always about your lenses, it's about how you capture it. Practice first with your kit lens before buying another lens. In my case, in 2010, I was a shooter for about 3 years using only my kit lens (18-55mm f3.5-5.6) with a Nikon 3100 body for one reason, I can't afford to buy another lens; because of that my kit lens taught me how to compose, how to see lights and shadows, and how to see and capture things differently, and it taught me what kind of photographer I wanna be... street and portrait photographer.

Today, there are lots of better lenses than a kit lens but never underestimate the power of your kit lens too because kit lenses today are way better 10 years ago.

Here are my humble portrait shots using a crop sensor entry level mirrorless camera:

Kit lenses helps one determine what kind of photography you want to be. Kit lenses have wide angle and at the same time a telephoto lens. If you want to be a landscape photographer, you have the wide angle at 18mm. You can practice landscape photography with a kit lens and get stunning images. If you need to buy a new expensive lens, you know now what kind of lenses you needed: the wide angles. If you discover you love portrait photography with your kit lens then you know what kind of lenses you need. Go buy prime lenses or other portrait lenses.

Kit lens helps you not buy unnecessary lenses and saves you a lot of money. It's true to us, newbies or pro that we lust for lenses and later we found out that we don't need that kind of lenses.

Here are some product photos I took using kit lens: