Purchase Zoom Lenses

This is a fixed lens camera so the short answer is no. However there are third party accessories lenses that can be screwed to the front of the lens to give a "fish eye" or telephoto capability. To get "Macro" there is a kit available which has a series of three close up lenses these lenses screw to the front lens element of your camera allowing for some pretty impressive macro capabilities.

Again to answer your original question no you can't change the lens on your camera

You just need any Minolta AF mount lens. Sony Alpha lenses also physically fit as Sony inherited the Minolta lens mount when they bought the company, but as they are a later development not all will be electronically compatible.

The size of the lens depends upon the focal length of the lens and you choose that according to how wide a field of view you desire. Typical lenses are 28 and 35mm wide angles, 50mm "standard" (approximately the same perspective of how the human eyeball sees images), 70 to 90mm short telephoto lenses (a narrower perspective and very good for portraits) and higher numbers are narrower perspective telephoto lenses for viewing increasingly distant objects. In practice, the available lenses will be incorporated into zoom lenses which incorporate a seamless range of focal lengths within one single model. The word "zoom" reflects the fact that you can seamlessly change from say 28mm wide angle through to 80mm short telephoto and every single setting between them

Any zoom which starts at less than 50mm and finishes in the short telephoto range is called a standard zoom and is the lens that most autofocus cameras were supplied with. The next most common size will be something like a 70-200mm which is a telephoto zoom (or tele zoom) and takes you from a portrait lens to a genuine 5x magnification telephoto. You may also find so-called "super zooms" which do the whole job on one, for example 28-200mm. but the more jobs a single lens tries to do, the bigger and bulkier it becomes and the image quality deteriorates due to poorer contrast and greater image distortion at each end of the zoom range.

This is not an exhaustive answer, as there are entire books on the subject, but hopefully it's been of help to you.

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It depends entirely upon what you're after and the type of photography you wish to undertake.

Any Minolta AF mount lens will fit. 28mm is a standard wide angle, 50mm is a standard lens with a field of view approximately the same as the human eye, 80mm is a slight telephoto and for distant subjects 200mm is a long telephoto. Some lenses combine a few into one, they're called zoom lenses and will typically be something like 35-70mm, or 70-200mm. The measurements relate to the focal length of the lens, but generally the larger the number the longer the lens sticks out at the front. Zoom lenses are bulkier and heavier than fixed focal length lenses, but they're also the most commonly used types these days.

Canon EOS 500N has an EF lens mount, so all lenses with Canon EF mount will fit. All lenses with MF and EF-S won't fit. If you purchased Sigma 28-70mm f/2.8 EX, then it have EF mount and will fit EOS 500N.

Replace the broken ribbon cable in the lens

Get the Canon EF 70-300mm IS USM about $500 and EFS 17-85mm IS USM about $300. The 75-300 all of them I would not use them 4 a body cap. Camera is fine or step up to XSI.

Most add on lenses are designed to be used at a certain focal length, a zoom should be used (is most effective) when you are completely zoomed out, (really why would you add a zoom lens then not zoom all the way) a wide angle lens should be used with the zoom all the way in (cause your getting the widest angles). As far as quality, you really shouldn't have an issue except you may get black edges depending on how big the end of your lens is. Good luck

There are several different lenses that are commonly used for portrait photography with this camera. I need more information to tell which one would be "best" for you, but these are all excellent choices:

85 mm f/1.2 (many portrait photographers prefer this lens)
24-70 f/2.8 (I own and love this lens)
24-105 f/4 - a great all-purpose lens that also works well for portraits

I can help more if you can tell me what lenses you already have, and what you will be shooting in addition to portraits.

These screw on the front of the plastic lens adapter and adjust the focal length. On the side of the adapter lenses it will quote the ratio. My wide angle says 0.66x so just multiply the range of focal lengths by this figure and you will see that it adjusts the camera zoom accordingly - making the image wider and probably also increasing the depth of field (what is in focus). Similarly a 1.5 tele will inrease the range of focal lengths to make the lens "longer" eg higher magnification , useful for astro photography - shots of the moon and terrestrial long distance work but detracting from the depth of field, eg the range of distance over which objects are in focus will be reduced.

The wide angle will allow you to come in close and get WIDE objects fully in-frame- hence "wide angle", while the telephoto will give you better overall maginification of the image but will probably increase the MINIMUM focal length - eg you may not be able to focus on objects closer than >2m (instead of ~1).

The screw-on adapter lenses I found were cheap in a Jessops sale use a 52mm thread, while the S5500 provides a 55mm internal thread. I use an appropriate 55mm to 52mm step down ring adapter. There is slight vignetting (shading around the edge of an image) at certain combinations of zoom, but generally these are very useful accessories.

As these are adapter lenses on the front of an already powerful 10x zoom that must be optically compromised at the price of this camera, there maybe some colour fringeing around bright images. If you want a better solution you really need to get a DSLR. Overall a good solution for the price.

Hey needacamera,
The range of an optical zoom lens refers to how wide angle to telephoto the lens covers. An example of a 6x optical zoom would be an 18mm-108mm lens, which covers wide angle to telephoto. An example of a 3x zoom lens would be an 18mm-54mm lens, which would provide a capability of capturing images from wide angle to normal views. To calculate the x factor of an optical zoom you would divide the largest number by the smallest number on your zoom. I hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Allan
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