Simple Web Tool Helps You Find Your Ideal Lens, Just Choose 20 Photos

There’s a useful new tool on the Interwebz, and it promises to help you decide what lens you should purchase next. Just select a category and pick 20 favorite photos as you scroll through, and What The Lens will reveal your lens preference.

This simple little Web tool was created by photographer Willie C, and it’s admittedly a bit limited at this point. For now, it only offers Canon lens suggestions, makes no consideration for your budget, and is basically unusable on a mobile phone (sorry smartphone readers). However, Willie promises to fix these issues soon.

So, how does it work?

We’re still waiting to hear back from Willie, but as far as we can tell, the app uses the 500px API to display the photos for you to pick. Then it looks at the EXIF data of the 20 photos you selected, and displays up to 3 ‘favorite’ lenses complete with a link to Amazon in case you want to go ahead and order something right away.

Editor’s Note: Since it uses 500px as an image source, the app can quickly become a bit too risqué for work, so be warned. You’re usually safe sticking to the Travel or Landscape categories, but scantily clad ladies await if you dare browse through the People category.

Will this app show you the ideal lens you never knew you needed? Eh, probably not. But if you can put aside your processing, subject, and lighting preferences and select photos based on lens qualities like focal length and depth of field alone, you might just learn something about your personal glass preference.

Give the site a shot here, and let us know your ‘ideal’ lens in the comments.