Question for Photographers or Photography Buffs...

Hi!
I am a Children and Family Photographer. While I am not claiming to be an equipment expert, here are some of my thoughts on your questions. First, the 55-200 is great for portraits, you would need to find the 'sweet spot' for that lens, but usually full zoom (150-200) is a good portrait sweet spot. The bokeh effect comes from the aperture mostly. I use a (Nikon) 50mm f1.4G lens for awesome bokeh effects - it gives a very short depth of field at fully open (f1.4), therefore blurry background. I'm not sure what specific lens is compatible with your Sony, but I would look for something that opens up to at least f1.8 if you can. I hope that helps!
~K.
fyi: my website www.KBSphoto.com

Tons of my photo-friends loooooove this blog: http://www.theburghbaby.com/photography-blog/. Maybe you'll find helpful info there as well. Good luck!

55-200 mm lens sounds good. I have a few lenses too, they are nice for portraits. I just purchased an external flash that has a swivel head and I bought a diffuser, too. What a monumental difference this has made. Once you have the lenses you need/want, consider an external flash. The pop up flash does NOTHING for your pictures until you have one that you can manipulate yourself. I'm into photography too, not an expert but someone seriously and passionately "into" it. : )

You might want to try a prime lens (fixed focal length). I love my 50mm lens for taking shots of my kids! With a lowest aperture of 1.8, it creates creamy bokeh.

We have cannon cameras and several lenses. A 55-200 would be a really versatile lens that is good for lots of things. The main ones we use are a 55-105 (I think) for people, some scenery, general shots and 100-400 and a fixed 300 for birding and nature pictures. We have a few others that get some use depending on what we are after in the photos.

The main thing we have found is not only the mm of the lens is important, but the quality of the glass is much more important for better pictures. Most of our lenses at this point are professional series and we can see a difference in the pictures. I don't know if Sony has different quality lenses, but you may want to look into it if they do. I don't think it matters as much for portraits, but we do a lot of zoomed in and then crop even more on pictures of birds.

If you go to a camera store that has the lens you can try it out and see how you like it. I really think a 55-200mm is a nice lens to have, since you can do a little bit of everything for it. For scenery or anything where you want a lot of background to show you will probably still use your 18-55.