Micah McDowell

Have a budget in mind? Exteriors at night... sounds like you want something with great low light performance, right? If you're on a low budget, 5DmkII with some fast primes perhaps.

Hence the reason that I HATE on-camera flashes. I use fast lenses and natural light for as much of my still photography as possible. People go, "Wow, that looks great! "How'd you do it?" And I'm not a great, or even good, photographer.

A spherical lens is just what it sounds like... a plain, round, sphere of a lens. That's the most common and perhaps user-friendly kind. Anamorphic lenses are generally a spherical lens with additional elements which "squeeze" the image so that it is narrower when it hits the film negative/digital sensor and then is "unsqeezed" when it is projected/edited. This gives a wider aspect ratio while utilizing as much as the camera negative as possible for higher quality. They're also known for different flare characteristics and field of view vs. spherical. Do some Googling... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphic_format would be a good place to start reading.