The Looking Glass - Camera Lens Basics
By Kurt Hansen
At the end of the day, no matter what camera you have and how much you spent on it, a camera is still basically a light-tight box designed to focus light on a piece of film or an image sensor. So it’s the lens and how the photographer uses it that makes all the difference in the world.
There are essentially three types of lenses - wide angle, normal and telephoto. Zoom lenses enable you to shift between wide and telephoto or an extensive range within the wide or telephoto subset. There are a few specialty lenses that most certainly have their place, but are used much less frequently.
Wide-angle lenses are lenses with focal lengths less than 40mm. The wide-angle lens provides a wider than normal angle of view. The angle of view is the amount of a scene covered, measured in degrees, based on plane geometry. A normal lens has an angle of view of about 45 degrees, which is approximately what the human eye sees. The wide-angle lens can provide an angle of view of 110 degrees, or even up to 140 degrees. Wide-angle lenses also provide greater depth of field, but they expand or exaggerate the perspective and when pointed up or down, the vanishing point lines in a scene can converge unnaturally.
You’ll want to use a wide-angle lens to photograph architecture, landscapes and large groups. Avoid using a wide-angle on portraits or interiors. This is just a guideline as you might like the distorting features that the wide-angle lens gives you for these subjects. Experimentation generates creative photographs.
Normal lenses have focal lengths of 45mm to 55mm and they provide an image that is very much in line with what your eye sees. These lenses are extremely versatile in that you capture whatever your eye happens to see, pretty much as your eye sees it. But because normal lenses don’t have attributes that enhance the image, you have to rely on your ability to make strong compositions to get the most out of these lenses. But that’s what you are supposed to do, go out and take a strong photo by designing a strong composition.
Telephoto lenses magnify a subject considerably depending on the focal length, which can be as high as 2000mm. Long lenses solve lots of problems by enabling you to fill a frame without having to get so close to a subject. This extra “reach” comes in handy when photographing such things as your son’s soccer game or your wife’s white water rafting adventure. However, telephoto lenses have a compressed angle of view, maybe only 18 degrees, and extremely shallow depth of field. The compressed angle of view and compressed perspective cause items to appear stacked on top of each other. Be aware of this and shoot at higher shutter speeds to remove any camera shake from your photographs. You’ll probably want to use a tripod from time to time.
Lenses can cost as much or more than the camera. That’s entirely acceptable because a high quality glass lens won’t have all the nagging little things that impede upon getting a rock-solid sharp image that produces as accurate color as possible. Your lens is one of the major painting tools for photography, as it also controls the scope of the canvas. You’ll probably only buy and use 2 or 3 lenses that will handle nearly all of your photographic needs. You might also splurge for a specialty lens like a Macro or Tilt-Shift. Experiment with wide-angle and telephoto zooms and primes, also known as fixed focal length lenses, to see what is most aesthetically pleasing to what you want to capture. Some people gravitate toward normal and telephoto zooms. Others like a strict set of primes and possibly a wide-angle zoom, say from 17mm to 35mm. It’s purely a personal preference.
Kurt Hansen
Find out more at: High FX Photo.net
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Photograph taken with a 28mm wide angle lens, showing photographers using telephoto lenses for wildlife photography. The telephoto lenses, with their extra reach, are necessary to bring the subjects closer as one can’t normally get close to wild animals.
| Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM Lens for Canon EOS SLR Cameras |
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| Canon EF-S 17-85mm f/4-5.6 Image Stabilized USM SLR Lens for EOS Digital SLR's |
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For more information about different lenses and their focal lengths, and in particular which Canon lenses are most suitable for various photographic situations or applications, please see:
Canon Telephoto Lenses
Canon Zoom Lenses
Canon Wide Angle Lens
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