"Understanding the lenses"

Today, I’d like to talk about camera lenses.

When you take a picture, or purchase a camera or its lens, understanding camera lens can help add more creativity and diversity to one’s picture. Using the right lens provides advantage in getting better pictures too.

There are three basic types of camera lenses: standard, wide angle and telephoto. "The power of a camera lens is measured in millimeters and is known as the focal length of a lens."(from wiki) The standard/normal lens is generally 18 – 55mm focal length for a normal 35mm camera. Any camera lens with a shorter focal length than this is considered to be a wide angle lens and any lens with a longer focal length is considered a telephoto lens.



Standard lens(google image)



·       Normal/Standard Lens: A normal lens shows most accurately what a normal human eye will see. 50mm is a typical normal focal length. It is not that expensive (around $200-400). And easy to carry these kind of lenses, because they are small and light. You can use it any kind of situation.



Wide lens(google image)

·         Wide Lens: A wide lens captures a wider area so it can be use for talking landscape photos and large group pictures. It is shorter-than-normal/standard focal lengths. The most common focal length for a wide angled lens are 24mm and 28mm.

Telephto lens(google imgage)

·         Telephoto Lens: This lens is the opposite of the wide lens. It is great for taking far away objects pictures.(Like sports pictures or taking pictures of UFO) Any way, these lens are longer than standard focal lengths around 70mm-300mm.

Other lens type:

Most people will have heard of a Macro Lens. These lenses are used for close up photography. They are able to focus a lot closer to the subject. Common focal lengths are 50/55mm to 90/100/105mm. The optical quality of a macro lens is normally very high.

Fisheye lens are use to take 180 degree view angle pictures. It looks exactly like a fisheye. The angle distorts the photograph so the four sides appear to be farther away.

There are so many different types of camera lens, so when you buy a new camera lens, think about what you want to take and what you need. Variety of lens can provide more fun and more different types of pictures as well.