Camera Lenses and Focal Length

In Photography, your lens is often your most important purchase. This

photography tutorial outlines some important qualities of different lenses, and
how each performs in identical situations.

Choosing a lens is often more difficult then choosing a camera when it comes to
purchasing. One thing to remember is that a lens will last several times longer
than digital cameras. A D-SLR has a limited lifespan of a couple of years, the
prices on cameras just keeps on dropping and purchasing a new camera every
3-5 years is quite reasonable if you want good quality photographs & equipment.
A lens on the other hand will (if handled correctly) last much longer then that, so
a good lens will be an investment that you can use for a longer period of time.
Another thing to think about is the fact that all the light that reaches the sensor
needs to pass through the lens. A low quality lens on a high quality camera
will result in bad image quality, but a good lens on a low quality camera
(entry level D-SLR) can still produce good results.
It’s important to realize that different lenses distort and compress the view. A
wide angle lens will distort the view and distances can seem greater than they
really are, while in contrast, a telephoto lens will compress the view and make far
away object seem closer than they are.

To show this effect see three photos taken with different lenses, the front object
(a street sign) is kept at the same size but the background is drastically different.
18mm, Wide Angle

50mm, Normal

300mm, Telephoto
 Lens Focal Terminology Typical
Length* Photography
Extreme Wide
Less than 21 mm Architecture
Angle
21-35 mm Wide Angle Landscape
Street &
35-70 mm Normal
Documentary
70-135 mm Medium Telephoto Portraiture
Sports, Bird &
135-300+ mm Telephoto
Wildlife

Wide-angle lens

Lenses with a wide angle of view have

become standard as kit-lenses on most low-end D-SLR cameras on the market,
always as zoom lenses. These lenses are great for landscapes, architecture
and indoor photography — but be aware of the distortion they create. The
closer you are to your object the more distorted it will become, and the
distortion is most predominant in the corners.
With such short focal length they can be useful in low-light situations, both
because they take in light from a wider angle and because a little camera shake
is not as visible as it is on longer focal lengths.
Be careful when using wide-angle lenses for close portraits, the distortion
created by the lens is magnified at close ranges and gives the model unnatural
shapes. The effect can be effective and useful in some situation but it’s a
technique that should be used with caution.

Normal lens
 Normal lenses have a focal length of around 50mm; it
resembles the view of the human eye and creates a natural view — unlike
wide-angle that distort and telephoto that compresses the view. These lenses
usually have a very low f-number, which makes them perfect for photographing
in low light conditions.
Back in the days this was the standard lens everybody had, often a 50mm prime
lens with an aperture of f/1.2–f/1.8. The fact that they were so widely used might
be one of the reasons why they have now been left behind for most beginners
and amateurs — they are just seen as too boring.

Telephoto lens

These lenses have a narrow

view field and a long focal length. Telephoto lenses are great for wildlife and
sport photography, and can be good to use for portrait when you want to
isolate the model from the background. Telephoto lenses compresses the
view which can be both positive and negative depending on the situation.
Telephoto lenses with their longer focal length require better light conditions or
the use of a tripod. There are fast telephoto lenses, like a 400mm f/2.8, but these
are often very expensive and out of reach when it comes to most amateurs —
and most of these lenses are too heavy to be handheld.
The last decade most companies have started to produce these high end
telephoto lenses with Image Stabilizer to make them more usable without
tripods. Lately this feature has been implanted in more and more low-end lenses
as well.
Macro lens
 Macro photography is close-up photography.
Macro is a word that has been severely abused lately, every photograph of an
insect or flower is not macro, and many people seems to have missed the point
of what macro is supposed to be. True macro photography is at the scale of 1:1
or greater — this means that the object you’re photographing should be the
same size or larger on the sensor.
Most macro lenses have a focal length between 50mm and 200mm, and they
usually have a large maximum aperture (low f-number) that gives them both the
ability to be fast as well as totally isolate the subject. The background and
shallow depth-of-field is a very important part of macro photography and
can take quite a lot of time to master.
Many modern macro lenses can focus to infinity and are prime lenses which can
make them ideal when it comes to portrait photography, so just because it’s a
macro lens doesn’t mean it can only be used for that type of photography.

Special lenses
FISHEYE LENS

Fisheye lenses are extreme wide-angle

lenses, having a 180° horizontal angle of view. There are both Circular and
Full-frame fisheye lenses, the circular will create a round image in the center with
unexposed (black) edges and the full-frame lens will fill the entire sensor but will
only have 180° horizontal and not vertical.
 TILT-SHIFT LENS

Tilt-shift lenses are common in architectural

photography to avoid the distortion a regular wide-angle lens creates while
keeping the entire building in focus. Tilt-shift lenses have more features than just
correcting the distortion, they also gives the photographer total control over the
focus and depth of field. The lens can create rather odd looking photographs
where the field of depth looks “unnatural”.

SONY DSC – H400 BRIDGE CAMERA with 63x Optical Zoom

20.1 M pix

63x Optical Zoom Equivalent to 24.5 mm to 1550 mm (in 35mm terms)

Prime lenses vs. Zoom lenses

There are two types of lenses,

prime and zoom. A prime lens is a lens that has a fixed focal length, these lenses
comes in all shapes and price classes. Zooms are more versatile. A zoom lens
can be a wide-angle lens, a normal lens and a telephoto lens — all in one —
where as a prime can only be what it is. High-end telephoto lenses as well as
macro lenses are almost always primes.
So why choose a prime instead of a zoom lens then?
Most prime lenses are considerably sharper than the zooms in the same price
class, even when you go to the very high-end lenses the primes are sharper but
the difference is not as distinct. Not only are primes sharper but they often
have a larger maximum aperture which makes them faster and ideal in low-
light situations. However, the technology is moving forward at a great speed
right now and the noise levels at high ISO isn’t as visible as it was before which
makes zoom lenses able to be faster as well.
All in all I would recommend that people have at least one prime in their camera
bag, preferably a normal lens, which is the perfect lens for many situations —
sharp, fast and light-weight.
Most lenses have a “sweet spot” where the lens is performing better than on
other settings. Zoom lenses are often best in the middle of their range and there
can be some quality loss on both the maximal and minimal focal length, but it’s
different from lens to lens so your best bet is to try and see where you find the
sharpest results.
The aperture will also affect the sharpness, and most lenses are softer when
they are wide open (largest aperture). To prevent this you can always step down
one or two f-stops, if the situation allows for it.

The Difference between Optical Zoom and Digital Zoom

on Your Digital Camera
Zooming on your digital camera involves getting a closer view of far-away
subjects. Optical zoom gets up close and personal by using an actual lens
adjustment and digital zoom adjusts the image in the camera itself (this figure
shows the difference in the images you get):

The camera used an optical zoom for the picture on the left and a digital zoom
for the one on the right.

Optical zoom: An optical zoom is a true zoom lens. They produce much
better-quality images.

Digital zoom: Some cameras offer a digital zoom, which is simply some in-
camera image processing. When you use a digital zoom, the camera enlarges
the image area at the center of the frame and trims away the outside edges of
the picture. The result is the same as when you open an image in your photo-
editing program, crop away the edges of the picture, and then enlarge the
remaining portion of the photo.
 Enlarging the “zoomed” area also enlarges the
pixels and reduces the image resolution and the image quality.

If taking a lot of photos from far away subjects is important to you, be sure
that the camera you buy has an optical zoom.

Some quick advice on buying a new lens

When it comes to purchasing a new lens there are a few things to consider.
• Who much are you willing to spend
• What do you need it for (sport, landscape, portraits etc)
• What lenses do you already own
• Prime or Zoom
• Image Stabilizer or not
• Filter size

The budget question is rather obvious, don’t buy lenses you can’t afford, period.

What you need your lens for is another very important factor, both when it comes
to focal length and speed.
For instance, there are many telephoto zoom lenses on the market but many of
them are not suitable for sport due to the fact that they are too slow —their
largest aperture isn’t letting enough light through to freeze action. Many sport
situations require a lens that has an aperture of f/2.8 or larger (consumer
telephoto lenses are often f/5.6).
For situations with low light, especially weddings and such, requires even faster
lenses, often between f/1.2 and f/1.8.
It’s also important to consider what lenses you already have in your collection
and what a new lens will add. Sometimes you purchase a new lens as an
upgrade from your previous lens, sometimes it’s for a focal length that you do not
already have. Don’t worry to much about small gaps in the focal length in your
collection. For example it’s no problem to have a 16-35mm wide angle, a 50mm
prime and a 70-200mm telephoto lens — sure you don’t have lenses that covers
36-49mm or 51-69mm, but those are not big gaps and buying extra lenses to fill
such gaps is not something I advice you do.

My personal opinion is that upgrading should add more than just better image
quality, for a worth upgrade you should get a faster lens, or a feature such as
image stabilizing. The choice between prime and zoom lenses was described
earlier in this article and there’s no right or wrong here, just personal preferences
and also depending on the situation.