Everything about camera lenses
Hey, Readers! From my previous blogs, you must’ve got familiar about the “Basics of Camera” and “Various types of photography”. If you haven’t read my previous blogs, tap these above mentioned, emphasized titles and read them. Now, let’s about this blog. This blog is all about the camera lenses.
Camera lenses are the most basic and important equipment after the camera, to capture the images or record videos. Basically, a camera lens is an optical body, mounted on a camera, which helps in the mechanism of capturing a photograph. Mostly, people check out the features of the camera which is a very good thing, but they usually forget to do the same thing while choosing a lens. There are many things which depends on the lens, which can enhance the quality of your photograph.
How to choose a suitable lens?
It maybe difficult to select a perfect lens for your camera. Though, it depends on your priority and the genre in which you want to shoot. But, I’ll tell you few things in a very simple language by which you can select the most suitable lenses.
- Focal Length
Did you ever wondered what is the meaning of “mm” written with few numbers on a lens? This “mm” means millimetre and the number written near this abbreviation is know as the focal length. I won’t go much deeper into its physics of working and technical terms to keep it simple.
16–35 mm written on the above lens is the focal length of this lens which means it can capture the frame ranging from 16–35 mm. The focal length of a lens describes how wide its field of view is, and this, in turn, is directly proportional to how ‘wide’ a lens is. A low focal length creates a wide angle of view — which is why lenses with low focal lengths are known as “wide angle” lenses. As the number of focal length increases, its angle of view gets narrow. These lenses are known as “telephoto” lenses.
2. Zoom Lens or Prime Lens
This is the most debatable topic in the field of photography. Which one is better between a zoom lens and a prime lens. But before we clarify this thing, let us understand what are zoom lenses and prime lenses.
Imagine capturing a shot of a very big subject like a tree and of a very small subject like a bird who is far away than you, while standing at only one position. This is what a zoom lens do. It has various focal lengths and allows us to zoom in and zoom out to take a perfect shot.
Prime lenses have fixed focal length. Here, a photographer has to move himself closer or far way from its subject to capture the photograph.
Now, you may think that zoom lenses are better than prime lenses, as they allows us to capture at different focal lengths. Well, that’s true. But, it changes the minimum aperture value when we change its focal length.
Imagine, using a kit lens of 18–55 mm while shooting. This lens has the minimum aperture of f/4.0 to f/5.6. Now the question arises, how this minimum value is more than one value? This is because when we zoom in/change the focal length, the minimum aperture value changes. In simpler words, while shooting at the focal length of 18 mm, the minimum aperture value will be f/4.0. Whereas, while shooting at the focal length of 55 mm, the minimum aperture value will be changed to f/5.6. A prime lens helps you to shoot at without changing the minimum aperture value.
If you want to know how this changing of aperture affects a photograph, check out my previous blog mentioned at the top of this blog.
So, both the lens have their own benefits. This depends on person to person which type of lens he/she wants to use.
3. Aperture Value
I won’t explain it in details as I’ve mentioned everything in detail in my previous blog. But aperture value really matters a lot (specially while shooting portraits) so as to achieve shallow depth of field and more bokeh on those areas which are out of focus.
Other things you might find on a lens
- IS/OIS/VIR
These refers to Image Stabilised, Optical Image Stabilisation, and Vibration Reduction. A lens as a built-in ‘floating’ element’, which helps the lens to sense the way of its movement and counteract any vibrations.
2. EF/EF-S (Canon) & FX/DX (Nikon)
These are the lens mount of full-frame and crop-sensor cameras. The EF and FX lenses are made for full-frame DSLR. A full-frame DSLR is a one which have image sensor of format 36 mm x 24 mm.
The EF-S/DX lenses are made or crop-sensor cameras. They tend to be smaller and lighter than their full-sized counterparts, but cannot be used on a full-frame camera.
3. USM/HSM/SWM
These refers to Ultrasonic motor, High Speed Motor, and Silent Wave Motor respectively. Lenses with these types of autofocus motors tend to be much quicker and faster than their non-USM counterparts.
Types of lenses based on their focal lengths
- Fisheye lens
They have a focal length of 8 mm-10 mm, i.e. they have a very wide angle of view and so they are called as fisheye lens.
2. Ultra Wide Angle Lens
They have a focal length of 14–24 mm. They have a wider angle of view but not wider than fisheye lens.
3. Wide Angle Lens
They have a focal length of 24–35 mm. They have wide angle of view. All these lenses are suitable for capturing sunsets, landscapes and group photos.
4. Standard Angle Lens
They have focal length of 36–60 mm. Their angle of view is narrower than above three lenses.
5. Medium Telephoto Lens
They have focal length of 70–135 mm. Their angle of view is more narrower than standard angle lens.
6. Super Telephoto Lens
They have focal length of above 200 mm. Their angle of view is narrowest. These lenses are used to shoot portraits and even helps in astro-photography.
There are also Macro/CRC (Close Range Correction) marked lens which are especially designed to be sharper at shorter focus range. These are mostly used to shoot small creatures like bugs, insects and other such different things.
To be honest, there are many more things which are uncovered in this blog but the basic and most important things one should know about lenses are covered here. We’ll surely discuss rest of them in upcoming blogs.
Let me know if you liked the blog.
If you have any doubts, you can contact me on my instagram @manusharma.ig
Will meet in the next blog. :)
