This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 12th, 2008 at 1:42 am and is filed under How to Use Lenses. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Cameras use different kinds of lenses to achieve different kinds of effects or to fix a problem the photographer may be having. Here is a rundown of different types of lenses and what they are used for.
Telephoto Lenses
This lens offers the ease of being far away from the subject while still getting a nice close-up shot. This is great for taking portraits of shy people and landscape shots. A medium sized telephoto lens (around 100 mm) offers distance without any distortions.
Zoom Lenses
This is the most common lens, and for good reason. A zoom lens is the most versatile one you can buy because it offers many different focal lengths and can aid in difficult compositions. It zooms in on far away objects, but can be pulled back for closer ones. The amateur photographer would be fine with a 10x zoom lens.
Fisheye Lens
This lens is expensive and has very few uses. What it does, for the most part, is highlight round objects so that they seem more round. This lens is not recommended for beginners.
Macro Lens
Macro lenses are great for getting close-up shots of very small things without blurring the image. This lens is great for taking photos of bugs, flowers, leaves, pebbles and other very small things.
Shift or Perspective Control Lenses
These lenses allow you to take pictures of tall buildings without moving your camera. Why is this so great? Well, with a normal lens pictures of tall images get distorted. The top of the building will look like it is leaning backwards. A shift lens compensates and makes the building look straight and tall. Okay, maybe it’s not the most needed lens, but if you had to take a lot of building shots for a magazine you’d understand its appeal.
Wide Angle Lens
A wide angle lens is just what it sounds like. It lets the camera see more of the area in front of it so that the image has more in it. This lens is great for landscape shots. It also allows the photographer to get very close to a subject and still have the background in focus.
Which lens you pick depends on your needs and budget. If you are a beginner, just start out with a good 10x zoom lens and don’t worry about the rest, for now.