What is a standard lens and why would I use one? You’re amazing. You really are. And I’m not saying that to curry favour either (I’m sure you’d be too polite to mention it even if I were). No, you’re a true wonder. Take your vision for a start. You have eyes that can focus on something held in your hand and, in a millisecond, on a star that is countless light years distant. And, this is the astonishing part;…

Picture making possibilities become more apparent when you tune into the angle of view of a particular prime (28mm lens). The easiest option when buying a new lens for a system camera is to pick a zoom (and in fact virtually all kit lenses supplied with new cameras are zooms). Practically speaking zoom lenses make a lot sense. A zoom lens lets you adjust the focal length to one degree or another. This versatility makes it easier to create a…

Have you ever wondered how they measure camera lens quality in magazine and online reviews?  Why is one lens considered to be better than another and why is there such a huge price difference between some lenses? Well the standard lens test is based on what’s know as ‘optical metric scores’ which are standard measurements used to rate the performance of a camera lens, such as its sharpness, distortion, vignetting, transmission and chromatic aberration (see image above). Sharpness Sharpness while…

A Beginner’s Guide to Camera Lenses. Buying your first camera lens can be daunting and many of us happily settle for the lens that comes with the camera. We may spend hours researching the camera body and give near fleeting thought to the lens. Yet it’s the lens that actually records the image, not the camera body, so haven’t we got this all the wrong way round? I would say yes! My old photography tutor once told us that that…

Which Lens Should I Use? Back in the days of prime lenses, when a photographer arrived at a location he would need to decide which lens to use for the subject at hand. Nowadays, with the preponderance of zoom lenses, the same decision remains – which end of the zoom to use? Should we zoom close in on our subject with a long focal length, or go to the wide angle end of the lens? Lots of different factors will…

Whether you have a DSLR with several lenses, or a compact camera with a zoom, you’ll need to make decisions about whether to use a wide angle lens, a telephoto lens, or a lens somewhere in between. So what factors will affect your decision?  There are lots of differences in the way lenses behave, but the main ones are listed here: 1. Field of view We all know that the wide angle lens includes a wide view, while the telephoto…

Telephoto lenses are generally thought of as being used to take photos of distant subjects – and of course this is true.  Wildlife photographers use long telephotos to make frame filling pictures of tiny birds, or animals that are too shy to get near to. I used a long telephoto to photograph this Acer leaf (left) which was right at the top of a tree – it would have been impossible to make a frame filling photo with a standard…