Lens type may become next step for your photography program. That you’ve bought your new D-SLR camera and are starting to come to terms with its operation, you might well be thinking about buying another type of lens.

lens type

Digital Lens

Lens type that you find when you purchased the digital camera it more than likely came with a zoom lens; something like a 28-80mm is the usual offering with new cameras, and this is a good lens type with which to start.

But if you feel like you need something different, what do you look for? There are many lens types available, and to know which type of lens you should buy you need to know what you want to photograph with it. Lenses come in all shapes and sizes—a bit like a family—and they all have specific characteristics. In the art photography Here is a breakdown of the different lens types and some of their applications.

There are three basic lens type:

A lens belongs in a particular category based on its focal length.

  • 50mm is the traditional focal length for a standard lens.
  • Less than 50mm is considered a wide-angle lens.
  • Greater than 50mm is considered to be a telephoto lens.
  • Lenses beyond about 300mm are known as super telephoto

Standard Lens Type

The standard lens type (50mm) gives an angle of view of between 45 and 55 degrees, which is approximately the same as that of the human eye. Because of this it produces an image with a natural look; it photographs things in a manner that is as near as possible to the way we would see the same subject.

Because these lenses photograph subjects in the same way as we see things, they produce pictures that tend to look “normal” and, thus, have a wide application as a general-purpose lens.

Wide-Angle Lens Type

With so many wide-angle lenses available ranging in focal lengths from 8mm to 35mm, the choice is huge and can be quite confusing. Basically, the wider the lens, the more specialized its use.

Super-wide lenses can distort the image and have a limited, if valuable, use. I would suggest that either a 24mm or a 28mm lens—the more common types of wide-angle— would be a good choice to purchase as a starter lens.

The 35mm wide-angle lens type is often used as a standard lens because although the focal length is slightly less than the 50mm of the standard lens, the difference is not huge. It can give the photographer the advantage of extra depth of field, a real benefit for news photographers, who shoot where space is often limited and for whom the more of the picture in focus, the better.

Because the angle of view of the wide-angle lens type is much greater than that of the telephoto or standard lens, it’s obviously the lens to use where there’s limited space or the subject is large. Taking the family picture at Christmas when 30 of your relatives have arrived at your place would be impossible unless you lived in a very large house—or you had a wide-angle lens to take the shot.

Landscape photography is another area where wide-angle lenses are very useful. Using a wide-angle lens type offers the ability to get close to your main subject to make it more prominent in the frame while keeping as much of the background in focus as you want.

Telephoto Lens Type

We all know that a long telephoto lens type can bring the subject right into the heart of the picture; objects that appear to be miles away when shot with a standard lens appear to be only feet in front of the photographer when shot with a telephoto lens. This is why all the photographers at a football match or soccer game use telephoto lenses to capture the action.

Telephoto lenses have many more uses than just sports photography. The narrow angle of acceptance and the extra magnification allow the photographer to foreshorten the distance between himself and the point of interest of the picture. The lens allows you to capture a smaller portion of the scene so that your subject is not lost. This effect makes telephoto lens type particularly suited to landscape photography when you are trying to isolate details in a rather large area.

The longer focal length of a telephoto lens type means that it has much less depth of field than a wide-angle or even a standard lens. This effect can be used to “drop out” or blur backgrounds to create a sharp, clear subject without the confusion of a busy background.

You must take this factor into account when using a telephoto lens type to shoot landscape pictures, where it’s often best to have as much of the picture in focus as possible. This often requires long shutter speeds and small apertures to create greater depth of field. A tripod will be necessary to hold the camera perfectly still.

A short telephoto lens type—90mm, 110mm, or 135mmis ideal for portraiture. It allows the photographer to maintain a comfortable distance from the subject while still allowing use of the limited depth of field to avoid confusing backgrounds.

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Filed under: Basic Photography

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