SLR Camera Lens

SLR Camera Lens

Executive Summary by Scott Karcich

When shopping for a Digital SLR Camera people often overlook or skimp on the camera's lenses. Camera Lenses serve as the digital SLR cameras "eye," the lens determines what and how your camera will see your subject and how well that view is transmitted to the camera's sensor chip for recording. The way I like to look at camera lenses is as painter's brushes, broad strokes, medium stokes, all purpose brushes, and small detail brushes.

Focal Length

On a digital SLR camera lens, the focal length of the lenses measures the distance between the lens and the image sensor, measured in millimeters. Lenses can be classified into subgroups like prime, macro, wide angle, normal, telephoto, and zoom lenses. They are also rated in regards to f-stop or speed an example would be a F2.0 50mm lens or a 1.4F 80mm lens.

Prime Lenses

Prime lenses are fixed focal length lenses like a 50mm 1.4f lens. Traditionally prime lenses are sharper and faster then zoom lenses.

Macro Lenses

Examples of macro lenses are 50mm and 100mm macros. These lenses are also great for selective focus types of photos.

Wide-angle Lenses

Wide-angle lenses are your broad stroke brushes; these types of lenses have short focal lengths. A way to check if the wide-angle lenses you are interested in has convergence is to take test pictures before buying the lens. With high quality wide angles lenses like Canon L series lenses address this convergence issue well. Examples of wide-angle lenses are 15MM, 17mm, 24mm and 28mm lenses.

Normal Lenses

If you buy just one lens try and buy the fastest normal lenses you can like a 50mm 1.4f lenses. Some examples of normal lenses are 35mm; 50mm, 65mm and some consider a 80mm a normal lens.

Telephoto Lenses

Lenses with long focal lengths 100mm and higher are called telephoto lenses. Telephoto lenses also give your subjects a graphic look and flatten out your subject. These lenses are my short stroke brushes.

Zoom Lenses

Zoom lenses are special because they can be very versatile. These types of lenses vary in their focal lengths and come in many in wide-angle, telephoto, and wide-angle to telephoto. In my bag I carry a 17mm to 35mm my wide-angle broad brush, 24mm to 70mm my medium brush, and a 80mm to 200mm my short brush. When shopping for a zoom lenses check out the f-stop range rating. Zoom lenses can give you flexibility and versatility all in one lenses.