How Choose a Digital Camera Lens
camera-lens
Your lens is an essential element to good photographs. It’s not just your camera. People spend thousands of dollars on a good camera and neglect the lens.
Make sure you buy a good camera lens when purchasing a camera. Buy a good camera as well, but don’t neglect a good camera lens.
Why? The lens is what your camera sees all your shots through. With most compact digital cameras, you can’t change the lens. Avoid a plastic digital camera lens because it doesn’t have the clarity of a glass lens.
What model of lens?
Stick with camera lenses from well known manufacturers like Nikon, Canon and Pentax. Ensure you purchase a lens that works with your camera too. A Nikon camera lens usually won’t work well with a Canon camera.
Types of Camera Lens
The most common lenses are : Wide Angle, Normal and Telephoto. The type of lens is determined by the Focal Length of the lens. A Zoom Lens is simply a lens that can change Focal Length from a Wide Angle to a Telephoto (or somewhere inbetween).
There are a number of things to look for when purchasing a camera lens.
Lens Focal Length
The Focal Length of a lens determines the amount of magnification and angle of vuew the lens can see. It’s the Focal Length that determines if the lens is a:
- Wide Angle; small magnification, wide angle of view. 20mm to 35mm
- Zoom; A Zoom lens can change it’s focal length to zoom in. A Zoom lens might have a Focal Length of between 50mm and 150mm.
Some lenses are interchangeable between film cameras and digital cameras, but you need to be aware that the effective focal length CHANGES between film and digital. So using a film 35mm lens on a digital camera has an effective focal length of 56mm.
A 35mm lens which gives a medium wide angle on a film camera acts as a traditional lens on a digital camera
Lens Speed
The ’speed’ of a digital camera lens also defines a lens. Faster lenses are more expensive and usually heavier.
Focusing Distance
More expensive lenses have more advanced features.
- Vibration Reduction. A feature called ‘vibration reduction’ keeps images sharper when shooting in low light. They help to counter any vibration in the camera.
- USM USM stands for Ultrasonic Motor. This feature of Canon lenses gives you a high speed auto focus but the main benefit is the ‘motor’ is almost silent, so you don’t disturb people around you when your camera is focussing.
- Filter Thread. When purchasing a half-decent lens, it should have a filter thread. This is a thread that allows you to screw on a filter (such as a polariser) to help when photographing difficult situations.
Generally the more expensive the lens, the better it is. More expensive lenses usually have a higher number of glass elements in the lens, which also makes them heavier.
By David Peterson
