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This article is brought to you by Canon New Zealand – SLR History. For more great Canon products, including camera accessories, visit their website.

The most important part of what makes an SLR camera so versatile is the lens, and there is a huge variety of lenses available on the market today. Choosing the right lens is important, but it can often be a complicated and confusing process, especially with all the different types available.’ Chromatic aberration’, ‘fixed-focal-length’, and ‘aperture zooms’ are terms which confuse many of us, but with this simple overview about some basic types of camera lenses, their uses, and some interesting facts you may not have known, you’ll be snapping away with your new favourite lens in no time.

• Zoom Lens – early forms of zoom lenses were used for optical telescopes in 1834. Nowadays, zoom lenses are either parfocal, which remain focused as you zoom in and out, or varifocal, which you have to refocus every time you change the zoom.

• Prime Lens – also called a ‘fixed’ or ‘standard’ lens, this type of lens offers no zoom capabilities. You can adjust the focus, but not the actual focal length. While you may ask how useful a lens with a fixed focal length may be, prime lenses usually offer very good optical quality, and are also lighter and less bulky.

• Telephoto Lens – sometimes resembling a mini-telescope, a telephoto lens is used to photograph very distant objects so they seem closer than they really are. Any bumps and shakes are also magnified with a telephoto lens, so you need to use fast shutter speeds to avoid blurring, or a tripod for slower shutter speeds. In 1834, a photographer from New Zealand, Alexander McKay, made the first home-made telephoto lenses out of ground-up whiskey bottle bottoms.

• Fisheye Lens – often considered to be one of the ‘fun’ lens options, fisheye lenses have a field of view of almost 180 degrees. Originally called “whole-sky lenses”, they were developed for meteorologists to study cloud formations. Fisheye lenses are often used with digital video cameras to film IMAX movies. The movies are also projected through a fisheye lens onto the giant curved screen. For those who want a DIY option for their compact digital camera, there are a number of online guides on how to make your own fisheye lens using an old pair of eyeglasses or a $10 door peephole.

• Macro Lens – macro lenses have a very shallow depth of field, which means that they can only focus on a small area at a time, and are used for shooting subjects at very close distances. Extreme close up shots of insects, flowers and tiny animals are often shot with macro lenses.