Pixiq

One of the most important camera hardware parts for your camera is the lens. It’s a convex, concave, or planar piece of glass that refracts light then channels the light onto the film or digital sensor of your camera. The quality of that glass determines the quality of the photographs that come out of your camera.

Most professional and serious amateur photographers use SLRs or DSLRs. This allows the photographers to change the lenses for various types of photography. There are a vast number of types and ranges of lenses for cameras. Let’s look at the two extremes of the spectrum and how they’re used. We’ll stick with zoom lenses for these examples.

Telephoto Lenses

Telephoto lenses are typically used in situations where you want to zoom in on your subject and make your subject appear as big inside the frame as that range allows. This is great for wildlife photographers who want to get a good close up of the bird in the distance. Fashion and portrait photographers also use telephoto lenses due to the flattering compression that takes place at the farther zoom ranges.

Wide Angle Lenses

Wide angle lenses allow the camera to capture a wider scene and are often used for landscape photographs or street photography where you really want to show the whole scene. There is a greater chance of perspective distortion when using a wide angle lens due it’s tendancy to magnify distances between subjects while allowing a greater depth of field.

Add-on Lenses

Point and shoot cameras use fixed lenses. You can’t replace the lenses but you can purchase add-on lenses for some models. Add-on lenses are attached to the fixed portion of your camera to alter how the fixed lens behaves.

Do Your Research

In choosing a lens you’ll want to do some research on what type of photography you’d like to capture. Then it’s a matter of researching what lenses are available for your camera make and model.

We did have an interesting discussion in the Your Photo Tips Flickr Group on favorite lenses that you may want to look at. My favorite is the 50mm fixed focal lens. If you have a favorite lens we’d love to hear what it is and why!

Photograph Lens by Scott Hussey of Photography Tactics