trying to figure out lenses

chrisgrieve

chrisgrieve

Messages
1,137
Name
Chris
Edit My Images
No
hi there, i am new to photography, but want to take this up as a hobby and hopefully buy myself a dslr sometime soon but anm trying to learn as much as possible before hand. i have been trying to figure a few things out about lenses. if someone could either point me in the right direction to online material (in dummy terms, cant understand all the big words :LOL: ) or if you could answer a couple of the below questions.

1. how far can a lens zoom in? i.e 18-55mm / 70-300mm ?

2. what is classed as a wide angle lens, and what does this do? are these more commonly used for landscapes?

3. what size of lens is generally used for everyday walkabout?

hope someone can help or point me in the right direction. it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
 
chrisgrieve said:
hi there, i am new to photography, but want to take this up as a hobby and hopefully buy myself a dslr sometime soon but anm trying to learn as much as possible before hand. i have been trying to figure a few things out about lenses. if someone could either point me in the right direction to online material (in dummy terms, cant understand all the big words :LOL: ) or if you could answer a couple of the below questions.

1. how far can a lens zoom in? i.e 18-55mm / 70-300mm ?
depend how much you want to spend but 70-200, 70-300, 100-400 are not uncommon

2. what is classed as a wide angle lens, and what does this do? are these more commonly used for landscapes?
anything less than 50mm is classed as wide angle, about 50mm is what the human eye sees

3. what size of lens is generally used for everyday walkabout?
18-70 is probably more of an everyday lens but for more vesatility something like 18-135 or 18-200 would be better, but are usually more expensive

hope someone can help or point me in the right direction. it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks
Click to expand...

hope that helps
 
its all about cutting down the angle of view - how much of a scene gets into the camera.

Human eye persepctive is 35mm or so (fullframe), standard is 50mm, 70mm will give you the illusion of zero magnification.

Above 70mm magnification comes into it and also narrowing down the angle of view.
 
Jonnyreb said:
its all about cutting down the angle of view - how much of a scene gets into the camera.

Human eye persepctive is 35mm or so (fullframe), standard is 50mm, 70mm will give you the illusion of zero magnification.

Above 70mm magnification comes into it and also narrowing down the angle of view.
Click to expand...

Alesse, Craig. Basic 35 mm Photo Guide for beginning photographers. New York: Amherst Media, 1989.
"The most commonly purchased lens is a normal lens. Its focal length is about 50 mm. A normal lens is popular because it has the same perspective as the human eye." 50 mm
 
StevieF8 said:
Alesse, Craig. Basic 35 mm Photo Guide for beginning photographers. New York: Amherst Media, 1989.
"The most commonly purchased lens is a normal lens. Its focal length is about 50 mm. A normal lens is popular because it has the same perspective as the human eye." 50 mm
Click to expand...

Wow - that must have been important to you. Good research.

Perhaps you would be less offended if i retracted that and stated that the FOV of a human eye is matched by a 35mm and the perspective is matched by (something close to) 50mm? Try it - I'm sure you'll agree :)

Chris - sorry for the confusion of my poor choice of words :)
 
Jonnyreb said:
Wow - that must have been important to you. Good research.
Click to expand...

not really, ive always thought that the human eye was 50mm but ive not needed that information for about 10 years, since I was in photogrpahic sales, but when someone else says its different you start to question if you have it right in your own head
 
thanks for the info,

just to go over a couple things, how far can a lens zoom in? i.e. if i am using a 70-30mm lens how far roughly can this zoom in ( if you know what i mean)

also a wide angle lens, what makes it wide angle? is the diameter of the lens any different to others, i cant seem to understand why its wide angle.

thanks
 
Chris - not really sure what you're asking.....? By zoom in do you mean the zoom factor? If so a 70-300 is a zoom factor of 4.3x

Wideangle is anything wider than a standard (which i think we established was 50mm :D) lens. so, you can go to as wide as 12mm (rectlinear) which is a field of view of about 120 degree on the horizontal plane
 
Zoom is just a ratio, so a 70-300 mm lens has a 300/70 zoom.
It's the same for compacts. Zoom isn't really an important figure (unless you'd need a lens that could stay on your camera for some time, because you can't afford to swap lenses, for example), it's the focal length in mm calculated to 35 mm equivalent that matters.
 
hey thanks everyone who has posted, has helped alot, thanks again.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top