Nothing is more important when taking pictures than the quality of the lens that you’re using to capture the carefully composed scene that you spent 20 minutes waiting for the light to be just right; or for that matter, even something you snapped off from the hip because the moment was fleeting. There are basically four types of lenses, plus three additional specialty lenses for you to select from.
Standard/Normal Lens
The standard lens has a fixed focal length (50mm, 85mm, 100mm), and reproduces fairly accurately what the human eye sees – in terms of perspective and angle of view. For a 35mm film camera or a full-frame DSLR, the 50mm lens is considered standard. At higher focal lengths (85mm or 100mm) you have an ideal lens for portraiture, because when coupled with a wide aperture they thoroughly soften any background detail, thus making it less likely to distract from the main subject.
Wide Angle Lens
Wide-angle lenses fall within 10mm to 42mm focal lengths. Though providing a wider angle of view, they incorporate a fair amount of distortion into your image (this is more pronounced the shorter the focal length). A wide-angle lens is a natural choice for capturing outdoor landscapes and group portraits. In fact, a wide angle lens can be the only way to capture the complete setting without omitting any important elements in the image.
Telephoto Lens
Telephoto lenses (100mm - 800mm) can provide you with a narrow field of view. These long lenses enable you to compress a distance (and compress the sense of depth, as well) and pick out specific objects from far off. They have a strong resolving power and an inherent shallow DOF, where the slightest lateral moment can take a subject out of view. Telephoto lenses are great for wildlife, portrait, sports, and documentary types of photography. They enable you to capture subjects from hundreds of feet away.
Zoom Lens
Zoom lenses have variable focal lengths, and are extremely useful. Some can range between a wide-angle and a telephoto (i.e. 24 to 200mm)… so you have extensive versatility for composition. The trade off with zoom lenses is the aperture. Because of the number of elements required in constructing these lenses, they have a limited ability to open up and allow in light. So unless you’re prepared to outlay a lot of money, you will give up lens speed.
Fisheye Lens
A fisheye lens is a specialized, wide-angle lens that provides extremely wide images by changing straight lines into curves. It can sometimes produce circular, convex, or oval images by distorting the perspective and creating a 180° image. The range of focal length varies between 7~16mm in a fish-eye lens.
Macro Lens
Macro lenses are used for close-up or “macro” photography. They range in focal lengths of between 50-200mm. These lenses obtain razor-sharp focus for subjects within the macro focus distance, but lose their ability for sharp focus at other distances. These lenses enable the photographer to obtain life-size or larger images of subjects like wasps, butterflies, and flowers.
Tilt-Shift Lens
The Tilt-Shift lens enables you to manipulate the vanishing points, so when you’re shooting buildings you can alter the perspective of an image so the parallel lines don’t converge, thus eliminating the distorting quality of the lens. The tilt-shift lens also enables you to selectively focus an image; where only specific portions of the image are in focus and out of focus within the same plane.
Conclusion
So choosing your lens is one of the most crucial choices that you’ll make to ensure that you have quality and amazing photos. Each variety of lens has its own special attributes and drawbacks, but careful research and experimentation will tell you what you should buy. Most photographers need at least three lenses – zoom, wide-angle and a telephoto… at least! That’s the beauty of SLR and DSLR cameras. They allow you to to change lenses to meet the needs of different photographic situations.
