A ’superzoom’ is generally reckoned to be a camera or a lens with a focal range of 10x or more. In other words, its maximum focal length is 10x its minimum focal length. The advantage is that you can tackle a [...]
Tag Archive for 'Focal length'
This is a lens with a variable focal length or angle of view. You can ‘zoom’ in or out to change the angle of view or the magification (the same thing). Zoom lenses are now standard on just about all digital [...]
This is a lens which captures a wider angle of view that normal or, in the case of a zoom, one which offers a ‘wideangle’ view at its shortest focal length. Most compact digital cameras only zoom out to the equivalent [...]
This is a lens which gives a magnified view of distant subjects. It’s a vague term because it can mean anything from the slight magnification of the zoom lens on a compact digital camera to the 8-10x magnification of lenses [...]
Fits between the camera and the lens to magnify the image. Teleconverters do not seem as popular as they once were. Typically sold with 1.4x, 2x or even 3x magnification, they turned a standard lens into a telephoto and a [...]
This is a fixed focal length lens, rather than a zoom. Zooms have taken over because they are more convenient, but prime lenses are more compact and offer better performance, with little or no distortion and, sometimes, better contrast and [...]
One of the main benefits of buying an SLR camera is that you can change lenses. Cameras usually come with a zoom that covers the focal range most people need, from wideangle to moderate telephoto. These are called ‘standard’ zooms [...]
A measure of a lens’s magnifying power or angle of view. Zoom lenses will have a focal length range, for example 35-105mm. The angle of view will depend on the size of the film used by the camera or the [...]
A lens’s focal length in 35mm camera terms. The smaller sensors in digital cameras mean that the focal lengths of lenses no longer give you an idea of their angle of view in the same way they do with 35mm [...]
How much the camera lens ‘takes in’. Photographers usually talk about ‘focal length’ when describing lenses, even though the angle of view is what they’re really concerned with. It is perfectly possible to convert focal length into angle of view [...]