Different types of lenses

Different types of lenses

Wide angle lens

This type of a lens which has a smaller focal length meaning that a 17 mm lens has less magnification then an 85 mm lens. As of the zoomed out nature of this lens it is able to capture more in the frame then a zoom lens and is therefore considered to have a ‘’wider’’ field of view. This type of lens is used to take pictures of landscapes, different setting and wide close ups. These images usually used in geographical magazines, books and car magazines.

Here is an image that has been taken with a wide angle lens 17mm and the red square illustrates how a normal lens would have cut it at either side.

Long lens

In photography a long focus lens which has a longer focal length. It is used to make distant object appear magnified. In other words this lens is able to zoom in from a longer distance and focus on it clearly. Below you can see the difference between a 28mm lens and a 210mm lens.

 28 mm on the top and 210 mm on the right.

You are able to see the difference clearly as with a long lens you are able to see further and the object size increases with the long lens capturing the detail of something. This type of lens is mainly used by sports photographers as they can get a great image of football as the lens increases object size in photos and is able to focus at long distances.

Telephoto lens

Telephoto lenses are sometimes broken into subtitles of medium telephoto and super telephoto but I will not do that and will not talk about that.

A telephoto lens is a specific type of long focus lens which is much shorter than a long focus lens but has about the same focus length. This is achieved by extending the light path to create a long-focus lens in a much shorter overall design.

A telephoto lens is used for wildlife photos and for landscape photos as this lens can normalize the distance difference between near and far objects and can make the depth of field appear more shallow. An example can be seen below.

Macro Lens

A macro lens is basically an extreme close-up usually used for vary small objects as this lens is able to zoom in at small objects from small distances (through macrophotography technically refers to the art of making very large photographs). Below you can see an example of a great image taken with a macro lens.