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Monday, 25 October 2010

Choosing A Camera Lens

Author: Michael Charles

Job Vacancy, Indonesia Job, Job Indonesia

Many believe that the quality of the lens is more important than the camera itself. Indeed, this may be true. After all, it is the lens that contains the glass that light passes through to create an image. Fortunately, just as cameras continue to improve with each passing year, so do lenses.
Lenses differ from each other in a variety of ways. However, for our purposes, we will mainly focus on differences in "focal length". To be honest, the mathematics involved in determining exactly what constitutes "focal length" is far beyond my capabilities. Fortunately, we don't need to know precise technical details to fully use what "focal length" provides.
To make things simple, think of lenses as being on a continuum from "short" to "long". A "short" lens is often called a "wide-angle" lens. This type of lens will give you a very wide view of a scene. A "long" lens is often called a "telephoto" lens. This lens will give you a narrower view. For example, imagine a photographer standing on the field at the Super Bowl. If this photographer wants to take a picture that shows the field, the stadium, the fans, everything - he will use a "short" lens. On the other hand, if this photographer wants to take a close-up of the quarterback - he will use a "long" lens.
Focal length designation is determined in millimeters. To put it simply, the more millimeters, the longer the lens. For example, a wide-angle lens might be 14 millimeters; while a telephoto lens might be 600 millimeters. The focal length that has long been considered a "normal" lens on an SLR camera is 50 millimeters (however, with digital cameras, it may be closer to 70 millimeters). This particular length is called "normal" because it most closely matches the field of view of the human eye.
Within my specialty of nude and erotic photography, the vast majority of my pictures are taken within a focal length range of 18 millimeters to 135 millimeters. This range gives me a moderate wide-angle (18 millimeters), a moderate telephoto (135 millimeters), and everything in between. This range provides a wide variety of compositional choices.
Thanks to today's technology, you can now get a very good quality "zoom" lens that will give you, in a single lens, a good range of focal lengths. It wasn't too many years ago that zoom lenses were optically inferior to "fixed" lenses. This meant that serious photographers had to change lenses every time they wanted to change their field of view (even for very small changes, such as going from 50 millimeters to 75 millimeters). Needless to say, this was inconvenient and time-consuming. Fortunately, we're at a place now where the quality of zoom lenses is exceptional.
In fact, zoom lens quality has come so far that, to the naked eye, an image taken with a zoom lens is usually indistinguishable in sharpness and clarity from an image taken with a fixed lens. In truth, all you really need to get started in this business is a camera and a moderate zoom lens (something in the range of 18-135 millimeters would be ideal).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Charles is a professional photographer based in Los Angeles. For over a decade, he has shot exclusively in the world of nude, erotic, and adult-oriented photography. His work has been featured in hundreds of national and international publications and appears on a wide variety of prominent websites.
From his years spent photographing the world's most beautiful women, Michael has acquired a definitive knowledge regarding what it takes to succeed within the field of nude and erotic photography.

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