Different Types of Lenses For Your DSLR

There are many types of lenses available in the market to suit your photography needs. For beginners, it can be painful to decide what lenses to get. Before cracking your head on this question, it is important to first to identify what you like to photograph.

Different lenses will suit different types of photography, thus it is important to get the right tool for the right task! Zoom lenses are getting very common and popular with respectable results as technology advances. They are very convenient to use and you do not have to keep switching between lens for different needs.

In this articles, I will share with you a few common type of lenses used, namely Standard zoom, Telephoto zoom, Wide-angle zoom, Prime and Macro lens. It is important to understand the difference between them, so that you will know what type of lenses to get for your photography needs.

Standard zoom lens normally have a focal length between 18mm to 55mm or slightly more. Such lens is commonly offered as kit-lens and is a good lens to get started with for beginners. This wide range of focal lengths are most suitable for landscapes and portraits.

Telephoto zoom lens offers longer focal length typically from 70mm and beyond. This type of lens is perfect when you want to get close to the action and isolate your subject. Photographers who likes shooting sports or wildlife, will get a telephoto lens with focal length of at least 400mm.

Wide angle lens is a lens every landscape photographers will want to have. Dedicated wide angle lens offers focal length as short as 10mm to 12mm. This will be good if you want to get everything into your frame or if you want to get up close to the subject.

Prime lens offers single focal length example 35mm, 50mm, 200mm, etc. 50mm prime lens is many photographers' favorite, commonly used for portraits. As prime lens offers single focal length, its construction is simpler and thus expect less distortions to the imagines.

Macro lens is useful when you want to get really up close to the subject. Macro lens is able to let you achieve a life-size shot, where the subject will be recorded as the same size it would be if it was placed directly on the sensor. You will commonly see photographers taking close-up of insects, flowers, etc using macro lens. Macro lens can also be used as portrait lens too.

Now that you have a general idea on the characteristics of different types of lens, you are able to make a better choice, once you know what you like to photograph!

Photography Basics Camera Settings - How to Use Different Camera Modes in Your Photos

Before taking great photos, you need to familiarize yourself with your camera and learn how to control your camera exposure, use different camera modes, flash and choose between optical or digital zoom.

Most digital cameras have both optical and digital zoom capabilities. Optical zoom is the camera lens which brings an object closer in focus while digital zoom uses in-camera software to digitally enlarge a portion of the object's image without necessarily using the zoom lens.

Optical zoom is better for digital photography since digital zoom only enlarges the image surrounding using a portion of the image to enlarge back to full image size. This will normally cause loss of quality making your photos look blurry. In case you want to enlarge or crop your image, use a software program such as photoshop installed on your pc, to get better control over how your final image will look.

Most digital cameras allow you to set the camera when to start using digital zoom and when not to. Constantly reading your camera manual will also come in handy giving you enough time to concentrate on your image composition, background, and your subject.

It is very vital to learn how and when to use and control your camera flash more especially when using a digital camera, since most digital cameras have an in-built flash.

Flash feature often comes in handy during bright sunlight and helps eliminate dark shadows under the eyes and chin. It also emphasizes your focus object thus making it stand out from the background.

Turning your camera flash on, helps illuminate your object in a shade, when it is backlit, or where there's water reflecting sun's rays on your focus object. Such bright conditions often darkens your object's surface.

Always consider playing with your camera modes since most digital cameras have macro modes which helps with close-up shots of smaller objects or flowers. When using a macro mode setting, ensure that your camera is able to focus on your object before pressing the shutter button fully.

Digital cameras have different modes with tailor made settings suited for each camera. Feel free to use preset scene modes of your camera.

Eye vs Camera - Different Perceptions of the Same World

How many times have you took a picture and then when we saw them, they got disappointed because it's not the beauty that you looked at the time of shooting? But the scene you filmed the scene and you saw were the same. This is not surprising, because the camera sees the world differently than our eyes. Now I will try to summarize the main points. This will help you make the reality more accurately from your photos or taking advantage of these differences in creativeartwork.

For starters, we have two eyes, while the camera has just one lens! Thanks to our stereoscopic view, we can perceive depth. This is because we can see the world from two slightly different points of view. Each of our eyes sees reality from a slightly different angle (parallax angle). Our brain then elaborates the information coming from both of our eyes permitting us to perceive depth. This is impossible for a camera, and that's why pictures tend to be "flat" (actually they are). If you try to cover one of your eyes, you will get the point. In this case, of course, your reasoning will still tell you if an object is nearer than another (e.g. a nearer car will appear bigger than a further away one). However, you will not perceive depth as before. Try catching a ball someone has thrown to you: you will probably miss it!

Depth of field is something unknown to our eyes but always lurking in the camera. When we look at something, be it near or far away, we instantly focus it. The camera usually can focus either the near objects or the objects far away, but not all of them contemporarily.

Another striking difference between the eye and the camera is their ability to see contrasty scenes. In each scene we look at, there are some parts darker and other parts brighter. Our eyes are usually able to see correctly both of them, virtually simultaneously. But the camera can't. If Have you ever tried to photograph a subject in the shade with a bright background (see example), you noticed that the person was rendered too dark underexposed () or the background is too light (overexposed). It was not your fault: it is used in the middle, take the picture, was a classic film or a CCD sensor.

What color? The colors are different, even seen. Also find various film or CCD color differently. Even our field of view is different from that> Room for camera field of view depends on the lens mounted.

At the end of all that these differences are good or bad? Depends. If you're struggling to make the scene are to appear, as does eye, you have to work hard to overcome these different properties. On the other hand, if you want to be creative, these differences are the same as a golden opportunity.