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!