The one biggest advantage of a SLR is the ability to change the lens on the camera. It is this ability that extends the functionality of the camera far beyond anything that can be accomplished with a fixed lens camera.
Below are some of the different types of photographic lens:
Zoom Lenses
Zoom lenses are lenses where the focal length of the lens can be varied, allowing the photographer to zoom in to a subject, isolating them in a scene from some of their surroundings, or zoom out to include other elements into the photographs. Often today's cameras come with a kit lens with a zoom range of 18 - 55mm, this lens takes the place of the traditional 50mm lens.
This lens with its small zoom range provides some scope for the photographer, giving them some limited opportunities with the camera, prompting the photographer to buy additional lenses.
Above is a typical 'kit lens'
A more useful zoom lens is shown below:
This lens, a 70 - 300mm zoom lens is sometimes referred to as a tele-photo zoom lens, which offers a wider range of focal lengths covering popular tele-photo lenses.
A super zoom is a zoom lens that covers a very wide range of focal lengths ranging from wide angle to tele-photo, within one lens body.
The lens above is a Tamron 18-200mm 'super zoom' lens, which has become my standard lens as it offers such a wide range of focal lengths. On my previous SLR, a Canon T70, my super zoom lens was a Vivitar 28-210mm lens which I found enabled me to capture scenes how I wanted them, but also allowed me to zoom in on individual features when I wanted.
Zoom lenses are good general purpose lenses which offer a wide range of possibilities, but some of the more expensive lenses offer larger apertures of f2.8 for the whole focal range, giving these lenses the advantage in low light situations or when faster shutter speeds are needed.
Zoom lenses are good general purpose lenses which offer a wide range of possibilities, but some of the more expensive lenses offer larger apertures of f2.8 for the whole focal range, giving these lenses the advantage in low light situations or when faster shutter speeds are needed.
Tele-photo
Tele-photo lenses are fixed lenses, which offer higher focal lengths than prime lenses, often larger than the focal ranges offered by larger zoom lenses, but have larger apertures than zoom lenses can offer.
One of the team, Suzy, has a 800mm tele-photo lens !
Above is a 500mm tele-photo lens, which is not an easy lens to use due to its length. For this lens you would have to use a support (tripod or monopod).
Another way of providing this focal length, but in a more compact form is a catadioptic mirror lens:
This lens, whilst more compact, has a disadvantage of having a fixed aperture of f8, which reduces its uses in low light. For this type of lens you would have to use in a stop down mode.
This lens provides this high focal length, within its short wide body by using a series of mirrors (hence its nickname 'mirror lens'), which reflect the incoming light towards a small mirror at the front of the lens,
this reflects the light back towards the camera, this procedure is how such a large focal length is produced within a small lens body.
Often these lenses use the universal 't mount' system, whereby the lens has a thread which is connected to the camera via an adaptor, which can easily be changed allowing the lens to be used on different makes of camera, by changing the adaptor without having to buy a different lens.
These lenses can be used to take photographs of wildlife, at a safe distance, or aircraft in flight, where large focal lengths are needed.
These lenses can be used to take photographs of wildlife, at a safe distance, or aircraft in flight, where large focal lengths are needed.
Wide Angle
These lenses are the opposite to tele-photo lenses, where shorter focal lengths are needed. These lenses have focal lengths of around 15 - 28mm.
These lenses are far shorter than tele-photo lenses, and sometimes offer smaller apertures.
These lenses are used for landscape, architectural, and some travel photography as they allow the photographer to include more scenery into the photograph.
Prime lens
These lenses are far shorter than tele-photo lenses, and sometimes offer smaller apertures.
These lenses are used for landscape, architectural, and some travel photography as they allow the photographer to include more scenery into the photograph.
Prime lens
These lenses are fixed focal length lenses, but have large apertures of f1.2 and above.
These are seen as some of the traditional lenses where the photographer would carry an assortment of different lenses, where today many of these lenses would be encompassed within one zoom lens.
These lenses are usually used for specific types of photographs like portraits.
These are seen as some of the traditional lenses where the photographer would carry an assortment of different lenses, where today many of these lenses would be encompassed within one zoom lens.
These lenses are usually used for specific types of photographs like portraits.
Macro Lenses
These lenses are specially designed with close focusing for taking close up photographs of nature, and textures.
These lenses are specialist, although some lenses, in particular zoom lenses, feature a macro mode, where they can focus at close range for macro photography as well as their normal use.
These lenses are specifically designed for macro photography.
Fish Eye
These lenses can be seen as extreme wide angle lenses, where due to the very low focal length of the lens, there is a distortion in the final photograph:
In these cases, this distortion is used in an artistic form, or sometimes just to include more than a normal wide angle could manage.
These lenses can be seen as extreme wide angle lenses, where due to the very low focal length of the lens, there is a distortion in the final photograph:
In these cases, this distortion is used in an artistic form, or sometimes just to include more than a normal wide angle could manage.
The fish eye lens above is in fact a fish eye zoom lens with a focal range of 10 - 17mm, with the lower end of the focal range creating the more pronounced fish eye effect.
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