I know some of you out there are far past the stage of needing this post. Believe it or not, only 10 months ago, I was not. I was googling every possible photography question under the sun.
I get lots of questions everyday from readers and recently, I’ve been getting an influx of questions about lenses. Before an amateur really even sets out on their quest to capture images, they must know the basics about lenses. So naturally, this information needs to be in as plain english as possible. No techie mumbojumbo.
Without further ado, bullet points for what you need to know to set out on your (expensive!) new hobby of collecting camera lenses:
- When a lens has only one number in the mm part of the title (like 85mm instead of 18-200mm) then that means it doesn’t zoom. It is a fixed, or ‘prime’ lens.
- The f/stop portion of the name (exe: ’1.4′) tells you how far the aperture opens up to allow in light and a resulting shallow depth of field. The lowest you can get is 1.2 so 1.4 is excellent. The cost difference between a 1.2 and 1.4 can be up to a staggering extra £2000!
- Note: I hear that Jack Bauer uses a f/0.25 to track terrorists. No idea what that would cost :)
- Aperture is often referred to as ‘lens speed’ and is used to describe how ‘fast’ a lens is.
I could go into even greater detail, but I’ve found a perfect post from DPS which does just that and in refreshingly easy language. Enjoy!
