Camera Lens

Make sure you buy a good camera lens when purchasing a camera. Buy a good camera as well, but don’t neglect a good camera lens.

Why? The lens is what your camera sees all your shots through. With most compact digital cameras, you can’t change the lens. Avoid a plastic digital camera lens because it doesn’t have the clarity of a glass lens.

What model of lens?

Ensure you purchase a lens that works with your camera too. A Nikon camera lens usually won’t work well with a Canon camera.

Types of Camera Lens

The most common lenses are : Wide Angle, Normal and Telephoto. The type of lens is determined by the Focal Length of the lens. Lens Focal Length

20mm to 35mm

Zoom; A Zoom lens can change it’s focal length to zoom in. So using a film 35mm lens on a digital camera has an effective focal length of 56mm.

A 35mm lens which gives a medium wide angle on a film camera acts as a traditional lens on a digital camera

Lens Speed

The ‘speed’ of a digital camera lens also defines a lens. Faster lenses are more expensive and usually heavier.

More expensive lenses have more advanced features.

Try to find a digital camera lens with this feature.

A badly composed picture won’t look great with a great camera lens.

Folding optical lenses are the type of lenses that fold back into the digital camera’s structure. Business photographers use these types of lenses often. This type of lens is great for a serious amateur photographer.

Fixed Focal Lenses do not have an optical zoom feature, but they usually have a digital zoom feature. Retractable Zoom lenses are what you find in most of today’s newer compact cameras. Interchangeable lenses are the grand daddy of them all.