Cameras With Removable Lenses Can Use Many Lenses
There are three general types of camera lenses. First is a wide-angle lens. Second is a "normal" perspective lens. Third is a telephoto lens. Focal length defines the lens type, with shorter lenses being wide-angle and longer being telephoto. Although single focal-length lenses are available, many modern cameras come with zoom lenses on which the focal length can be adjusted. In most cases, two types of lenses may be covered in a zoom, for example, wide-angle and normal or normal and telephoto. Several recent lenses have been released that do a good job across all three lens types.
Wide-angle Lenses
Wide-angle lenses can capture a wider field of view than the human eye. They are shorter in length than other types of lenses, and they are very good for landscapes. They also are very useful when trying to capture more detail in a confined space, such as when photographing a small room. Wide-angle lenses tend to emphasize differences in perspective. Objects in the foreground will appear larger than in reality. Because of this, wide-angle lenses are rarely used for portraits. Facial features closer to the lens will often appear larger than they really are.
"Normal" Lenses
A "normal" lens is a lens that captures approximately the same field of view as the human eye. These lenses tend to keep the relationship between the size of objects consistent throughout the field of view. Differences in sizes between foreground objects and background objects will appear normal.
Telephoto Lenses
A telephoto lens is a longer lens that has a narrow field of view. Telephoto lenses are good for filling the frame with distant objects. A telephoto lens has the opposite effect of a wide-angle in that it will compress objects in the photograph. Close objects appear to be closer in size to distant objects. In portraits, this is often flattering for a subject and many portrait photographers use medium telephoto lenses. At wide apertures, telephoto lenses have the shortest depth-of-field of any lens. This results in backgrounds being thrown out of focus, which can be a good way to visually isolate the subject of a photograph.
Tags: field view, telephoto lens, appear larger, appear larger than, distant objects, larger than, lens that
