A press release issued by a certain camera manufacturer proudly claims that "more than 50 lenses are available in our camera system."
When I read that, I thought: "Wow! What a wonderful thing for a professional photographer who needs to shoot in a variety of situations." But another thought soon occurred to me: What about the amateur or beginner in 35mm SLR photography who doesn't know the differences among lenses?To help the novice photographer determine which lens or lens system is best for his needs, let's go over the various types of lenses and accessory lenses.
First, there's the normal or standard lens. Most 35mm SLR cameras are sold with a 50mm normal or standard lens, so called because it has an angle of view similar to that of a person's normal field of vision. This is a good, inexpensive starter lens.
Wide-angle lenses: This type lens is necessary when you want to capture sweeping landscapes, with tremendous depth of focus. These lenses range in focal length from 20mm to 35mm, the smaller-number lenses having the wider view and higher price tag.
Telephoto lenses: If you want to take portraits, or sports or wildlife pictures, you'll need a telephoto lens. Like wide-angles, telephoto lenses are also available in a variety of focal lengths, from 85mm to 800mm. The longer the lens, the more powerful the magnification.
For example, if you were in Africa and wanted to get as "close" as possible to a tiger, you'd use the longest lens available. Longer lenses, like wider ones, feature more glass and complex optics. Therefore, they are quite expensive as well.
Zoom lenses are perhaps the most popular lenses. Their advantage is that they offer several focal lengths (lenses) in one lens. My favorite zoom is a 35mm-135mm. It gives me semiwide-angle, standard and short telephoto views. It's a great general lens. There are also 100mm-300mm telephoto zooms, 28mm-85mm zooms, and even a zoom with a tremendous 50mm-300mm range. The greater the zoom range, the more versatile - and expensive - the lens.
Macros, mirrors and teleconverters:
If you like to photograph flowers, stamps or coins, you'll need a macro lens. This lens produces high magnification and lets you get extremely close to your subject.
Mirror lenses use mirrors to cut down on the length of super telephoto lenses. For example, a 500mm mirror lens may only be 150mm long - a nice feature if you need to travel light.
Teleconverters double the effective focal length of a lens. For example, a teleconverter on a 100mm lens gives the lens an effective focal length of 200mm. The advantage here is that you can pack a relatively small teleconverter in your camera bag and double the focal length at will.
AF vs. non-AF lenses: Today, every camera manufacturer offers autofocus lenses, most of which focus faster than humans can.
I'm often asked if autofocus lenses are better than non-autofocus lenses. My reply is a simple one: "Do you ever want to take an out-of-focus picture?"