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Summary: Understanding camera lenses means knowing the three basic types, which are normal, telephoto and wide angle, as well as the ranges for each. Use good lighting and study each lens's capabilities with advice from a professional photographer in this free video on camera lenses.
Steve Anthony has been a professional photographer since 1989. He is based in both New York City and Miami. As a photographer who specializes in theatrical head shots, Anthony also...read more
"Hi, my name is Steve Anthony, I'm a professional photographer with SteveAnthonyStudios.com. In this clip we're going to talk about how to understand camera lenses. When we talk about camera lenses, there are three basic types, normal, telephoto and wide angle. What you'll need are some camera lenses, in this case, I have a 50mm fixed focal length, normal lens and 85mm fixed focal length, telephoto lens and a 28-85 wide angle to telephoto zoom lens. Now in the case of a normal lens, you're talking about, in the 35mm photography, you're talking about in the range of 50mm. This happens to be a 50mm fixed focal length lens. And telephoto can go anywhere from, in the case of this lens, 85 to even up 300, 500, 600mm. That's for just for photographing things that are far away, that brings them closer to you. And wide angle is in the focal length of anywhere from 28mm on down. You can get as small as 6mm, in Fisheye lens. This happens to be a 28 to 85 zoom lens. Now the other two lenses that we just looked at were fixed focal length, which means that they only have one size which in that case was a 50 and an 85. This lens zooms in and out from 28mm to 85mm. Now a lot of times that can be much more convenient than having to change lenses, but there are limitations. The zoom lenses don't tend to have as good an optical quality as the fixed focal length lenses, and they tend to be slower, in the sense that they don't let in as much light. So you have to use good lighting or shoot outdoors. This has been Steve Anthony, thanks for watching."
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