Camera Lens

When you want to take your photography to the next level, you will start to look at a DSLR Camera. Even though the camera body contains vitals that will help with the quality of photo, we will look more closely at the lenses or basically the eye of the camera.

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What do the markings on the lens mean?

The most important thing to understand when it comes to photography is light, as it is the main source that in essence creates the image you wish to capture. There are 3 things you can control when it comes to light, when using a DSLR camera. Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO but that falls part of the camera body, so I won't go into depth with regards to info on these topics.

Aperture

The Lens however is limited when it comes to one of those features, and that is aperture. One of the markings on the lens represents the minimum aperture the lens will allow for a certain focal length range.

Aperture basically determines depth of field. If you want the entire picture to be completely in focus, or do you want to blur out the background and focus only on a specific subject?

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Aperture is indicated with an f number or what is commonly know as an f-stop. As indicated in the photo, the lowest f-stop value that the lens will obtain when on its lowest focal length of 18mm is f3.5, the lower the number the bigger the aperture will open to allow in more light, and the higher the f-stop number the smaller the aperture will open to allow in less light.

Focal Length

Focal length is the lens's ability keep the frame or picture in its natural state or to distort the frame should you so wish. It also allows for zooming in closer to a subject should you be limited in how close you can get to the subject, such as in wildlife and sports photography.

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Focal length is indicated on the lens as numerical value in mm, as illustrated in the picture above 24 - 105mm indicates the lens's minimum and maximum focal length.

Other markings on the lens represent the diameter of the lens, and this would be important for accessories used in conjunction with the lens such as hoods, filters and lens caps. It is normally a numerical number followed with a circular sign and a line through the circle.

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The latest versions of lenses come with more features such a Autofocus and Vibration Reduction that help take the workload off the photographer.

The most important thing to understand when deciding on a lens, is to determine what you enjoy the most when capturing the moment, as different lenses are designed to do different things, but other things you should keep in mind is the minimum aperture value, as the more light the lens allows in, the better the picture quality in the end.

Example

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