Lenses Archives - Page 3 of 4

Macro Lens

What Is a Macro Lens Used for When Taking Photographs? A macro lens is lens designed for macro, or close-up photography. Macro lenses feature extremely small minimum focusing distances meaning they are capable of focusing on objects that are extremely close to the lens. A good Macro lens should feature a 1:1 magnification ratio for taking highly detailed, life sized images of subjects. Macro lenses use optical formula specifically designed to render close objects in extreme detail and as such are not particularly versatile; Due to the small minimum focusing distances macro lenses have an extremely narrow depth of field, …

Maximum Aperture

What Does Maximum Aperture Mean When Talking about Photography? When talking about photography and more specifically photographic lenses, the term ‘maximum aperture’ describes the widest hole that can be formed by the aperture blades within a lens. At it’s maximum aperture a lens will allow a lot of light to enter the camera, therefore allowing the use of faster shutter speeds when capturing images; Lenses with large maximum apertures, for example f/1.4 are therefore often referred to as ‘fast lenses’. The trade off when using a lens’ maximum aperture is that images will be softer and have a very narrow …

MFD

What Does MFD Stand for in Photography and What Does It Mean? MFD stands for ‘Minimum Focusing Distance’. It is the minimum distance between a camera sensor or film, and image subject, at which a lens is able to focus on the image subject. MFD can be measured in meters or inches and is often marked on a lenses barrel. Knowledge of the MFD of a lens allows a photographer to make the right creative choices when positioning himself in relation to close subjects ensuring the required image sharpness is achieved. In situations where capturing the image you want requires …

Minimum Aperture

What Does Minimum Aperture Mean When Talking About Cameras and Lenses? The term ‘minimum aperture’ refers to the smallest possible hole that can be formed by the aperture blades in a photographic lens. Generally at it’s minimum aperture a lens will produce extremely sharp images with a wide depth of field, but will allow a much reduced amount of light to strike the photographic medium. A lens with an minimum aperture of f/64 for example would produce extremely sharp images with a very wide depth of field. The minimum aperture of a lens is usually listed in the lens’ specifications …

MTF Chart

What Is An MTF Chart? MTF stands for Modulation Transfer Function and an MTF chart is a chart that plots the optical performance of a lens across the the image, from the centre to the corner. Various lines on the chart depict the lens’ performance in both contrast and resolution, and it’s the combination of these two things that give us what we might call perceived sharpness. A lens only looks sharp when there is a good balance of both contrast AND resolution, even though most people don’t typically think so much about the contrast side of things. The x-axis of …

Nifty fifty

What does Nifty Fifty mean when talking about cameras and photography? The term ‘nifty fifty’ is a photography colloquialism for a cheap 50mm prime lens, usually with a maximum aperture of f/1.8 or faster. Lenses in this range are fast, lightweight and extremely versatile for street and portrait photography. The ‘nifty’ feature is the price; These f/1.8 and f/1.4 50mm lenses often have a relatively simple optical formula with fewer elements than their more complex counterparts. This makes a ‘nifty fifty’ one best value pieces of glass you can add to your kit as a beginner who is looking to …

Normal Lens

What Is a Normal Lens and How Is It Used When Taking Photos? A ‘normal lens’ is a Lens with a focal length approximately equal to the diagonal of the film format or of a digital camera’s image sensor. A scene viewed through a normal lens appears to have the same perspective as the way your eye sees it. Most 35mm cameras normal lenses have a focal length of approximately 50 mm. Normal lenses are extremely popular with street photographers because the perspective captured in an image shot with a normal lens will be extremely true to life, having the effect …

OOF

What Does OOF Mean In Photography? OOF or Oof stands for Out Of Focus and it means that the area of the image is not within the depth of field for your given combination of aperture, focal length and distance from subject. Sharp, fine details will be lost and your image will look ‘soft’ or blurry, at least in part. If your subject is OOF then you’ve got a problem! But OOF can also be used to describe the background or foreground of an image as well. For example, someone might say “the image has a pleasingly OOF background”, meaning the area behind …

Open Up

What Does Open up Mean When Talking About Taking Photographs? When taking photographs to ‘open up’ or ‘opening up’ refers to the practice of allowing more light to be recorded by a photographic medium for example a camera film or sensor. Opening up can be done in one of two ways; By selecting a larger aperture setting on a lens, or setting a longer exposure time on a camera. Both methods allow more light to be captured by the film or image sensor but have different creative effects. The challenge of of capturing a good photograph is knowing which method …

Optical Zoom

What does Optical Zoom mean when talking about photography? When talking about photography the term ‘optical zoom’ refers to a specific type of lens which allows a photographer to alter the magnification ratio by changing the distance between groups of optical elements within the lens. The zoom ratio of an optical zoom lens is often controlled by rotating the front portion of the lens, this manipulates a mechanism within the lens which moves elements within the lens barrel. On smaller cameras the zoom ratio may be controlled electronically using a motor. Importantly, the focus settings of a lens are not …