Aspherical Lens

What is an Aspherical Lens? The term Aspherical Lens is slightly misleading, although it one that is often used in the camera industry. As you probably know, camera lenses are comprised of several different lens elements. Each lens element serves a specific purpose, such as correcting chromatic aberration or field curvature. An aspherical lens element is commonly used to correct spherical aberration, though it is usually only one or two elements within a more complex lens design. A spherical lens has a constant curvature to its surface. If you could extrapolate that curve, it would eventually come back around to …

Read more

Astrophotography

What Does Astrophotography Mean? Astrophotography is the art of photographing nighttime skyscapes and astrological objects such as stars and planets in the night sky. Successful astrophotography requires knowledge of various photography techniques such as use of long exposures for creating star trails, knowledge of camera sensitivity to avoid excess noise levels in photographs of dark skies, and the use of camera steadying equipment such as tripods to aid in the capture of sharp long exposure images. Astrophotography techniques can even be used to capture images of objects that would otherwise be invisible to the naked eye for example far away …

Read more

Autofocus

What Is Autofocus? Autofocus (AF) is the feature of a camera that tries to ensure that your chosen subject is sharp within the photo. Sensors detect how far away the subject is from the camera, and this information is relayed to the lens, which then uses an electronic motor to adjusts the focal distance of the lens. Most point and shoot cameras are autofocus only, but all DSLRs and mirrorless cameras have the option to disable AF if desired. The first autofocus cameras were developed in the late 1970’s and their speed and accuracy has been improved greatly since that …

Read more