Welcome to today’s post for the great Blogging A to Z Challenge!

Today is L is for Lens.

Lenses are important and Lenses are expensive!

I only have one lens (the lens that came with the camera) for my digital DSLR:  an 18-55mm lens.  What does this mean?  According to http://expertphotography.com/what-do-the-numbers-and-letters-on-lenses-mean/, “this refers to the focal length of your lens. 18mm is wide angle, and 55mm is more zoomed. When you zoom your lens in, you’re zooming between 18mm and 55mm. The ‘mm’ stands for millimeter, and this is the distance between your camera’s sensor, and the point of convergence in the lens. The further away the point of convergence is from the sensor, the more zoomed you will be.”  If the lens is at 55, things look closer, and if it’s at 18 they look farther away.  There you go.

There are many kinds of lenses with different focal lengths, designed to do different things.  The most common appear to be:

Macro:  “True macro lenses offer a magnification factor of 1.0x or 1:1 at its closest focus setting. Fit one of these lenses to a DSLR like the Canon EOS 60D, and a standard UK postage stamp will fill the whole frame.”  http://www.digitalcameraworld.com/2013/08/23/what-is-a-macro-lens-magnification-minimum-focus-distance/.  I want a Macro lens just so I can get closer to little things and keep them in focus.

Telephoto:  Use a telephoto lens to take a picture of something far away that you can’t get close to, like a bird perched in a tree or something out on the ocean.  Well, that’s what I would use it for. However, according to http://www.imaging-resource.com/news/2015/03/31/what-do-telephoto-lenses-really-do, “The two most common uses of a telephoto lens by a professional photographer would be: Put backgrounds out of focus; Change the perspective of the picture.”  Go figure!  The article goes on to explain how to do these, so if you’re interested, check it out.

Wide-angle:  “[W]ide angle lenses are very well suited to any type of photography where your goal is to photograph something that is physically large, such as that building we talked about earlier or a big, sweeping landscape.”  http://www.digital-photo-secrets.com/tip/215/what-does-the-mm-mean-on-a-lens/

Kevin has a set of lenses for his old non-digital camera, but which we can use with the digital camera by using a special adapter he purchased a while back.  This means, of course, that I am not getting any new lenses anytime soon.  But, they are good lenses I understand.  What lenses does he have?  Well, he has a few different ones, but the ones he’s most proud of are his Zeiss lenses (http://www.zeiss.ca/camera-lenses/en_ca/camera_lenses.html), and here they are!

This is a portrait lens.

This is a wide angle lens

This is your standard issue 55mm lens with a shallow depth of field.