You might have a solid camera, but it can be useless to you as a creator if you don’t have the right camera lenses. Your camera might have thousands of specifications, but the lens does all the capturing magic. This seemingly tiny element is responsible for focusing light onto the back of your DSLR camera, giving you the right image output and film quality.
Without a lens attached to your camera, every shot you take is bound to produce just white light, which no photographer can work with. So, as a professional or beginner photographer, it helps to invest in the right lens to ensure you capture shots with great pixel quality. On that note, here are four of the most common custom lenses and their uses.
1. Standard Camera Lenses
The standard lens is a mid-range focal length unit used for street and travel photography, video production services, and documentary projects. The focal length ranges between 35 mm and 85mm, and the lenses are built to mimic the human eye and how it views images and scenes in terms of perspective and visual angles.
The standard camera lenses are a must-have for everyone who identifies as a professional photographer because of their versatile design and affordability. Many creators swear by the 50mm lens with the varying options available, which is fondly referred to as the Nifty Fifty. It’s used by amateurs and professionals alike, and its flexible design makes it easy to use.
2. Telephoto Camera lenses
The next type of lens is great for photographers taking shots that require the isolation of their subject. These lenses are also referred to as zoom lenses, with their major strength being that they offer multiple focal points. You can checkout the best telephoto lenses for Nikon to get an idea of what’s out there on the market.
Telephoto camera lenses can be considered ideal options when searching for the best webcams for streaming, but they might prevent you from having a narrow field of view for some images. Nonetheless, they’re great for use as a telescope to view subjects such as planets and stars, thanks to the different quality and ability to capture shots even in darker environments.
3. Wide Area Camera Lenses
The wide-area lenses will be your best bet if you wish to capture a large space and fit it effortlessly into the frame. These are great lenses that are used commonly by street and landscape photography. Youtube vloggers and cinematographers also commonly use these lenses, especially where broader spaces need to be captured. These lenses bring everything into focus without much effort on the part of the photographer.
The wide area lens ranges from 14mm to 35mm, and these lenses are great at creating a large depth of field. Like every other lens, it does have its downside. While it offers wide areas, it also operates with a shorter focal length which sometimes translates into distorted photos. However, the best way to correct this will be with photo editing software, making the wide-area lens a worthy investment.
4. Specialty Camera Lenses
The last lens type we look at is the specialty lenses, which that add unique touches to your shots. There are many different types but the most common is the fish-eye lens, which distorts the image’s field of view, giving you scenery that resembles a bubble.
There’s also the infrared lens that allows you to play with lighting. It filters all light waves, leaving only the infrared for a unique visual effect. Infrared lenses are great for motion graphics or video projects looking for special visual effects. Again on the visual effect front, if you’re looking for a lens to help play with the size of objects, go in for a tilt-shift lens. These lenses destroy perspectives, making objects seem smaller than their actual size.
Whether you’re a beginner or a professional filmmaker, videographer, or photographer, you need the very best equipment. This requires constant study of specifications and trials. Plenty of practice with each lens is the best way to get the most out of them, so don’t stop taking shots, no matter how unimpressive they might look in the beginning.
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