Adam Wilt

Have you ever wanted to know how camera lenses are made? Did you know that it takes days to manufacture lens?

In this fantastic video you can learn how camera lenses are made:

The Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Gaussian optics provide sharp delineation from near to far focusing distances and the color balance is very good for a standard lens. Also, it produces  wonderful bokeh.

Autofocus is little noisy and slow, especially in low light conditions. This model offers a fast f/1.8 aperture, an excellent lens for for all those who prefer to use a fixed focal length.

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II is very affordable. Dimensions are 2.7 x 2.7 x 1.6 inches and this lense has plastic construction. Such dimensions and plastic housing makes it very lightweight (4.6 ounces).

Canon EF 50mm f1.8 II Camera Lens

It is necessary to handle the lens with care. His plastic construction can not resist impact and you can say goodbye if you drop it.

Product Characteristics

• High Performance Standard Lens
• Fast f/1.8 Aperture
• 46-Degree Angle of View
• 1.5′ (0.45m) Close Focusing Distance
• 52mm Filter Size

Some examples of photos taken with this lens:

Flickr/CyranoB’s

Pros: sharp images, image quality, price, lightweight

Cons: slow autofocus, plastic housing

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lense has excellent customer reviews on Amazon.com.

Customer reviews – Amazon.com

When all things considered Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II is excellent for this price range. Let’s face it, for this price you won’t find better lens! All beginners should have this lens in theirs arsenal.

In my first article I wrote few sentences about camera lenses and theirs 2 main properties: focal length and aperture.

In elementary school I have learned about the focal length and I will try to explain you a little and share my knowledge.

What is Focal Length?

Focal length is a distance in millimeters between the lense and the focal point.

Focal Length - Flickr/Derek K. Miller

In this picture you can see a simple example of the lense and the focal point. In the cameras that is more complex beceause it contains more lenses: for variable focusing, correct for distortions and aberrations… Fundamentaly, these two types have the same basic idea.

As I said in one of my last posts, there are different types of lenses.

• For far away objects we use a telephoto lens with focal length of 135, 200 or 300 mm.
• Wide angle lens is used to take photos of people in a room. Focal length are 28 or 21 mm
• Normal lenses have focal length around 50 mm. They are called „normal“ because an object can be seen like through human eyes.

For example: you want to take a picture of six people in a room. With normal lens you could probably „see“ 4 of them. The other two would be cut because you are in the room and you can not distance yourself. For that purpose the best solution is wide angle lens with a focal length of 21 or 28 mm.

Telephoto lens is used when you want to take pictures of sport events or landscape from distance. You have probably noticed that telephoto lenses are long – this is because they have long focal length, sometimes more than 30 cm.

Angle of View

In next picture you can see angles of 3 lenses with different value of focal length.

Flickr/Derek K. Miller

21 mm – 74° angle

50 mm – 46° angle

200 mm – 12° angle

As you can see, 21 mm has the biggest viewing angle. As I said before, this type of lens is perfect for pictures in a room unlike 200 mm with small angle and application for distance photos.

Flickr/Derek K. Miller

As you know, there is a lot of different lenses. All of them have the same function: they capture the reflective light from subject and focus it on the image sensor. The main difference between them is how they transmit the light.

Telephoto lens – A telephoto lens has a long focal length and his primary function is to magnify the subject. Also, this lense brings closer objects that are far away. That property is good to use when we can not approach to the object or we do not want (sport, nature or wild animals).

Wide angle lens – This type of lens has small focal length. With wide angle lens you can add more scene in the photo. That can be useful when you take architectural or landscape photos.

Another use of this lense is to emphasise the distance between objects in front and rear: the objects in the front look very large unlike the objects in the rear.

Normal lens – This lense is also called a standard lens. It got its name because a field of view looks „normal“ for humans. The other types of lenses with shorter/longer focal length have expanded field of view.

Mirror lens – In this special lens some his parts are replaced with a mirror. Usually they come with a fixed aperture.

Zoom lens – In this type of the lens focal length can vary because positive and negative elements are placed together. Some telephoto lens can have zoom lens capabilities so don’t get confused.

Prime lens – Unlike the zoom lens, this type has a fixed focal length. They are fast with larger apperture that allows to take photos in lower light. With lesser moving parts they have solved a prbolem with chromatic aberrations.

Macro lens – Macro lens is used when we want to take a picture of insects, flowers or any other small object because they have very high focusing movement.

Fish-eye lens – With this lens we can get a disorted photo. Fish-eye is a wide angle lens which can give us hemispherical photo.

Fish Eye Lens - Flickr/jadi

Buy a good SLR camera is very hard and the same situation is when you search a lens. You have a lot of options in different shapes, sizes and prices.

Know About Lenses

First of all, you have to know that the lenses are very important, perhaps more than the camera!

Before you start your search, you should know some basic things about lenses. In my last article you can find additional informations about camera lenses properties.

Important things when you buy lense

When you decide to buy a lense you should consider a few tips:

1. Determine the focal length that you want.
2. Pick an aperture
3. Think about additional features
4. Read reviews and make an inquire about lense quality
5. Choose a price range

Flickr/koalazymonkey

If you want to facilitate your choise the best thing would be to make an excel file or on a piece of paper and compare different models. In a rows you can put type of zoom, aperture, focal length… That will help you to compare various models and then you can easily choose between them.