Nature Photography Photo Workshop

5.2. DSLR LENSES

The purpose of a camera lens is to collect the incoming light and focus it at the focal plane. The type and quality of your lenses have a huge effect on the quality of your pictures. The way a lens transmits light to the sensor is a unique characteristic to that lens model and can also vary between different lenses of the same make and model. Sharpness, distortion, vignetting (darkening) of the corners, and lens artifacts such as chromatic aberration are properties that should be carefully evaluated when comparing the quality of the pictures a lens can make. It's always better to have fewer, better lenses than a lot of cheap, low-quality lenses.

5.2.1. TYPES OF LENSES

Most nature photographers carry several lenses in their bag. There are three basic types:

• Prime lens. Also called a fixed focal-length or single focal-length lens, a prime lens is set at one specific focal length. In general, prime lenses are the sharpest, highest-quality lenses available from a given manufacturer, but if you want to get closer to or farther from your subject you must move the camera.

  ACCESSORY LENSES There's a category of lenses that don't attach directly to the camera; instead, they attach to the end of the main lens. It's important to understand these are not filters (which are discussed later). Accessory lenses manipulate the light as it passes through by bending the light waves. The most common example is the close-up lens.

• Zoom lens. This type of lens allows you to increase ...