Lens Focal Length | Photography 101 Santa Clarita

There are several factors that make up a lens. We have been learning about the aperture, zooms vs. primes, etc. However one of the basic principles that comes to mind when choosing a lens is the focal length of that lens. Is it the lens for you given what you are shooting?

Typically focal lengths are divided up into 4 categories:

wide, standard, zoom, telephoto.

As a rule of thumb, the lower the focal length number, the wider the resulting shot. If you are looking into wide angle lenses, you are probably going to be looking at lenses that range from about 8-35mm in length. These can be considered fisheye lenses (which add distortion to the surrounding edges) or aspherical (which has much less distortion).  These terms typically have to do with the shape of the lens.  

For standard lenses, you are going to be looking at focal lengths anywhere from 50mm to roughly 100mm. these are more the types of views that we would consider to be standard. 50mm is about the focal length of what the natural eye sees for example. Even at 100mm though, the lens tends to fall into a sub category of medium telephoto.  

Anything above 100mm is typically known as a telephoto lens (or super telephoto above 400mm!). These are great for getting those shots that are far away to the point where you need a close up, but can’t get close up!   Last, but not least, we have our zoom lenses. These can be standard zoom or telephoto zoom based on the focal lengths that they cover. Standard zoom lenses typically include that 50mm length in the zoom length and telephoto zoom typically covers lengths over 100mm.  

For more references on the different types of lenses and focal lengths, definitely visit Canon’s website to see all the variety that they have to offer.  

What length do you shoot with?  

-J