Lens Usage

DSLR cameras enable you to change lenses to achieve a variety of effects. The camera's standard lens will give an angle of view roughly similar to that we perceive with the naked eye, a wide-angle lens enables you to get more into the frame, while a telephoto magnifies distance objects.

Uses for Standard Lenses

• Standard Prime lenses are good for full-length portraits, because you stand far enough away to prevent distortion but not so far away that you run out of space when working in small rooms.
• The large maximum aperture of a standard prime lens will make it ideal for taking pictures at parties and celebrations where you don't want to use flash, which could disturb the subjects
• A standard 28-90mm zoom lens (or its digital equivalent) is perfect for everyday photography, because its compact and light and you will seldom need focal lengths outside this range
• Standard zooms are perfect for travel photography as well, in situations where there is often little time to change lenses or viewpoints. For this kind of work, a slightly longer zoom range (28-135mm, for example) can be an advantage

Uses for Wide-Angled Lenses

• Huge sweeping landscapes can only be captured with a wide-angled lens. With longer focal lengths you are restricted to picking out interesting details
• Domestic interiors can be quite cramped, making photography difficult. A wide-angled lens will make a room look larger and enable you to get more people into the shot
• Landmarks and tourist attractions are often hemmed in by other buildings, leaving you no room to stand back to take the picture unless you have a wide-angled lens
• The big difference in size between close and distant objects enable you to produce surreal compositions in which everyday objects take on a monumental and dramatic appearance

Advantages of Telephoto Lenses

• Wildlife photography is difficult or impossible without telephoto lenses, since animals and birds frighten easily if you get too close
• Many sports are impossible to photograph successfully without a telephoto lens because spectator areas are a long way from the action
• Telephoto lenses can produce striking landscape shots, since they enable you to pick out distant details and 'flatten' perspective
• Portrait shots can be improved by throwing backgrounds out of focus. This requires shallow depth-of-field, a characteristic of telephoto lenses

Disadvantages of Telephoto Lenses

• Telephoto lenses appear to 'compress' perspective. Unlike wide-angles, they reproduce subjects and their backgrounds at their true relative sizes, or at least closer to them
• This effect will become obvious if you attempt to photograph a tree, for example, against a distance mountain. If you fill the frame with the tree in both cases, the wide-angle lens will make the mountain tiny, while the telephoto will make it look much larger
• Telephoto lenses also make objects at different distances look closer together

Uses of Extreme Lenses

• Due to its scale, architectural photography can be quite a challenge. An ultra-wide-angle lens may be the only way to capture the subject in its entirety from the viewpoint available
• It is very difficult to fully capture the interiors of buildings - whether they are small or large - without an ultra-wide-angle lens. Other lenses can only capture sections or details
• In the case of sports that take place on a large pitch, such as football, you will need an ultra-telephoto lens to fill the frame with individual players
• At air shows, the public is kept well back from the display areas, so if you want to photograph aeroplanes in action, an ultra-telephoto lens will be essential