One of the most wonderful things about cameras are the lenses. Once you enter the beautiful world of cameras with interchangeable lens capacities, things can get pretty wild.
I remember the first time I got a DSLR in my hands and I changed a lens, wow, that feeling was so incredible that I can still remember it to this day. That twisting and clicking feeling, jeez, so awesome.
Some years after that experience, I got the chance of buying my first DSLR and I was completely confused about lenses. I spent a lot of money in lenses I'm embarrassed to talk about today, but I did make one great investment, a 50mm f/1.4 lens.
50mm lenses are considered to be “the normal lenses” in the world of full frame cameras because they allow you to see through the camera with a focal length that matches human vision.
With smaller sensor cameras you can still get the same feeling, but with a crop factor. Understanding this, I want to share with you today 3 free guides that will help you through the marvelous world of lenses, from wide to telephoto lenses.
And after reading them, I'm sure you won’t make the same rookie mistakes that I did.
A Beginner’s Guide to the Wide Angle Lens
Let's start with all the lenses below the normal (50mm) focal length, the wide angle lenses. In this comprehensive guide from Leanne Cleaveley, you'll learn a lot about wide angle lenses, and why wide angle lenses are so useful for certain applications instead of long zoom or telephoto lenses.
Wide angle lenses enable you to see the world from a completely different perspective, everything becomes roomier and wide when using them.
Telephoto Lenses – Free Quick Guide
Telephoto lenses are attractive for a lot of people, and they give photographers some really serious working power when needed. Here Robin Nichols talks about some really nice features that come with telephoto lenses (like blurred backgrounds) and image stabilization.
He also talks about a pretty easy to understand rule called “the shutter speed rule” which will help you to take control of your telephoto lenses.
How to Choose a Lens for Night Photography
In this free guide, Aaron Seefeld walks us through some real-world situations and how to choose a lens for capturing wonderful pictures at night.
Here he will help you understand why you need to choose a lens by considering the camera that you already own, and also why it is important to do some self-discovery. He also helps you to figure out what you want to do with your night photography and to examine your creative intent.
Understanding about lenses is not as complex as learning about light but it is important for you to know about lenses because they are your main tool (after the camera) when taking photographs.
And I hope these guides help you before you have spent money in the wrong lenses just like I did :).
