I get asked quite often, "What are you taking pictures of, are you with the local news?" It turns out often people ask because in this day and age of smart phones, many people are taking pictures and videos but have little concept of what digital DLSR look like or why anyone other then photojournalists would want to lug around a huge camera, after all my iPhone© takes the best pictures. Well it's all in the optics folks, rule of thumb is the larger the lens and internal sensor, the richer and larger pixels a camera can capture. If your sensor is the size of an iPhone, the sensor is limited by both the size of the lease and the sensor is no larger than a pencil eraser. The typical full frame or even the less expensive partial frame sensor is 500x larger. If you think of this from the perspective of how large is your dinner plate, it start to make sense. I can have a really small plate and pile my dinner on the small plate because I don't like washing dishes or I'm on a plane and they fit better on the fold down table in front of me. Regardless, you can only fit so much on that plate before you have to compromise and limit the amounts of each service. If I have a huge plate, that same dinner looks a whole lot smaller and leaves a lot more room for larger portion sizes and opens the options to include more items from the buffet; Pile it on please!
Background Zoomed Primer
Basic Lens Types
While there are many specialized lenses, they break down into two basic type the majority of the time.
The Primary Lens
A Primary Lens is a fixed focal length optical lens, used often for portrait photos or pictures of things that don't require zooming in and out and refocusing. They provide excellent options for this purpose.
The Zoom Lens
The zoom lens is a camera optic that allows the photographer to capture a range of focal points including infinity, where he or she can capture a focused view of everything they can see in the viewfinder also know as field of view. Forget about digital zoom as it really only doubles up the pixels nearest neighbors and ends up limiting the amount a picture enlargements. If you want to digitally zoom in on a portion of your picture, wait until later and do this in the digital editing program of your choice. You will soon understand what I am writing about as you crop the photo. As you edit your photo you will soon see a grainy photo followed by a large boxes which the camera sensor captured the original image. In a future posting I'll discuss what megapixels mean to the professional as well as the daily use of the camera phone, advantages and disadvantages of both. Each of the prior mentioned have qualities both amateur and professionals take advantage.
The Lens Hood
"Why do you have that big plastic tulip or funnel looking thing on your camera? Do you just subscribe to the bigger is better, I'm from Texas and I'm huge camera dude" a
No, actually the lens hood serves three important functions, I'm not showing off. I subscribe
1. Lens hoods help protect my investment. When we move around it is highly probable
our often expensive lens will come in contact with various encounters of items that might scratch my lens. While camera bodies wear out, the lens is a long term investment as they are meant to be interchangeable with the other manufactures bodies. Even if you decide to change manufactures, they often sell adapters to where you can continue to use your old lens.
Tip
A good tip is to protect your optic lens with a inexpensive UV filter. It will keep out the dust and other granular which can scratch fine optics even if we are very careful how we clean our equipment. A good ultra violet filter will not only cut out the purple cast unseen by our eyes but captured by the dynamic range of the sensor, in protecting the lens, should it get damaged, is replaced for a small fraction the cost of replacing a 5,000.00 fine optic telephoto lens.
Quality Lenses range in price from several hundred dollars to tens of thousands depending upon the proper tool for the job. You wouldn't bring a pen knife to a knife fight would you? The investment in a lens should be considered before the camera body as fine optics retain their value as the bodies have a finite life span and loose value rapidly with each click of he limited life shutter. I have already been through a number of bodies though I continue to use my first lens. In fact I was given an old 33mm camera from which I took a 35mm - 50mm lens that would have cost me over 100.00 had it been purchased. I ditched the camera body even though I have a love for film photography as it is now cost prohibitive to take and develop fine art photographs.*
2. A hood keeps stray light from entering my lens at an angle. This stray light resulting from direct or elected light at the sides of your lens can cause the lens flare, a bright dot in the middle of your dream picture. It can also result in a washed out look for an end result as the angled reflective light distorts the light focused on the camera sensor. If you don't have a cover or forget to bring one, you can use your hand at the end to cover that light but with all the advantages of a hood, you can see why one might just leave it on all the time, even at night.
3. A well designed hood flares out to the closest focal point, giving you the widest depth of field for any shot.
4. Your black points will look sharper and colors rich without a need for much digital embellishment. The resulting image is what a DSLR provides in a natural balance of light and saturation of color.
Link
Here is a good explanation by a fellow YouTube photographers take on lens hoods, I thought as a followup you might enjoy a video from another persons point of view and some choices you can make in selecting a hood for your DLSR lens.
Keep in mind, if you can achieve the results you want and fit your needs, by all means, I still use my iPhone for the one off or shot's I would miss if I had to get my camera.
* Interesting Fact
Did you know film cameras do not have pixels? This is because they are analog in nature and the image is very fine, spread out across the strip without interruption. The quality of the film makes a big difference when blowing up a picture of this type. When we zoom in on a traditional photograph what one encounters is grain and noise. This why an old 110 camera and a thin photographic film, while it took nice and inexpensive shots, was inferiors to the larger high end consumer, professional 35mm camera format. The larger the film or sensor, the more light can be stored on the transfer medium and later blown up on the final prints.
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