Nature Photography - Which Lens Do I Use?

First of all the camera is only as good as the lens. Then next in line the picture will only be as good as the settings tailored for the light and environment.

With that being said, let's look first at what lens is needed for which application.

We will begin by classifying lenses into 4 different categories. And defining a couple terms.

Each of the following have fast and slow models

1. Fixed Wide Angle

2. Fixed Portrait

3. Fixed Telescopic

4. Zoom Wide - Telescopic

By the term fixed I mean the focal length is fixed. This means that the lens cannot zoom in or zoom out ( mm is the same all the time). The only adjustment control that the lens has is focusing.

Why would you want a lens that could not zoom? That is a good question. The answer is that it is a better lens, that has fewer elements of glass to disperse the light and will give a better quality picture. These are also sometimes called prime lenses.

The terms fast and slow refer to the aperture size. This is also called F-stop. The lower the F-Stop the faster the lens, and the higher the f-stop the slower the lens. I like to compare this to our human eye. The F-Stop represents our pupil which allow a certain amount of light in when our eyelid is open (AV). Then our eyelid represents the shutter speed which allows light in for a certain amount of time (TV). The wider that our pupil is (f-stop), then the less time (faster) we would need to open our eye lid (shutter speed), to allow a certain amount of exposure (EV).

So hopefully you can see (no pun intended) that (TV) Time Value and (AV) Aperture Value both influence the (EV) exposure of a picture. If a picture is over exposed then is will be too bright and a lack of detail. If it is underexposed you have the same problem in the opposite direction and the picture is too dim.

Depending what you want to accomplish you will need to not only have the right focal length, but the correct AV and TV to accomplish the correct EV.

Now let's look at some real life applications.

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