Page 9 - Learning How to Photograph with your DSLR Camera 2nd Edition Jan 2021

Lesson 2: Camera Lenses: Which One and Why

The basics of understanding lenses are fundamental to selecting and using a specific
lens for your photography project. For example, for a landscape scene, you may want a
wide view to exhibit the expanse of the land, while for a portrait you probably want a
lens that ha a more narrow field that can portray your subject without distortion and
similar to what the eye sees.

Full Frame Lenses

In the previous lesson, I discussed the Full Frame, and the APS-C sensors in your
camera body. The full frame cameras have a sensor that is essentially the same as the
35mm film cameras before DSLR’s. This means that nearly all lenses manufactured for
your brand film cameras can be used on the same brand full frame camera bodies with
the same field of view as you would expect if shooting through a film camera. Note that
there are some incredibly good older lenses, as I own a few, that are cheaper now and
produce wonderful photographs.

For the APS-C cameras, they can also use these older and newer full frame lenses,
although because these are crop sensors, the field of view will not be the same as if it
were on a full frame camera. Another way to think of this is that the image is zoomed in.
For example, in bird photography, a lens would differ on the full frame vs. the APS-C. On
the APS-C cameras, the bird is looking closer because the sensor is smaller, thus
cropped.

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