From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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Lens features

Lens features

From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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Lens features

In addition to quality differences, some lenses will have more features than others. Now quality should be your main selection benchmark, but you want to pay attention to other features as well. I've got a couple of zoom lenses here and there is an important difference in the way that they zoom. This lens has an internal zooming mechanism. When I turn the zoom ring, you don't see anything happening outside the lens. If I look inside though, I see all sorts of lens elements and things moving around. This lens has an external zoom mechanism. When I turn the zoom ring, the lens gets physically longer and shorter. Now you now think that is much of a big deal and it may not be, but if you spend the lot of time in foul weather and rough environments, an external zooming mechanism like this could begin to wear out quicker, because dust and stuff can get on here and actually be carried down inside the lens mechanism. So an internal mechanism is definitely more durable and long-lasting than an…

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