From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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Primes and zooms

Primes and zooms

From the course: Photography Foundations: Lenses

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Primes and zooms

Lenses come in two flavors: prime lenses, which have a single fixed focal length, that means they have one field of view, and zoom lenses which have a variable focal length. So they have a field of view that can go from wide to more narrow. For the most part a lens with a longer focal length will be physically longer. For example, I've got this 400mm lens, which is as you would expect much longer than this 50mm lens. Now I say for the most part, because zoom lenses can complicate things. For example, I've got this 50mm lens here and then I've got this is a 16 to 35 millimeter zoom. It's much longer than the 50. That's because zoom lenses have complex mechanics and sometimes require extra glass. So even though this is ultimately a shorter focal length, it's a physically longer lens. With primes you'll sometimes find a kind of odd size variation. For example, here is a 28mm lens and here is a different 50mm lens. The 28mm is a shorter focal length, but in this case it's a physically…

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