Canon Camera Lenses: Meeting Your Photography Needs
Changing lenses is one of the greatest advantages to using an SLR camera as opposed to a digital “point-and-shoot” camera. From ultra-wide zoom lenses meant for landscape shots to macro lenses that can capture the tiniest details on miniature subjects, there are a wide variety of Canon camera lenses available to help you take the best pictures possible.
Wide-Angle Lenses
Canon has several fixed focal length and zoom varieties of wide-angle lenses. They also sell ultra-wide angle lenses, which are lenses with a focal length that is shorter than the short side of the sensor.
Both wide and ultra wide-angle lenses allow the photographer to capture a greater field depth and magnify the distance between objects. Because of the crop-factor of most digital cameras, a smaller focal length is needed to capture the same image that a film camera would capture from the same distance with a lens of a larger focal length. Some Canon SLR digital cameras do not have this crop factor and so do not require such small focal lengths, but they are generally much more expensive than SLRs that do have a crop factor.
Long-Focus Lenses
Long-focus Canon camera lenses magnify images in the distance, and the longer the focal length is, the greater the magnification will be. The most popular long-focus lens is the telephoto lens, which uses what is called the telephoto lens group to extend the light path in the camera so that the physical length of the lens can be shorter than the focal length.
Unlike wide-angle lenses, which seem to magnify the distance between objects, telephoto and other long-focus lenses appear to compress this distance. They are best used to make objects in the distance appear magnified. Long lenses can also be used to blur the background of a photo, making the subject appear to stick out more.
Standard and Zoom Lenses
Wide-angle and telephoto lenses tend to distort perspective, but standard lenses produce images with a perspective that seems more natural to the observer. Standard zoom lenses can change focal length from either moderate wide-angle to moderate telephoto or from standard to extreme telephoto or extreme wide-angle.
The zoom on zoom lenses is controlled through twisting the barrel. Because you manually control the zoom, there is no lag the way there is on compact digital cameras, which use electronic zoom.
Macro Lenses
Macro lenses are generally used to take close-up photos of very tiny objects. Their extreme magnification allows them to uncover details that you could not see with your naked eye.
Tilt-Shift Lenses
Tilt-shift lenses allow the photographer to control how perspective appears in their photos. The term “shift” refers to the movement of the lens parallel to the image plane, and “tilt” refers to the rotation of the plane of the lens relative to that of the image. Canon was the first company to produce a lens that had both tilt and shift functions.
Using tilt-shift lenses allows the photographer to take a picture of a tall object from a low vantage point without having the image appear tilted due to perspective. This is a very convenient feature for taking pictures of architecture from the ground. These lenses are incredibly expensive, however, costing upwards from $1000.
Wide-angle, long-focus, standard, macro, and tilt-shift lenses are the main Canon camera lenses manufactured for use with the company’s SLR cameras. The prices of these lenses vary depending on the type you get, and can be as much as $2500 for the best tilt-shift lens or as little as $100 for a refurbished standard lens. These lenses make SLR cameras very pricey and rather heavy and cumbersome, but the quality of the photos they produce is far better than anything you will get out of a regular compact digital camera.
If you are passionate about photography, it is worth the extra money to buy a good SLR camera and the Canon camera lenses that correspond to the type of photography you are passionate about. Whether you work with landscapes or insects or portraits of people, you can easily find a Canon lens that can accommodate your needs.