Confuse on Camera Lens

[wootsk]

About the telephoto and wide angle stuff for camera lens,

A simple way to imagine how it is like is to do a L and 7 with your hand. Join both hand up and for a small rectangle box. This is your screen. Start by placing the screen near to your eye and move them far and near to you. What you see through the screen when far away from you is a telephoto view and what you see near to you is a wide angle view.
The point and shoot mostly have the mm numbers written on the lens if I am not wrong. But for layman explaination, it is easier to explain by microscope values of X maginfication. But it doesn't actually explain how wide your lens can capture as it just mention that it can capture 3 time more tele the widest view when your camera is at 3X.

20mm, 3X = 60mm
10mm, 3X = 30mm

Don't worry about the full frame stuff as it should be for more advance users. Learn the basics of operating your camera and the structure different of a DSLR vs a PNS first ba, there are stuff like hyperfocal and how light theory like defraction for you to learn before advancing. Hope it is easy to understand as my english isn't that good and I am poor in conveying ideas across.

 

[mimik07]

anyway dun spent too much on reading. u will learn faster by going practical. ;p

yes, read more and shoot more! You'll definitely learn faster that way

Anyway welcome to CS~

 

[CamInit]

Can start here...

http://www.tamron.com/lenses/fundamentals.asp
http://web.canon.jp/imaging/enjoydslr/part3/3A.html

 

[evilorgi]

i am not an expert but should be able to answer your questions here in layman terms.

18-55mm , 100mm etc is refering to the focal length of the lens. in point and shoot world, this is known as zoom. the bigger the number, the more upclose to your subject. but in DSLR world, we dun call it zoom anymore.

canon 1.6 refers to the sensor size of the camera with a crop factor of 1.6. So if you are using a 100mm lens on a cropped camera body (eg 550D, 50D, 7D) its actually 160mm (since u will multiply this 100mm by 1.6) that u are shooting.

like wise for nikon, their crop factor is 1.5 instead of 1.6 so if u are using a 100mm lens on a crop body (i am not familiar with nikon, so no examples here), then u are actually shooting 150mm.

in order to shoot what u get (100mm means 100mm), u need a full frame camera body like canon 5D or 1Ds.

for a start, i think 18-55 kit lens is good for u to start. You need not get any lens for now until u learn some basics (ISO, aperture, shutter speed etc) and wishes to upgrade your lens.

hope this makes your understanding easier.

short and straight to the point...