Understanding Different Types of Camera Lenses and Their Uses (2024)

Different lens types do different things. Choosing the right camera is important, but choosing the right lens is just as crucial.

Here at ExpertPhotography, we know how essential lenses are to photography. So, to help you get started, we will look at the different types of lenses. We’ll show you which types of lenses are available and how to use them.

The Basics for All Lens Types

Photography is all about light. A camera needs a scene’s light to make an image. A camera’s lens channels the light in the right direction, bringing it to the film strip or digital sensor.

The camera lens directs the light and determines how much light passes through. This is partly done through the aperture setting. But different lens types also have a wider or narrower field of view. This means you see more or less of the scene before you.

The glass elements direct the light to a single point in front of the camera sensor or film. This is called the focal point. From the focal point, we can determine the lens’s focal length.

The focal length is the distance between the focal point and the sensor. For a 50mm prime lens, the focal point is 50mm in front of the sensor.

The focal length helps us categorize lens types. A shorter focal length, like 28mm, gives us a wider angle of view. A higher number, such as 200mm, gives us a narrower angle of view but greater magnification.

Prime and Zoom Lenses

Prime and zoom are umbrella categories for lenses. The prime or zoom label denotes how the lens functions rather than what lens it is. A prime lens has a fixed focal length. It has fewer moving parts than a zoom, making prime lenses lighter and cheaper.

Prime lenses often have a wider maximum aperture. The downside is that they’re less versatile. And you might have to change lenses more often.

A zoom lens has a variable focal length within a particular range. For instance, with a 16-35mm zoom lens, the focal point can be moved anywhere within that range. The higher the number, the further you can zoom.

Zoom lenses are more versatile than primes. They let you control the shot more without changing your vantage point. But they are usually more expensive. They can also be heavier and have smaller maximum apertures.

The Different Lens Types

We now examine the different types of camera lenses used in photography. We highlight what makes each lens type unique. And we explain how and why photographers choose particular lenses.

Standard Lenses

A standard lens, like the Sigma 50mm F/4, has a focal length between 35mm and 85mm. They’re called standard or “normal” lenses because their field of view is similar to the human eye’s.

When we look through the viewfinder of a camera with a standard lens attached, it’s similar to our normal vision. Prime and zoom standard lenses are both common.

The natural field of vision makes the standard lens a popular choice for many photographers. Standard lenses are common among street photographers,travel photographers, and photojournalists.

These characteristics also make standard lenses suitable for portrait photography. You can use a standard lens for close-up and intimate portraits or full-body fashion photography.

A 50mm prime lens is often called a nifty fifty. This nickname derives from the lens’s versatility and reliability. As such, nifty fifties are popular in many areas of photography and among the most common lenses.

We review and recommend the top standard zoom lenses you can buy.

Wide-Angle Lenses

The focal length of a wide-angle lens is between 14mm and 35mm. These lenses give a wide field of vision, with a broad scope from side to side. They are more panoramic than a standard lens and similar to widescreen in cinematography.

Wide-angle lenses are essential for serious landscape photographers. This is because the wide angle captures large and spacious scenes. The wide angle stretches the horizon, allowing your camera to view more of the landscape.

A wide-angle lens is also vital equipment for architecture and real estatephotographers. For exterior property photography, they let you capture the whole building without moving further and further away.

This is equally valuable with interior real estate photography. You can photograph entire rooms from the inside. We review and recommend the top wide-angle lenses you can buy.

Ultra-Wide-Angle or Fisheye Lenses

A lens with a focal length of less than 14mm is called an ultra-wide-angle lens. Because the field of vision is so wide, the picture is bent and curved around the edges. This effect makes it a fisheye lens because it’s like looking through a fish’s eye.

Ultra-wide-angle lenses offer an enormous field of view. But the warping effect means fisheye lenses have limited appeal to photographers.

Fisheye lenses are mainly used for visual effects in fine art photography. But they’re also often used in extreme sports like skateboarding and surfing. We review and recommend the best fisheye lenses.

Telephoto Lenses

A telephoto lens has an incredible level of magnification. They contain many glass elements, which work much like a telescope. A telephoto lens allows the photographer to get close shots of faraway subjects.

Telephoto lenses have two subcategories. There are short telephotos with focal lengths between 85 and 135mm. And there are standard telephotos with focal lengths between 135 and 300mm.

A telephoto lens gives you excellent magnification to shoot faraway objects. But the angle of view is very narrow. A telephoto zoom lens has a small maximum aperture.

The magnification quality of a telephoto lens makes them popular with sports and wildlife photographers.

A sports photographer can capture action shots without venturing onto the pitch. Wildlife photographers can get intimate images of wild animals without scaring them or getting harmed.

We review and recommend the top telephoto lenses you can buy.

Super-Telephoto Lenses

A super-telephoto lens has an even greater level of magnification than a standard telephoto. Its focal length is anything above 300mm.

They’re big, heavy, and expensive. So you won’t buy one on a whim. But they’re excellent pieces of kit with incredible ingenuity. They have upwards of 10 precisely crafted glass elements.

Like short and standard telephoto lenses, they are found in the kit bags of sports and wildlife photographers. Their telescopic abilities also make them ideal for astrophotography. You can capture incredible details of night-sky galaxies and nebulae.

We review and recommend the best super-telephotos you can buy.

Macro Lenses

A telephoto lens works like a telescope, but a macro lens works like a microscope. They let you take pictures of things at very close range. You can capture tiny objects with a small minimum focus range.

Unlike the other camera lenses, you can’t categorize a macro lens by the focal length alone. They can have anything between 35mm and 200mm. The macro lens is defined by the ability to focus at a very close range.

Macro lenses, like the Canon EF 100mm F/2.8, are used for extreme close-ups and shots with tiny subjects. They don’t have a wide application, making them specialized gear.

They can be used for portraits, giving an excellent bokeh effect. But this camera lens is mainly used for shooting very small subjects. We review and recommend the best macro lenses you can buy.

Tilt-Shift Lenses

Tilt-shift lenses allow you to distort and change the perspective of a shot. You can manipulate the focal plane by tilting and shifting the lens’s optics relative to the camera sensor.

Tilting the lens gives greater control over the depth of field. It allows you near-infinite depth at the greater end or pin-point focus point at the narrow end.

Shifting the lens controls perspective. This makes tilt-shift lenses ideal for architectural photography when shooting tall buildings. The lenses can ensure a building doesn’t appear to be leaning or that the vertical lines stay vertical.

Perspective control also gives you excellent creative options. For example, you can use a tilt-shift lens when shooting with mirrors. You can take a shot from the side of the mirror but change the perspective. You can make it look like it was taken without the camera!

These lenses are sophisticated equipment, and they don’t come cheap. But tilt-shift lenses are excellent for visual effects and to capture otherwise impossible shots.

Many architecture and real estate photographers swear by them. You can even use tilt-shift lenses for food photography. We review and recommend the best tilt-shift lenses you can buy.

Conclusion: Different Types of Lenses

Camera lenses can seem like a confusing topic. It’s easy to get lost in the jargon and specifications. But it all comes into focus once you break down the different lens types!

There are prime lenses and zoom lenses. Within those categories, there are standard, wide-angle, and telephoto lenses.

There are super-telephoto, tilt-shift, and macro lenses for more niche photography areas. And if the names don’t stick, you can often find what you need with the focal length.

I hope you’re ready to dive further into the world of camera lenses. It’s a vital area of photography. And once you get to grips with your camera lens, your photography will only improve.

Check out our Photography for Beginners course to take amazing photos no matter what lens you use!