Guide to Lenses

Types of Lens:

Fixed Focal Length (prime)
Fixed Lenses offer many advatages over zooms. They are mostly smaller and lighter, with wider maximum apertures and superior image quality

Standard lens
Most DSLRs come with a standard zoom (kit lens). A standard zoom spans from a moderate wide angle to a shot telephoto.

Wide Angle
Wide angles make subjects appear further away enabling you to get more in the frame.

Super Zoom
While they rarly compare with shorter range lenses in image quality, a 18 - 200mm type lens offers the benefits of speed and convenience.

Macro
While many lenses sport the macro feature, they do not compare to a truley dedicated macro lens. These let you get close enough to reproduce your subject 1:1 or 1:2 on the sensor.

Fisheye Lens
These lenses give you an angle of view at 180%. The resulting picture is massivly distorted where the centre of the image is magnified compared to the outer edges.

Tilt Shift
These lenses are use to correct the problem of converging verticles with its built in perspective control.

Lens Suffixes

ll/lll - Dentoes version of lens
APO - Apoch lens elements designed to produce sharper images by focusing all wavelengths of light to the same point.
DG - Sigmas designation for digital full fram sensors
Di - Tamron lenses compatible with APS-C sensors
DO - Canon lenses featuring difractive optical element
DX - Nikon lenses designed for APS-C sensors
ED - Nikon lenses featuring extra low dispersion element(s)
EF - Canon lenses compatible with full frame and APS-C sized sensors
EF-S - Canon lense compatible with APS-C sized sensors
EX - Sigmas "excellent" range of lenses
FE - Canons fisheye lens
G - Nikon lenses without a manual aperture ring
HSM - Sigma Lenses with hypersonic motor
IF - internal focusing lens
L - Canons luxury range
LD - Tamrons lenses wit low dispersion glass
MF - Manual Focusing
OS - Sigma lenses with optical stabilisation
PRO - Tokinas professional range
TS-E - Canons "Tilt and Shift" lenses
UD - Canon lenses with ultra low light dispersion elements
VR - Nikon lenses with vibration reduction
USM - Canon lenses with an ultrasonic motor
IS - Canon Image Stabiliser

ill soon be adding " how lenses work" in here

Thanks K, added to sticky!

Thanks for that, it's really handy for us not very well up on things yet.

Hey KK you missed out IS which is the Canon Image Stabiliser

Good post nice and informative

Cheers Sam

Bump for those who havnt seen

lol thanks for bumping this ! very useful for me

no probs wasnt sure if you had seen it or not!