Standard and Telephoto?

[HighPlainsDox]

What's the difference between "Standard Zoom" and "Telephoto Zoom"? How about "Zoom" and "Telephoto"?

TIA

[srwatters]

Originally Posted by HighPlainsDox

What's the difference between "Standard Zoom" and "Telephoto Zoom"? How about "Zoom" and "Telephoto"?

TIA

Depends on which vendor you're talking about. For Nikon it's like this:

Standard zoom centers around the natural focal length. For 35mm, that's about 50mm. So a 35-70mm would be a 'standard' zoom.

Wide zoom would be from wide angle to natural focal length. 17-55mm

Telephoto is anything longer than the natural focal length. For 35mm starts at 85mm and goes to infinity :)

Then you get super telephoto zoom and super wide zoom. The Bigma 50-500mm is a super telephoto and a 24-120mm is a super wide zoom.

Check out this site for a great description of Nikon's offerings http://www.maxwell.com.au/products/n...kor/index.html

[chloew]

A standard lens is a lens around 50mm (35-70mm) of focal length assuming you are using a 35mm film camera. It makes things appear on film at about the same size as they appear to you in reality.

A telephoto lens is a lens with a focal length greater then about 70 mm and can go as high 1200mm in some cases. It makes things appear on film larger than they appear to you in reality, so it looks like you are closer to your subject than you really are (think sports or wild life photography)

A wide (angle) lens is a lens with a focal length less than about 35mm. It makes things appear on film smaller than they appear to you in reality, so it looks like you are further away from your subject than you really are. These are commonly used for landscapes and architectural photgraphy.

A zoom lens is any lens with variable focal length. So the lens will cover a range of focal lengths (e.g. 28-70mm) and you can decide which focal length to use. You can get zoom lenses that cover only wide angle, or wide angle to standard, or wide angle to telephoto, etc.

A lens that only has one fixed focal length is called a prime focal lens.

[HighPlainsDox]

Thanks, guys. I kinda considered them the same, just different ways of saying it. You both put it in perspective.