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IV. Lenses Here are five suggestions about lenses:
A. Get as wide an angle lens as possible. This is generally designated by a shorter focal length. For example the 18 mm lens on my Pentax is shorter (and therefore wider) than the 28 mm lens on my Rollie. There are two good reasons to want a wider-angle lens. First, the shorter the lens (that is, the wider the angle of view), the less obvious is the blur of camera movement. When you see the way your camera can swing from a kite line, you'll want the advantage of a wide-angle lens to ensure getting sharper images. The second reason for a wider-angle lens relates to the fact that distances can be quite deceptive. When your camera's several hundred feet away, it's difficult to calculate precisely where it is in relationship to your subject. The wider the lens, the closer the camera can be to your subject and the surer you are of including that subject in your photos. Besides all this, the perspectives seen from wide-angle lenses are more dramatic. The widest are the fish-eye lenses. Their view covers 180 degrees, their images are extremely distorted, and their prices are quite high. It seems they're more popular among kite fliers in the Orient than here. B. Get a fast lens (one that lets more light pass through it). Lens speed is designated in f-stops--fractions of a lens's focal length. For example, an f/2 lens lets more light through it than an f/4 lens does. The logic of wanting a faster lens is simple: the faster the lens, the faster the shutter speed, the less blurry your pictures will be. The drawback is price. It's common for a lens that lets in twice as much light to cost ten times as much. By the way, a lens is typically sharpest when it is closed down two or three stops. For example, an f/2 lens may be sharpest when it's closed down to f.4 or f/5.6. C. Avoid zoom lenses. They tend to vignette (that is, to produce pictures that are darker on the corners than the center), they tend to be slower (that is, let less light pass through), and historically they tended to be less sharp than fixed focal-length lenses. On the other hand, you might find a zoom to be your least expensive lens. D. Consider using no-name lenses. For your KAP photos, you may notice no difference in image quality. I put my camera on a tripod to shoot identical scenes on fine-grain Kodachrome 25 slide film--half the roll with an 18 mm Nikor lens and the other half with a store brand lens. When I viewed the results, I couldn't tell the difference. If there's no significant loss of image quality, I'd just as soon see my $200 lens than my $800 lens swinging a thousand feet away.
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