The [AP] Blog

Hey Everyone,

Continuing in this 101 theme, I thought I’d bring up the idea of lens magnification and the such, a lot of people think that they’ll get the best zoom because it says: 8x or the like on the side of the barrel, this may not always be the case, and I’ll write a short entry on this now.

Firstly though, I must thank all the visitors to the site, because this week we broke 200 visitors, and I’m really pleased, thanks a lot to everyone who has helped me continue the blog this far!

—

I must start explaining what you see on the side of lenses and on P&S (point and shoot) cameras. When you see, say, ‘10x Zoom‘, this means that from the lowest level of zoom, (or, the wide end), to the longest zoom is 10x larger.

The number that is being magnified, or enlarged, is the ‘mm’. The ‘mm’ is really how the zoom is measured, and typically on an ‘average’ camera, the zoom could be say, ‘35mm - 105mm’. That would be considered normal, and around 3x.

So I hope you can see that the zoom is the mm-mm which also equates the magnification. I’ll give you a real example, my Fuji S7000, has a zoom magnification on the side of the barrel stating, 6x optical zoom. The mm states 35-210mm.

—

Now, more often than not, people would prefer a wider angle of view than 35mm, and this is were a lot of compact cameras really do fall very short, I mean, 28mm makes a big difference, and can be a lot more useful to a lot of people. You’ll notice that some of the latest Panasonic digital compact cameras offer their 28mm wide angle as a major selling point, and this clearly reveals how important it is.

Most photographers will use a wide range of focal-lengths, say from 20-200mm. (10x).

—

I hope this has been a short but informative post to the 101 scheme of things. I hope you’re all well.

Charlie - Teenage Photographer