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Lense Question Thats Been Bugging Me Since I Started


Davetrials

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yea obviosly

but what is it measuring, what on that that lense is 10mm

ok i think i could be wrong but it could be lens length. from shutter ( sensor film whatever. to the front element. however that doesnt work as a 10 mm lens obviously isnt 10 mm. ask mike, he ll know

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nah f**k this. I'm with dave on this. If you are gonna spend a lot of money on something, it' better to understand how it works, why it works and have a good general understanding about it. I don't like owning something without knowing as much as possible about it.

Anyway, it's a f**king forum. There are thousands of questions you don't give a toss about knowing the answer to, but dave does want the answer to this, so either help, or leave the thread alone to let him get the answer...

Not being funny about it like, but just cos you don't give a shit about the answer, doesn't mean it's wrong to want to know.

Bongo

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But, a 17 - 200mm lense doesn't have a focal limit of 20cm does it!!

I guess the number of lens elements has something to do with it - I.e. the calculations are based on if there was only one element (like in the picture) whereas most lenses have several bits of glass in them?

EDIT: And yeah I'm with Bongo on this one, it's not exactly dumb to want to know what something means.

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LOL. Aww, sorry dave my bad.

I do find your camera topics amusing. 1) Because i dont know the ansers to your questions, beacuse i pay interest in the TECHNICAL aspects of cameras and 2) Beacuse Your dave.. The one and only Dave.

You know i love you really.

Must bear In mind though, i was sorting through 670 photos took in 1 hour at the baftas yesterday, until about 2am last nightm then had to get up at 5, to carry on sorting and have them sent before 6. So im still abit grouchey lol.

I should go take a sleeep :(

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The focal length is a basic optical property of any lens, and the most important one to a photographer. The simple way to think of the focal length is to think of it as a numerical value, expressed in millimetres, which represents how much of a given scene (the coverage area) a lens can take in.

Focal lengths for Canon SLR lenses range from ultra-wide (14mm) to incredibly long telephoto (600mm and 1200mm). The typical range of an affordable lens or lenses is from 28mm to 105mm or so.

Why, then, these strange values in millimetres? Why not indicate the angle of view taken in by each lens instead? Well, partly for historical reasons and partly for practical reasons. The technical description of focal lengths is rooted in the mathematics of optics - it’s the distance between the focal plane and the rear nodal point of the lens, given infinity focus. How this bit of Martian translates to the field of view depends on the size of the imaging area being used, which can be different between 35mm film cameras, APS cameras and some digital cameras. And as for practical reasons, the focal length of a lens is an innate property of the lens, but the actual coverage area of the scene depends on the size of the image format used.

So note that crucial point - all the examples I gave above are for a 35mm film camera or full-frame EOS SLR only. If you were to use a 28mm lens on an APS camera or a digital camera with an image sensor smaller than that of 35mm film (ie: most digital cameras sold today) then you would have a much narrower field of vision than if you were to use the same lens on a 35mm film camera.

The same focal length system is used to describe lenses for other types of cameras as well, such as medium format cameras. But the area taken in by a lens on a medium format camera will be totally different from that of a lens of the same focal length on a 35mm camera, because the area covered by medium format film is considerably larger.

I knew all along. Seriously dave, the FIRST link on my FIRST google search gave me this :P

john...THE GURU...

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It's all a bit of relational values rather than anything actually specific or interesting. As Bongo said, it's simply the distance from the film (or sensor) plane to the rear nodal point of the lens. It's not important, but an interesting bit of trivia.

Now, for a bonus point, can any one a) say where F numbers come from, and B) why aperture values are called stops?

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The way I understand it from what bongo said and comon sense, it is the distance from the rear nodal point of the lense* and the image sensor. Obviously a 300mm lense couldnt physicaly fit that length in it, but the length of the lense could be compressed by adding a second lense within it, that will focus the light in earlier.

N = Rear nodial point of the lense:

180px-Cardinal-points-2.svg.png

So I guess kinda like this, both setups would be called the same length lense, but the lower one would be more compact.

lensestuff.jpg

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