What is the Difference Between a telephoto lens and a regular lens.?

Question

I am trying to decide on a lens for a digital camera I want to buy and I haven't any clue what the difference is

Answer 1

If you want to photograph a large landscape, you use a wide angle. If want to photograph a faraway detail, you use a telephoto lens. You want to photograph something in between the two, you use a normal lens. Zoom lenses are ideal for most amateur photographers because they combine the properties of the normal lenses,the wide-angle lenses and the telephoto lenses.

As you move from wide angle to normal lenses to telephoto lenses you actually include less and less of the landscape in your photographs. You, in effect, go from taking as much of the landscape as you can (with a wide angle lens) to taking what we normally see with our eyes (with a normal lens) to taking only a fraction of what we see (with a telephoto lens). In effect, you are focusing the attention of the viewer to an increasingly smaller field of view.

The names I which can be used for these three categories are Large Landscapes, when you photograph everything there is in front of you, Medium Landscapes, when you photograph part of what is in front of you, and finally Small Landscapes, when you photograph only a fraction of what is in front of you.

In this process you call the shots. It is your decision to photograph all the landscape, a “normal” part of the landscape, or a fraction of the landscape. Of course, certain subjects may naturally lend themselves to one of these three main categories. However, it is important to remember that any subject can be photographed in all 3 ways.


A wide-angle lens can take in a large area of a scene. This has two common applications - first, it means you can take in sweeping panoramic landscape scenes, and second, you can take in large areas of an ordinary room. If you want to take a photo of a group of friends at a dinner party you’ll need a wide angle lens unless you can back up far enough to get everyone in. On a 35mm film camera a wide angle lens would have a focal length of, say, 35mm or less.
Looking through a telephoto lens is like using a telescope - it narrows down what can be seen in a scene or makes the subject seem much closer than it really is. A telephoto lens might have a focal length of 70mm or more on a 35mm camera.

zoom lens is a lens in which the field of view can be adjusted. If you can’t fit in all your friends in the picture, for example, you could just rotate the zoom ring on the lens until they’re all in there. Or if that bird is too far away you could rotate it the other way to zoom in closer.


The type of lenses you decide to buy depends on what you are you going to be photographing/
Your photographic goals and objectives essentially inform all of the other decisions. Will you being shooting landscapes? Portraits? Your kids or pets? Flowers? Wild birds? Sports? Architecture? Will you be doing travel photography? Will you be hiking with your gear? These sorts of questions are critical to ask yourself first. Another key question you have to ask yourself is how much money do you want to spend?
You can spend huge amounts of money on lenses, so determining your budget, as with cameras, is pretty important.

Do you want a prime (fixed focal length) or a zoom (variable focal length) lens?
Prime lenses generally afford higher optical quality than zooms, except in the case of really expensive pro zoom lenses. However prime lenses mean you have to walk around more - you can’t simply adjust the zoom setting to get the framing you need.

What focal length or focal length range do you want to cover?
I’d sit down with your photos and think about what focal lengths you tend to use most and where there are gaps. Maybe you want an extreme wide angle, for example. If so there’s no point getting another telephoto.

Do you need a fast lens?
Do you want to do low-light photography without a tripod or flash? Do you want to do portrait photos while blurring the background? These applications call for a faster lens which can let in more light.

I hope this helps you.

Answer 2

The difference between a Telephoto and a regular is that telephoto are longer than 50mm and a regular is 50mm. Anything below 50mm is wide angle. Telephoto is good for sports and bird photography when its nesscary to get close up and personal with your subject. Wide angle is good for scenic shots. There are many variables too that will decide on what you want. Wide angle are usually a good all around lens but you can get a lens that gives you both wide angle-telephoto.