The Properties And Features Of Camera Lenses

This interesting and highly technical and extensive video by John P. Hess from Filmmaker IQ looks at the properties and features of modern lenses including aperture, focal length, crop factor, zoom and prime and much more.

After Hess looked at the History and Science of Lenses in a previous video, we now take a dive into the more relevant practical aspects of lenses – the ones that will directly effect how you use your camera/lens and take pictures.

Hess start by explaining the concept of field of view and how it is connected to focal length and sensor size. He gives examples of different fields of view of different sensors (with the same lens). Next we go into different types of lenses – starting from a normal lens and moving to telephoto and wide angle lenses. The next part deals with the aperture, starting with a bit of history Hess goes into f/stops and than T/stops and what they mean.

We have dived into lens technology many times in the past and more specifically into lens manufacturing on “Nikon Lens Technology Explained“, “Nikon Lens Craftsmanship“, “How does the Glass for Nikon Lenses is Made”, “How Does Panasonic Manufacture Lenses at the Yamagata Plant“, “How Does Sigma Manufacture Lenses (part 1 and part 2)”, “Carl Zeiss – Manufacturing the new Touit lenses“, and finally “How Leica Lenses are Made“.

You can find more photography related technology videos on our photo-tech section here on LensVid.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.