The lens mount used by Sony’s Alpha SLT cameras. Because these cameras have a mirror in the body, even though it’s a non-moving one, the rear of the lens is further from the sensor, so Alpha mount lenses are physically different to Sony’s E-mount lens range. You can use Alpha lenses on an E-mount camera […]
Lenses A-Z
Aberrations
These are optical flaws produced by camera lenses and which are largely unavoidable except in the most expensive or the simplest lens designs. They include distortion, chromatic aberration (colour fringing), vignetting (corner shading) and edge softness.
AF-P lenses (Nikon)
This is a new autofocus technology being introduced by Nikon in its consumer-level lenses. It used different autofocus actuators to its existing AF-S (Supersonic Wave) lenses. The AF-P system uses stepper motors for a fast, quiet and smooth autofocus action that’s especially well suited to video, where you don’t want fast, sharp focus movements or […]
AF-S lenses (Nikon)
This is the most common autofocus system in current Nikon D-SLR lenses. It uses Silent Wave ultrasonic autofocus actuators to produce very fast and quiet focusing well suited to stills photography.
Angle of view
This is quoted in degrees, and indicates how much of a scene a lens takes in. Wideangle lenses have a wide angle of view, telephoto lenses have a narrow angle of view. Angle of view is directly related to a lens’s focal length, though the different ‘crop factors’ of smaller sensors means that the relationship […]