Article 1 of 4 in the Film Vs. Digital Series

Lens-speak can be a frustrating thing when you’re starting out in photography. When it comes to the camera lens, most beginners find themselves caught in the middle of that vortex of words: aperture, ISO, depth of field, etc… but it’s not as hopeless as it may seem. Remember, the world’s most accomplished photographers weren’t born knowing these things, and it’s certainly never too late to learn.

Many of the terms and concepts that have to do with the camera lens span across film and digital, but there are some curiosities to the new breed of “digital-specific” lenses.

This series of short articles attmepts to explain the basic features of Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera lenses and maps out the differences between digital and film lenses. 

Let’s start with a relatively new concept to the industry: lenses for the digital world. The most popular question I hear is rightfully so because it is also the most misleading. That is: I have a digital SLR, do I need to buy a “digital” lens?

The short answer is no. However, before you go out and purchase several film lenses for your digital SLR, let’s take a short, historical look into why new “digital” lenses were developed.

With the digital photography revolution came a new type of image recording mechanism. Instead of an image being burnt onto a 35mm section of film, we now had a newer, SMALLER digital sensor. I put an emphasis on smaller because this is the root of almost all confusion when it comes to lenses for digital. Because the sensors on most digital SLR bodies are smaller than that of 35mm film, the digital sensor sees only the central portion of what a traditional film lens is capable of showing. Consequently, lens manufacturers began to see a new market for smaller, lighter, digital specific lenses. The idea behind these lenses was “why waste all of that hefty glass and metal if 1/3 of the image it produces is never going to be seen?”

Thus the market for digital specific lenses was born. The key element in these lenses is that they are built lighter, smaller and cheaper, yet they maintain the same quality that a film lens would on a 35mm camera. Well, mostly.

The problem with the newer, smaller, digital lenses is that they are often more expensive and can be less sharp. You see, most of those old 35mm lenses which seem to get less and less crisp as you get to the outer edges, work like champs on a digital SLR because the light that travels through the outer edges of the lens never end up being transfered to the smaller digital sensor. In essence, some of the cheaper, plastic film lenses with sharp centers and moderatley horrible extremeties can produce wonderful photographs on a digital SLR.

Read the next article in this series: Focal Length and the Digital SLR

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