Field of View : Objective in Digital Photography

Field of View as well as Objective both in Digital as with film Photography, the quality of lens s crucial. Apart from practice, there is no recipe to judge. Previously we wrote about Image Sensor Size and Field of View, which might be correlated while reading by the reader. The aspects of writing this article on Field of View is different than that of the previous.

Basics of Field of View and Objective in Digital Photography

To start with we will advise you not to ignore the German branded number of Lenses for your DSLR. Carl Zeiss optics is legendary, most consumer grade camera like from Canon ships with a lens with a scary mark “Made in China”, embarked glasses polished with pseudo love and expertise unlike made in Germany. At the time, we need to understand the things clearly – certain countries do have more efficiency in producing quality equipments.

You might argue that, Apple also now became “Made in China”, but it is matter of fact, Apple follows the word – Quality Control. A top notch DSLR has not much difference in price compared with a MacBook Pro 15″.

Second point is for compact and DSLR cameras, for convenience and marketing, many manufacturers often refer zoom like 8x or 12x. This figure has the merit to talk to everyone and give an idea of the zoom range or if you prefer its magnifying power. But it is not much of value in every case, especially to compare models. Given that they sports very small dimensions of a digital sensor compared to a full frame DSLR, which is the Gold standard in the world, the focal lengths of digital cameras are much shorter. Fortunately, manufacturers consistently indicate the focal length of the lens with reference to 24×36 equivalent.

These are the basic points on Objective, that is the Lens complex when we consider Field of View.

Field of View : Other Points

Even if you do not understand these concepts fully, it is easy to take advantage of these things.

The first is the so-called wide angle Lens. The higher it is, more is the field of view covered by the camera can. In short: to capture a landscape or a piece if it, it is better that the first figure is around 28 mm that to 35 or 40.

This is all the more worthy that the wide angle is usually the weak point of bridge camera digital cameras and Point and shoot cameras. In our opinion, it is the data that should be preferred. The second point corresponds to the zoom position on maximum magnification. We are talking about telephoto. This is the position that is used for a portrait or to isolate the details of a scene. The higher this number is, the more you will see details and add blur effect, bokeh etc. But beware: increased sensitivity to added artifacts like blur, noise are almost inevitable in Point and Shoot and Bridge camera. Most of these point and shot and bridge has image stabilization system, but they works on the principle of software level override of Aperture and ISO, this is why blurry pictures and noises are quite common with Bridge cameras.

The last two points are related to Viewfinder and Pentaprism Viewfinder, Image sensor and Image Processor. All has been discussed before.

The last part is hard criticism of a photograph taken by a Bride Camera by real person. Please do not share this without link to the original copyright holder or this article. I do not know the person personally, I accidentally saw this photograph of Indian wedding via a Friend in Facebook. Oddly, just two days before taking the picture we were talking about Night Shots in Digital Photography, in the last paragraph we wrote about the  points. The person’s name is Mr. Samudranil Ray, you can see his Flicker stream too :

After watching his works on Flicker, you can not say that the person has no idea about Photography. He has quite good grasp on composition and has an artistic sense.  You can identify the issues :

You can clearly see the issues typical with the consumer grade Bridge Camera.