Easy Way To Know The Real Meaning Of Focal Length In Photography

If you’re a passionate photographer then focal length is a very important part of your photography career.

Today in this article, I’m sharing some important points of Focal Length in Photography.

Like how you can easily change your photography game just using changing the focal length to capture a same shot with different focal lengths.

so without talking more about it, let’s know the REAL meaning of Focal Length.

Know The Real Meaning Of Focal Length In Photography

Many newbies photographer thinks Focal length is the size of the actual length of a lens.

if you’re also think like that then your wrong.

the actual meaning of Focal length is the gap between the lens and the image sensor which is available inside your camera body.

and it is represented in millimeters (mm).

so let’s say as an example if you’re capturing some portraits with a prime lens, then focus length will be different according to the subject.

if your object is far away from you then the focal length can be min or max according to your camera lens.

here is the example, so you can understand how focal length actually works…

source: photography Life

as you can see the distance between your camera’s viewfinder and the sensor is the focal length.

so just imaging what happens when you zoom in? the focal length will increase or decrease?

hmmm, yeah it’ll increase.

so now you get the point, like if you know what is the distance between you and your object while you shoot.

here I’m saying point, that means if your planning for photography then you can automatically assume which lens to carry with you for a better and sharp result.

here is some best Focal Length in photography you can use for a specific type of photography.

Portrait Photography

This is the shot that I captured using the 18-55MM lens.

so if you don’t have any Prime lens then you can use an 85-105MM lens ( or even kit lens ), to capture better portrait shots.

• Top 5 Most important camera settings for better Portrait photography

Landscape Photography

so as I said earlier, the more you zoom in, the focal length will increase but as you can see, to capture landscapes you need to zoom out so you need a lens that contains smaller focal length.

Therefore, focal lengths such as 20mm, 28mm are most common for landscape photography.

• Important tips for better landscape photography

Macro Photography

Basically Macro lens contains a very narrow depth of focal when we focused extremely close to the object.

for macro photography, some of the best lenses are 50mm-100mm.

Zoom Lens

Many photographers assume that the Zoom lens is also called a telephoto lens, but that’s not the real answer.

the main difference between the zoom lens and the telephoto lens is that a zoom lens can change focal lengths while a telephoto lens can’t.

The telephoto lens already comes with bigger focal lengths.

A normal zoom lens contains a focal length between 23-105mm.

Prime lens

These kinds of lenses contain only one focal length.

it can be wide-angle, telephoto or normal.

Fisheye lens ( contains a focal length of 8mm ), my favorite nifty-fifty ( 50mm lens ) also 24mm f/1.4, etc…

so now I hope you know which camera lens you need to use to do the best shoot ever.

for me, the main purpose of knowing the real meaning of focal length in photography is to learn what is focal length and how to apply it to win every single shoot.

if you have some more knowledge or information related to focal length then let me know by commenting below…

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Featured image capture by toine G on Unsplash, so thanks for the image.

hope you guys like this article thank you have a good day 🙂