How Does a Camera Lens Work?

A camera lens which is also known as photographic lens is a series of curved glasses that bring the rays of lights together to form an image. The small optical glass lenses are placed at different lengths from each other.

As a photographer turns the ring located on the barrel of lenses, the pieces of glasses inside the camera moves closer or further away from each other.

A camera lens projects a circular image. However, the sensor captures a relatively small rectangular area at the center of this projected view.

If the rectangle is extended to the edge of this circle, the sensor should be able to capture the full field of view. Conversely, if the rectangle falls short of this, the field of view is then reduced. Most difital cameras use the conventional 35mm format lenses which results to reduced field of view available to the sensor. However, for wider views, a wide-angle converter will be helpful.

Some digital cameras feature zoom lenses with very large ranges where focal length reaches as much as 420mm. And to reduce unsharpness caused by camera shake, an optical image stabilizer is much helpful.

55 mm

                                                                 

105 mm

                                                                  

135 mm

              

                                                                   

200 mm

                                                                  

                   These images are taken at the same distance from the object using different focal lengths. Notice how the background gets blurry as the focal length increases? That's because wider lenses tend to magnify distance between objects and allow greater depth of field. Longer lenses magnify the subject more by compressing the distance which results to blurry background as the depth of field gets shallow.

Basic Kinds of Lenses

Normal Lens has focal ranges that are similar to a human eye. 35 to 50mm lenses are considered normal lenses.

Telephoto Lens is the longest and heaviest among the lenses. The subject appears very close but the range of view will be very narrow.

Wide Angle Lens as the name implies has a short but wider views than a typical standard lens of the same focal length. Think of the field of view as captured by a fish where the term fisheye lens is derived. Lenses with focal lengths of 8 to 16mm are considered as fisheye lenses.

Using Wide Angle Lens

How Digital Camera Works as Explained Simply

If you are a beginner in photography, understanding how digital camera works will help you comprehend the basics, and how each of the basic parts relate to each other which will eventually lead to better pictures.

Basically, a digital camera works much the same way as the human eye. The illustration above shows how the light travels from the object until it reaches the sensor.

The rays of lights travel thru the lens first. Lenses are series of curved glasses that bring the light together to form an image.

Then it goes through the aperture which is placed inside the lens. An aperture is an opening that controls how much light reaches the sensor. You can think of aperture as a window.

The shutter, on the other hand, is like a curtain. It controls the length of time that the light fills the room. A shutter is located in front of the sensor.

A sensor is a sensitive plate where light that travels thru the lens, and controlled by the aperture and shutter, is absorbed and transformed into pixels.

Once an image is processed, digital cameras store the digital representation of a subject onto a memory card where images are ready to be downloaded into a computer as digital files.

Now that you understand how a digital camera basically absorbs an image of an object, understand how the lens, aperture, and shutter works to get the maximum result of the images captured.