Newbie question about wideangle lenses

Bakat

My father is completely addicted to my D50 (a good excuse to upgrade and pass this one on) but, as a long time 35mm nature photographer he misses having a wide angle lens to use on my camera.

Now in my mind this is a perfectly reasonable excuse to buy a new lens (for my dear retired father's sake, of course), so onto the question...

Can someone please give me a tangible explanation of wideangle lenses and super wideangle lenses (preferably with pictures).

I get it that they have a wider angle of view, but the manufactures always express that info in camera lingo that is meaningless to me.

As always I appreciate everyones patience!
Kat

wxwax

Kat, what kind of "camera lingo" are you talking about?

Are you trying to find out what focal length to buy? In other words, are you trying to figure how wide you want your wide angle to be?

Steve Cavigliano

Kat,
In the 35mm world, wide angle would be from around 24mm-35mms of focal length. Super wide would be approx. 20mms and shorter. So if your Dad likes wide angle you need to find a lens that will give him a focal length between 24-35mms when taking your camera's multiplier (1.5X) into account. So you should be looking at lenses in the 16-24mm 35mm equiv. range. FWIW, the Nikon 20mm F2.8 prime comes to mind


This link may also help shed some light on the subject.

http://photographytips.com/page.cfm/468

Steve

Bakat

Steve,
Thanks for the link! I really needed a visual.

Now to camera lingo... I know what a millimeter is, I have worked in jewelry for years and metric is standard in the jewelry industry.

So why, can I find no way in which 300 millimeters relates to my 300mm lens. 300mm = 30cm which is esentially 12 inches. My "300mm" fully extended is only 210mm long. It focuses on stuff a heck of a lot farther than 300mm away. :bash

AHH!!! Iknow this is just newbie user confusion and probably has a perfectly reasonable explanation which will ultimately make me just look silly, but I'll never be able to buy a lens confidently until I know the answer to this.

Thanks Again,
Kat

wxwax

Well, if it's math you want, Google is your friend.

Here is a broad explanation.

And here is an equation.

Here's the Wikipedia explanation.

I believe it's important to remember that a long lens will have more than one lens or mirror in it. "Optical designs of telephoto lenses must contain a telephoto group, which allows the lens to be physically shorter than its focal length. "

Thanks for prompting me to look this up.

DanielB

the Tokina 12-24 f/4 is a very good choice... its beating its competitors in almost every class except for a touch of CA... but they're small so you can't see it...definitely a more affordable option than the Nikon 12-24 f/4

Bakat

Thanks for the links! They have helped tremendously!
Kat