Get The Most From Your Camera With Zoom Lens When Photographing Children

At Mayflower Beach Cape Cod - Taken with zoom lens at 135mm focal length

Your digital camera probably comes with a zoom lens that allows you to vary the focal length from a wide-angle or normal perspective all the way through some moderate telephoto length. Understanding the effects created will help you get the most from your camera with zoom lens.

You may ask: What is a zoom lens? Answer: A zoom lens is a lens that allows you to change or adjust the focal point usually by rotating the lens. If you cannot do this, then the lens is called a fixed lens and has a fixed focal point. A zoom lens may be either a wide angle lens, or a telephoto lens. This is determined by which side of the normal 50 mm lens the lens is on; if its between about 14mm and 49mm it is called a wide angle zoom lens. And if it’s on the other side of 50 mm say 51mm to something like 200mm or greater, they are called telephoto zoom lenses. However, you may even have a zoom lens that covers wide angle, normal, and telephoto focal lengths.

Where Can A Telephoto Zoom Lens Help Me?

One of my favorite trip lens for photographing children is the Canon EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS for Canon SLR cameras (get a Canon Lens Hood for it too!) which works quite well when you have to do a lot of walking with the kids, plus take care of them, and photograph them as well. When you are on a day outing with your kids or grand kids, it’s very easy to be overwhelmed with all of your responsibilities. I find that this lens is a great compromise between being able to get some great pictures of the kids that have enough quality should I want to have them made into art on a canvas print, but without having to carry extra lenses and having to change lenses as well. Remember if you only have a point and shoot camera, or your cell phone camera with you, you may be really disappointed with the quality should you get a great pose of your child.

Taken at the Cape Cod Mayflower Beach (uncropped) with a focal length of 200mm

Many people ask me about the 2.8 zoom lens. All this means is that this lens is a “fast” zoom lens because when it is at the 2.8 aperture the lens is wide open to let in a lot of light, and the 2.8 zoom lens is also expensive because the lens glass is finely ground very close to the edge. However, the size of this lens does not make it easy to carry when you have kids too. I have a Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS telephoto zoom lens that I like to use at places like the inner cape beaches on Cape Cod where the kids can get quite a ways away from you and still be in shallow water. If I couple that lens with my Canon 5D Mark II, then I have plenty of low light capability, and plenty of mega pixels that can be cropped off (for images when the kids get a little too far away) which still leaves me with a very high quality image to make into the canvas prints that I love so much.

When Is It Safe To Crop My Pictures?

The same picture as the photo on the right, taken with a zoom telephoto lens at 200 mm (now cropped)

As you may recall, focal length is just a measure of the magnification that the lens provides. A larger focal length produces greater magnification; hence long focal length lenses are great for capturing fast action or enlarging objects that are moderately far way.

A key fact to remember, however, is that the focal length of a given lens also affects the camera’s angle of view. Because a telephoto lens magnifies distant objects, it has a very narrow angle of view. As you reduce the magnification and zoom out towards smaller focal lengths, the angle of view likewise increases.

At the extreme end of the scale – specifically, wide-angle lenses – the image is actually shrunk with respect to what the human eye can see. The angle of view becomes extreme, sometimes even greater than 180°. This kind of wide-angle lenses known as a fish-eye lens due to the peculiar effect of the angle of view.

The focal length of your lens has one other important characteristic. Depending upon whether you have your lens set to wide-angle, normal, or telephoto, you will get a very different depth of field. As we discussed previously, a telephoto setting yields minimal depth of field, while a wide-angle setting generates a lot of focusing depth.

Again, the same picture printed on canvas

Not all special effects need to be done inside a computer. The zoomed picture is a good example of a special effect that you can do in the lens of your camera without doing any processing on the computer whatsoever. To take a zoomed picture, you need a digital camera that allows you to change the zoom setting during exposure; generally, only professional SLR-style digital cameras are capable of this feat.

If you have a camera that you can manually move the focal length of the lens then you could set it on a tripod, set the shutter speed for about a quarter of a second, and manually move the zooming in a firm, steady, and consistent motion.

Getting The Most From Your Camera With Zoom Lens

Getting The Most From Your Zoom Lens

The telephoto end of your zoom lens is great for capturing distant objects, but the additional magnification can create blurry pictures. Especially if you’re shooting something in low light, where your camera might choose a slow shutter speed, so I highly recommend that you take telephoto images using a tripod.

Remember, keep taking lots and lots of photographs of your kids. You will be glad you did!

Betty Muscott, Child Photographer

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About Betty Muscott

Betty A. Muscott is an experienced child photographer and online entrepreneur for tools to capture great photographs of children by parents and grandparents. Connect with Betty on Google+

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