Lessons
Class Introduction
07:11 2Canon Lens Basics
14:12 3Focal Length: Angle of View
11:31 4Focal Length: Normal Lenses
09:43 5Focal Length: Wide Angle Lenses
18:15 6Focal Length: Telephoto Lens
21:27 7Focal Length Rule of Thumb
15:36 8Field of View
10:14Aperture Basics
04:41 10Aperture: Maximum Aperture
18:44 11Aperture: Equivalent Focal Length
07:48 12Aperture: Depth of Field
06:23 13Aperture: Maximum Sharpness
08:33 14Aperture: Starburst Effect
05:18 15Aperture: Flare
06:48 16Aperture: Hyperfocal Distance
19:32 17Camera Mount System
14:57 18Canon Lens Compatibility
14:26 19Canon Lens Design
12:29 20Canon Lens Composition
04:30 21Canon Lens Shape
05:50 22Canon Lens Coating
06:53 23Canon Lens Focusing
14:10 24Lens Autofocus
08:17 25Canon Lens Image Stabilization
06:57 26Canon L Lenses
10:18 27Image Quality
09:46 28Canon Zoom Lenses: Standard
17:50 29Canon Super Zooms
05:20 30Canon Wide Zooms
09:48 31Canon Telephoto Zooms
16:09 32Prime Lens: Normal Lenses
09:19 33Prime Lens: Moderate Wide
07:01 34Prime Lens: Wide Angle
05:33 35Prime Lens: Ultra-Wide
09:23 36Prime Lens: Short Telephoto
09:03 37Prime Lens: Medium Telephoto
08:59 38Prime Lens: Super Telephoto
13:59 393rd Party Lenses Overview
06:01 403rd Party Prime Lenses
15:25 413rd Party Zoom Lenses
26:28 42Lens Accessories: Filters
33:42 43Lens Accessories: Lens Hoods
09:58 44Lens Accessories: Tripod Mount
04:51 45Lens Accessories: Extension Tubes
04:30 46Lens Accessories: Extenders
13:11 47Macro Lens: Reproduction Ratio
18:59 48Macro Lens: Technique and Choices
25:59 49Fisheye: Technique and Choices
18:49 50Tilt Shift: Techniques and Choices
27:08 51Make a Lens System Choice
05:37 52Choosing A Portrait Lens
17:21 53Choosing A Sports Lens
17:31 54Choosing A Landscape Lens
10:39 55Best Lenses for You
08:46 56Lens Maintenance
11:19 57Buying and Selling Lens
11:15 58What is John Greengo's Favorite Lens?
08:37Lesson Info
Aperture: Flare
But the flare shape is also determined by the aperture. You can actually look in here and you can count the blades on the aperture by the type of flair in here. And for instance, on this lens, I can tell I have 12345678 bladed aperture in this lance. And so our standard apertures are these straight edges. This is the easiest way to build an aperture, and you will see kind of the lower end lenses built with this type of design. One of the things that you might see listed under the characteristics of a lens is a rounded aperture. And what this means is they put a little curve in the aperture, and I don't design and build lenses myself. But I believe this complicates the process of them opening and closing in the way they actually have to move in and out. But this is preferable so that we have a rounder out of focus area, which doesn't look awkward, cause imagine if we had a three bladed aperture and we had these triangles on our images in all our flare areas, it would look quite awkward.
And so you want to have, ah, lot of blades and you wanna have them rounded. Or even better, you want a truly round aperture so that these air all curves so that when they stop down, they form a perfect circle. But this perfect circle is very hard to create because they're trying to create perfect circles for all the different apertures, and that's why they typically get a rounded one. It's kind of a compromise with the largest versus the smallest aperture. It's all pretty close to round. There are a few lenses that were ableto have nearly perfectly round aperture settings on him, and those tend to have very nice flare areas because they're very natural looking. This also has an impact on the bouquet or the out of focus area of our photograph. We're gonna talk about that in a later section as well. And so how many blades is in your lands? It's not a critical factor on which lens I would choose to buy, but it's something to be aware of because it has an impact on our final photographs, and I always seem to get questions on Starburst. I think I've answered him, but I Well, let's just check in on any other questions that we might need to catch up on. Yeah, I love that starburst affection. Um, so w M. C. Ward had asked him. This is just going back to diffraction. Um, so would my seven d mark two, which would be a crops and circle, have the same diffraction as my five d. Since if the pixel sizes are about the same, Yes. So it's the pixel size, not the sensor size. And so it would. I was about to say no, but I didn't really hear what was the other camera waas. And so there are technical places. For instance, DP Review is a great local site that international, but they're located locally here. And if you go into this, the pages about the camera reviews somewhere buried in there will be in the specifications pixel size, and it's measured in micro meters, and it's gonna be like 2.3 or 4.9, and you can actually check the pixel size off the camera that you were using. And you can compare that with the other cameras that you might have to see where that might be So that a reason to at that point B a pixel peeper. We're getting into that territory. And that's one of the things that I want to avoid a little bit. I mean, we're comparing lenses, but we're not gonna be going in incredible detail and comparing the that close of detail between lens and lens word. We're trying to do the big scope here, right? But that so that the size of the pixel is that is different than saying, This camera has 20 megapixels and this camera has 20 megapixels that you could have you could. Well, I'm not sure what you're asking, but you could have two cameras that have 20 megapixel right that have different Lett's add on top of 20 megapixels, 20 megapixels, same size sensor. They could have slightly different size pixels. It's possible because there is the gap between the pixels and that could very generally they would probably be very, very close. But you could you could pretty summarize going. Oh, this camera has 50 megapixels, and this one has 24 they're the same size sensor that 50 has gotta cram a lot more little pixels in there. And so they're probably a lot smaller. But if they were, if there were two different size sensors, then you got to go back to the looking at the individual pixels. And so one of the areas where this is concerned people is that Cannon has recently introduced a megapixel camera. Okay, so you got 50 megapixels. What does that mean? Smaller pixels packed into that same size area, and this is drawn the attention of some landscape photographers because landscape photographers love intricate little small detail. But landscape photographers also like stopping their lens down to F 16 and F 22. And that's one of the questions that people need to answer is if they're landscape photographer, which I do a fair bit off and you stop your lens down to 22. Do you get too much to fraction on a five DS 50 megapixel camera and you have to back up to F 16 or F 11 in order to hold the sharpness that you need for your photography? And so this is potentially one of the limit points of how far we're going to take pixels. Yeah, 100 megapixel. Sure, that might be fun, but we're gonna have a lot of diffraction. How about how about a 1,000,000 pixels? We're gonna have diffraction at F 2.8 and so we're gonna have to improve the quality of our lenses if we wanna have pixel levels that are that small and in that great of numbers. And so there's a bit of, ah tech war between the lenses and the sensors that we can't have higher quality sensors until we have higher quality lenses. And if you are upgrading your camera, you need to upgrade your lenses to match that, because you gotta have kind of equivalent items to work well together. Where on my lens does it say the number of blades? It doesn't, it doesn't. But if you look in the instruction manual, if you look at the data online about your lands ah, good website would list that in the specifications. However, if you do take a photograph of yourself a selfie and you use a really long exposure like one second, you'll see all the blades, and if you do it long enough, you'll be able to count them
Class Materials
Bonus Materials with Purchase
Ratings and Reviews
user-b3a96c
I so appreciate what a good teacher John is. I wish I would have known this much about lenses when I first started out buying my lenses. It was hard finding information about lenses. I didn't want to spend money on a lens I wouldn't use. The better understanding we have about our gear the better photographers we will be. I have never seen a class like this. Invaluable...yes I bought the class! I am really impressed with the high quality photography classes available on Creative Live!
Abbeylynne
This was a great class not just about the lenses that Canon offers but also how each lens works. As usual, John's slides are alway informative and entertaining. There is a phrase: John has a slide for that! I am not even a Canon user and found this class to have great information for the use of each specific lens. Great work John! Thank you Creative Live for another great class!
Tami Miller
Have loved the other John Greengo classes I've watched & purchased - and this is another winner! Having been a high school/college science teacher, it is refreshing to take a course with someone who not only is extremely experienced, seems to be a computer having stored so much knowledge, but is equally concerned about making the information truly understandable to different levels. And he shares the information using every tool he can: slides, video, interactive presentations, and great quizzes. I learned so much about my Canon lenses - and lenses in general with their many components. I am excited about testing each of mine to see what macro ratio they handle, and especially appreciated the tutorial on testing each for their specific quirk that affects super sharpness. This class is great whether you own Canon lenses or not. Thanks John Greengo!