Macro And Tilt-Shift Lenses

Sometimes a standard zoom or prime lens just won't cut it.

If you take certain types of specialty photographs — extreme closeups and architecture — then you need a lens optimized for those types of photography.

Having the right lens for a photography style is a lot like having the right wrench for a particular bolt.

While you can probably get the bolt undone with something that doesn't quite fit, it takes a lot more time and effort to get it done.

Macro Lenses

Macro lenses get you up close and personal with your photography subject.

While they come in a variety of focal lengths, the defining feature of a macro lens is its ability to focus on objects that are just inches away from the lens.

This type of lens lets you photograph all the details of flowers, bugs, marbles and any other tiny object that catches your eye.

Probably the most interesting thing about macro photography is that the camera is able to capture details that are hard to see with the naked eye.

Sometimes I will take a macro photo and it's not until I look at the large version of the photo later that I see things I didn't even know were there when I took the shot.If you're never going to get this close to any subject (big or small) then you won't need to get a lens with a macro setting.

Tilt-Shift Lenses

Tilt-Shift (TS) lenses really are specialized and are used for one type of photography: architecture.

The primary purpose of a Tilt-Shift lens is to eliminate perspective lines.

When you're taking a photo of a large building, you typically have to tilt the camera up to get the entire building in the photo.

This creates perspective lines, which disrupt architecture photos where you want all the lines to be straight up and down.

A TS lens corrects for this since you are able to keep the camera level, and shift the lens to keep the lines from coverging.

See this article from PhotoGraphic Magazine (one of my favorite photography magazines) for some great examples of a TS lens used for architectural photography.