Zoom lens

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Zooming in and out

The effect of different focal lengths. The focal length is given in the image. The effect is shown for normal film photography. The subject in the center always has about the same size.

A Zoom lens from Canon. This one covers 70-200, and has a maximum aperture of 2.8

A Variable focus lens (also called Zoom lens) is a camera lens that can vary its focal length.

In general, such lenses have a lower aperture than comparable fixfocus lenses. Depending on the manufacturer common zoom lenses (in the 30-100mm focal range, for film photography) usually have a varying aperture, from 4-5.6, perhaps 3.3-5.6. There are also some zoom lenses with a fixed maximal aperture (to take the example from before: Of 2.6 or 2.8, maximum). In contrast, fix-focus lenses in that range have maximum apertures of 1.4 to 2.

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