source of width δ Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

A zoom lens allows pho­tog­ra­phers to vary its effec­tive focal length through a spec­i­fied range, which alters the angle of view and mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of the image. Zoom lens­es are described by stat­ing their focal length range from the short­est to longest, such as 24–70 mm and 70–200 mm. The focal length range of a zoom lens direct­ly cor­re­lates to its zoom ratio, which is derived by divid­ing the longest focal length by the short­est. Both of the lens­es above have a zoom ratio of approx­i­mate­ly 2.9x, or 2.9:1. The zoom ratio also describes the amount of sub­ject mag­ni­fi­ca­tion a sin­gle lens can achieve across its avail­able focal length range.

Uncertainty principle for wave packets:  ΔfΔt ~ 1. The frequency bandwidth is of the same order as the reciprocal of the temporal extend of the pulse.

Focal length of lensformula

[At time t look at a source of width δ a perpendicular distance L from a screen.  Look at two points (P1 and P2) on the screen separated by a distance d.  The electric field at P1 and P2 is a superposition of the electric fields of the waves emitted by all source points, whose emissions are not correlated.  In order for EM waves leaving P1 and P2 to produce a recognizable interference pattern, the superpositions at P1 and P2 must stay in phase. screen source of width δ Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

If you’re into math—and who isn’t?—the gen­er­al for­mu­la for cal­cu­lat­ing the angle of view when you know the focal length and the sen­sor size is:

A distance L from a thermal monochromatic (line) source whose linear dimensions are on the order of δ, two slits separated by a distance greater than dc = 0.16λL/δ will no longer produce a recognizable interference pattern.  We call πdc2/4 the coherence area of the source.[At time t look at a source of width δ a perpendicular distance L from a screen.  Look at two points (P1 and P2) on the screen separated by a distance d.  The electric field at P1 and P2 is a superposition of the electric fields of the waves emitted by all source points, whose emissions are not correlated.  In order for EM waves leaving P1 and P2 to produce a recognizable interference pattern, the superpositions at P1 and P2 must stay in phase. screen source of width δ Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

FOV tofocal length

Consider a wave propagating through space.  Coherence is a measure of the correlation that exists between the phases of the wave measured at different points.  The coherence of a wave depends on the characteristics of its source.

We can produce coherent light from an incoherent source if we are willing to throw away a lot of the light.  We do this by first spatially filtering the light from the incoherent source to increase the spatial coherence, and then spectrally filtering the light to increase the temporal coherence.

In gen­er­al, a short focal length—or short focus, or “wide-angle”—lens is one whose angle of view is 65° or greater. Recall from above that angle of view is deter­mined by both focal length and image sen­sor size, which means that what qual­i­fies as “short” is pred­i­cat­ed upon a camera’s image sen­sor for­mat. There­fore, on full-frame cam­eras, the thresh­old for wide-angle lens­es is 35 mm or less, and on APS‑C cam­eras, it’s 23 mm or less. Lens­es with an angle of view of 85° or greater are called “ultra wide-angle,” which is about 24 mm or less on full-frame and 16mm or less on APS‑C cam­eras.

Image

If we know the wavelength or frequency spread of a light source, we can calculate lc and tc.  We cannot observe interference patterns produced by division of amplitude, such as thin-film interference, if the optical path difference greatly exceeds lc.

The con­stant angle of view of a prime lens forces this type of experimentation—“zooming with your feet”—because the oth­er options are either bad pic­tures or no pic­tures. Fur­ther­more, restrict­ing your­self to a sin­gle focal length for an extend­ed peri­od of time acquaints you to its angle of view and allows you to visu­al­ize a com­po­si­tion before rais­ing the cam­era to your face.

The rela­tion­ship between the angle of view and a lens’s focal length is rough­ly inverse­ly pro­por­tion­al from 50mm and up on a full-frame cam­era. How­ev­er, as the focal length grows increas­ing­ly short­er than 50mm, that rough pro­por­tion­al­i­ty breaks down, and the rate of change in the angle of view slows. For exam­ple, the change in angle of view from 100mm to 50mm is more pro­nounced than the change from 28mm to 14mm.

Fourier's theorem states that any periodic function with period T (or spatial period or wavelength L) can be synthesized by a sum of harmonic functions whose periods (wavelengths) are integral submultiples of T (or L), such as T/2, T/3, ..., (or L/2, L/3, ...).

A sinusoidal plane wave extends to infinity in space and time.  It is perfectly coherent in space and time, its coherence length, coherence time, and coherence area are all infinite.  All real waves are wave pulses, they last for a finite time interval and have finite extend perpendicular to their direction of propagation.  They are mathematically described by non-periodic functions.  We therefore have to learn how to analyze non-periodic functions to find the frequencies present in wave pulses to determine Δω and the coherence length.

The angle of view describes the breadth, or how much, of a scene is cap­tured by the lens and pro­ject­ed onto your camera’s image sen­sor. It’s expressed in degrees of arc and mea­sured diag­o­nal­ly along the image sen­sor. Thus, the angle of view of any lens of a giv­en focal length will change depend­ing on the size of the cam­er­a’s image sen­sor. For exam­ple, a 50 mm lens has a wide angle of view on a medi­um for­mat cam­era, a nor­mal angle of view on a full-frame cam­era, a nar­row­er angle of view on an APS‑C cam­era, and a nar­row angle of view on a Micro Four-Thirds cam­era.

Focal length

f(ω) is a representation of the wave train in frequency space.  It gives the amplitudes and phases of the harmonic waves of all possible frequencies needed to synthesize the wave train.

There are two types of wide-angle lens­es, rec­ti­lin­ear and fish­eye (some­times termed curvi­lin­ear). The vast major­i­ty of wide-angle lens—and oth­er focal lengths, too—are rec­ti­lin­ear. These types of lens­es are designed to ren­der the straight ele­ments found in a scene as straight lines on the pro­ject­ed image. Despite this, wide-angle rec­ti­lin­ear lens­es cause ren­dered objects to pro­gres­sive­ly stretch and enlarge as they approach the edges of the frame. In pho­tog­ra­phy, all fish­eye lens­es are ultra wide-angle lens­es that pro­duce images fea­tur­ing strong con­vex cur­va­ture. Fish­eye lens­es ren­der the straight ele­ments of a scene with a strong cur­va­ture about the cen­tre of the frame (the lens axis). The effect is sim­i­lar to look­ing through a door’s peep­hole, or the con­vex safe­ty mir­rors com­mon­ly placed at the blind cor­ners of indoor park­ing lots and hos­pi­tal cor­ri­dors. Only straight lines that inter­sect with the lens axis will be ren­dered as straight in images cap­tured by fish­eye lens­es.

focallength是什么

The focal length of a lens deter­mines its mag­ni­fy­ing pow­er, which is the appar­ent size of your sub­ject as pro­ject­ed onto the focal plane where your image sen­sor resides. A longer focal length cor­re­sponds to greater mag­ni­fy­ing pow­er and a larg­er ren­di­tion of your sub­ject, and vice ver­sa.

A prime or fixed focal length lens has a set focal length that can­not be changed. There are sev­er­al crit­i­cal dif­fer­ences between prime and zoom lens­es that you should know. Prime lens­es are gen­er­al­ly small­er, faster, and have bet­ter opti­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics than zoom lens­es. Despite this, pho­tog­ra­phers fre­quent­ly opt to shoot with zoom lens­es because of their con­ve­nience: a sin­gle lens can replace sev­er­al of the most pop­u­lar focal length prime lens­es. This is espe­cial­ly impor­tant when you’d pre­fer to pack light, such as dur­ing a trip or a hike.

Camerafocal lengthchart

source of width δ Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

A “nor­mal” lens is defined as one whose focal length is equal to the approx­i­mate diag­o­nal length of a camera’s image sen­sor. In prac­tice, such lens­es tend to fall into a range of slight­ly longer focal lengths that are claimed to pos­sess an angle of view com­pa­ra­ble to that of the human eye’s cone of visu­al atten­tion, which is about 55°.

Any set of sinusoidal waves whose frequencies do not belong to a harmonic series will combine to produce a complex wave that is not periodic.  Any non-periodic waveform may be built from a set of sinusoidal waves.  Each component must have just the right amplitude and relative phase to produce the desired waveform.

It’s impor­tant to rec­og­nize that the con­ve­nience and flex­i­bil­i­ty of zoom lens­es can inspire lazy pho­tog­ra­phy. The ease of chang­ing the angle of view encour­ages pho­tog­ra­phers to set­tle on com­po­si­tions that are good-enough, instead of seek­ing out bet­ter per­spec­tives and gain­ing a deep­er under­stand­ing of their sub­jects. What­ev­er lens you have, be it zoom or prime, it’s vital for the devel­op­ment of good pho­tog­ra­phy to con­sid­er your sub­ject from sev­er­al per­spec­tives by walk­ing towards, step­ping away, and cir­cling around them.

Assume our source emits waves with wavelength λ ± Δλ.  Waves with wavelength λ and λ + Δλ, which at some point in space constructively interfere, will no longer constructively interfere after some optical path length lc = λ2/(2πΔλ); lc is called the coherence length.

focallength中文

For instance, on full-frame cam­eras, whose image sen­sors mea­sure 36×24 mm, the diag­o­nal length is approx­i­mate­ly 43 mm, and yet, the 50 mm lens is con­ven­tion­al­ly con­sid­ered nor­mal. On APS‑C cam­eras (24 × 16 mm), whose diag­o­nal spans about 28 mm, a 35 mm focal length is regard­ed as nor­mal pri­mar­i­ly because its angle of view is sim­i­lar to the 50 mm lens on the full-frame for­mat. There­fore, nor­mal focal lengths will dif­fer as a func­tion of the camera’s image sen­sor size. In fact, as you con­tin­ue read­ing, keep in mind that descrip­tive terms such as “ultra-wide,” “short,” “long,” et cetera, implic­it­ly refer to the angle of view of a lens.

Image

Shortfocal length

Any piece-wise regular periodic function (finite # of discontinuities, finite # of extreme values) can be written as a series of imaginary exponentials.  Assume f(t) is a periodic function of t with fundamental period T = 1/f.

For any giv­en cam­era sys­tem, nor­mal lens­es are gen­er­al­ly the “fastest” avail­able. Adjec­tives such as “fast” and “slow” always describe lens speed, which refers to a lens’ max­i­mum aper­ture open­ing. For instance, a lens with a ƒ/2 or larg­er aper­ture is gen­er­al­ly con­sid­ered fast; a lens with a ƒ/5.6 or small­er aper­ture is deemed to be slow. How is speed rel­e­vant to aper­ture? Recall the reci­procity law: larg­er aper­tures per­mit more light into the cam­era, there­by allow­ing you to use faster shut­ter speeds, and vice ver­sa.

screen source of width δ Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

As you have learned in the sec­tion on aper­tures and f‑numbers, “an increase in focal length decreas­es the inten­si­ty of light reach­ing the image sen­sor.” This rela­tion­ship is most obvi­ous in zoom lens­es. A “vari­able” aper­ture zoom lens is a lens whose max­i­mum aper­ture becomes small­er with increased focal length. These types of zoom lens­es are sim­ple to spot because they list a max­i­mum aper­ture range instead of a sin­gle num­ber. The range spec­i­fies the max­i­mum aper­ture for the short­est and longest focal lengths of the zoom range. Vari­able aper­ture lens­es are the most com­mon type of zoom lens. A con­stant aper­ture or “fixed” aper­ture zoom lens is one whose max­i­mum aper­ture remains con­stant across the entire zoom range. Fixed aper­ture lens­es are typ­i­cal­ly more mas­sive and more expen­sive than their vari­able aper­ture coun­ter­parts. They are also more straight­for­ward to work with when prac­tic­ing man­u­al expo­sure at the max­i­mum aper­ture since no com­pen­sa­tion for lost light is required dur­ing zoom­ing.

[The phase of a wave propagating into the x-direction is given by φ = kx - ωt.  Look at the wave pattern in space at some time t.  At some distance l the phase difference between two waves with wave vectors k1 and k2  which are in phase at x = 0 becomes Δφ = (k1 - k2)l.  When Δφ = 1, or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Interference and diffraction patterns severely loose contrast. We therefore have  1 = (k1 - k2)lc = (2π/λ - 2π/(λ + Δλ))lc. (λ + Δλ - λ)lc/(λ(λ + Δλ))  ~ Δλlc/λ2 = 1/2π. lc = λ2/(2πΔλ).]

Due to their abil­i­ty to mag­ni­fy dis­tance objects, long-focus lens­es present pho­tog­ra­phers with many uses. They are almost uni­ver­sal­ly laud­ed for por­trai­ture because their nar­row angle of view allows for a high­er mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of the sub­ject from con­ven­tion­al­ly more pleas­ing per­spec­tives. As a rule of thumb, a desir­able focal length for a por­trait lens starts at twice the nor­mal focal length for the cam­era sys­tem (about 85 mm for full-frame and 56 mm for APS‑C).

According to Fourier analysis, an arbitrary periodical waveform can be regarded as a superposition of sinusoidal waves.  Fourier synthesis means superimposing many sinusoidal waves to obtain the arbitrary periodic waveform.

Beyond por­trai­ture, long-focus lens­es are use­ful for iso­lat­ing sub­jects in busy and crowd­ed envi­ron­ments. Pho­to­jour­nal­ists, wed­ding, and sports pho­tog­ra­phers exploit this abil­i­ty reg­u­lar­ly. Due to their mag­ni­fy­ing pow­er, super tele­pho­to lens­es are a main­stay for wildlife and nature pho­tog­ra­phers. Last­ly, long-focus lens­es are fre­quent­ly used by land­scape pho­tog­ra­phers to cap­ture dis­tant vis­tas or to iso­late a fea­ture from its sur­round­ings.

Light waves emitted from the two edges of the source have a some definite phase difference right in the center between the two points at some time t.  A ray traveling from the left edge of δ to point P2 must travel a distance ~d(sinθ)/2 farther then a ray traveling to the center.  The path of a ray traveling from the right edge of δ to point P2 travel is ~d(sinθ)/2 shorter then the path to the center.  The path difference for the two rays therefore is dsinθ, which introduces a phase difference Δφ' = 2πdsinθ/λ.  For the distance from P1 to P2 along the wave front we therefore get a phase difference Δφ = 2Δφ' = 4πdsinθ/λ.  Wavelets emitted from the two edges of the source are that are in phase at P1 at time t are are out of phase by 4πdsinθ/λ at P2 at the same time t.  We have sinθ ~ δ/(2L), so Δφ = 2πdδ/(Lλ).  When Δφ = 1 or Δφ ~ 60o, the light is no longer considered coherent.  Δφ = 1 --> d = Lλ/(2πδ) = 0.16 Lλ/δ.]

Let us look at a simple example.  Imagine two corks bobbing up and down on a wavy water surface. Suppose the source of the water waves is a single stick moved harmonically in and out of the water, breaking the otherwise smooth water surface.  There exists a perfect correlation between the motions of the two corks.  They may not bop up and down exactly in phase, one may go up while the other one goes down, but the phase difference between the positions of the two corks is constant in time.  We say that the source is perfectly coherent.  A harmonically oscillating point source produces a perfectly coherent wave.

f(ω) = (A/((2π)1/2i(ω-ω0)))[exp(i(ω+ω0)(T1/2)) - exp(-i(ω-ω0)(T1/2))] = (AT1/(2π)1/2)sin[(ω-ω0)(T1/2)]/(ω-ω0)(T1/2) = (AT1/(2π)1/2)sin(u)/u with u = (ω-ω0)(T1/2).

Lens­es with an angle of view of 35° or nar­row­er are con­sid­ered long-focus lens­es. This trans­lates to a focal length of about 70 mm and greater on full-frame cam­eras, and about 45 mm and longer on APS‑C cam­eras. It’s com­mon for pho­tog­ra­phers to (incor­rect­ly) refer to long-focus lens­es as “tele­pho­to” lens­es. A true tele­pho­to lens is one whose indi­cat­ed focal length is longer than the phys­i­cal length of its body. Due to this ubiq­ui­tous mis­use of the word, there exists a fur­ther clas­si­fi­ca­tion of long-focus lens­es whose angle of view is 10° or nar­row­er called “super tele­pho­to” lens­es (equal to or greater than 250 mm on full-frame cam­eras and 165 mm on APS‑C cam­eras). For­tu­nate­ly, super tele­pho­to lens­es are more often than not actu­al tele­pho­to designs. A great exam­ple is the Canon EF 800 mm f/5.6L IS USM Lens, which is only 461 mm long.

Focaldistance vsfocal length

Sub­ject size is direct­ly pro­por­tion­al to the focal length of the lens. For exam­ple, if you pho­to­graph a soc­cer play­er kick­ing a ball, then switch to a lens that is twice the focal length of the first, the ren­dered size of every ele­ment in your image, from the per­son to the ball, will be dou­bled in size along the lin­ear dimen­sions.

It’s impor­tant to under­stand that the degree to which the focal length mag­ni­fies an object does not depend on your cam­era or the size of its image sen­sor. Assum­ing a fixed sub­ject and sub­ject dis­tance, every lens of the same focal length will project an image of your sub­ject at the same scale. For exam­ple, if a 35 mm lens casts a 1.2 cm image of a per­son, that image will remain 1.2 cm high regard­less of your camera’s sen­sor for­mat. How­ev­er, on a Micro Four Thirds for­mat cam­era, the image of that per­son will fill the height of the frame, where­as it will occu­py half the height of a full-frame image sen­sor, and about one-third the height of a medi­um for­mat image sen­sor. As you progress from a small­er sen­sor to a larg­er one, the 1.2 cm high pro­jec­tion of the per­son remains unchanged, but it occu­pies a small­er part of the total frame. There­fore, although the absolute size of the image will stay con­stant across vary­ing image sen­sor for­mats, its size in pro­por­tion to each image sen­sor for­mat will be dif­fer­ent.

Wide-angle lens­es rep­re­sent the only prac­ti­cal method of cap­tur­ing a scene whose essen­tial ele­ments would oth­er­wise fall out­side the angle of view of a nor­mal lens. Con­ven­tion­al sub­jects of ultra wide-angle lens­es include archi­tec­ture (espe­cial­ly inte­ri­ors), land­scapes, seascapes, cityscapes, astropho­tog­ra­phy, and the entire domain of under­wa­ter pho­tog­ra­phy. Wide-angle lens­es are often used for pho­to­jour­nal­ism, street pho­tog­ra­phy, auto­mo­tive, some sports, and niche por­trai­ture.

In pho­tog­ra­phy, the most essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of a lens is its focal length, which is a mea­sure­ment that describes how much of the scene in front of you can be cap­tured by the cam­era. Tech­ni­cal­ly, the focal length is the dis­tance between the sec­ondary prin­ci­pal point (com­mon­ly and incor­rect­ly called the opti­cal cen­tre) and the rear focal point, where sub­jects at infin­i­ty come into focus. The focal length of a lens deter­mines two inter­re­lat­ed char­ac­ter­is­tics: mag­ni­fi­ca­tion and angle of view.

The light pulse in the figure above contains many frequencies. To determine the coherence length, we need to know its frequency content.

Any set of sinusoidal waves whose frequencies belong to a harmonic series will combine to produce a periodic complex wave, whose repetition frequency is that of the series fundamental.  The individual components may have any amplitudes and any relative phases.  These amplitudes and phases determine the shape of the complex waveform.

While it is not zero  for |x| > some number, we find that it has a dominant peak between x = -π and x = π with smaller fringes on the sides. The major contributions to f(ω) sinc[(ω-ω0)(T1/2)] therefore come from the region -π < (ω - ω0)(T1/2) < π, or  -2π < (ω - ω0)T1 < 2π. If we define Δω = (ω-ω0) as the width of the wave train in frequency space and Δt = T1/2 as its width in time, then ΔωΔt = 2π, ΔfΔt = 1.

In pho­tog­ra­phy, the term macro refers to extreme close-ups. Macro lens­es are nor­mal to long-focus lens­es capa­ble of focus­ing on extreme­ly close sub­jects, there­by ren­der­ing large repro­duc­tions. The mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratio or mag­ni­fi­ca­tion fac­tor is the size of the sub­ject pro­ject­ed onto the image sen­sor in com­par­i­son to its actu­al size. A macro lens’ mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratio is cal­cu­lat­ed at its clos­est focus­ing dis­tance. A true macro lens is capa­ble of achiev­ing a mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratio of 1:1 or high­er. Lens­es with mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratios from 2:1 to 10:1 are called super macro. Ratios over 10:1 cross over into the field of microscopy. When shop­ping for a macro lens, keep in mind that in the con­text of kit lens­es and point-and-shoot cam­eras, some man­u­fac­tur­ers use the macro moniker as mar­ket­ing short­hand for “close-up pho­tog­ra­phy.” These prod­ucts do not achieve 1:1 mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratios. When in doubt, check the tech­ni­cal spec­i­fi­ca­tions.

Image

The wave pattern travels through space with speed c. The coherence time tc is tc = lc/c.  Since λf = c, we have Δf/f = Δω/ω = Δλ/λ.  We can write

A true zoom lens, known as a par­fo­cal lens, main­tains a set focus dis­tance across its entire focal length range. In the days before dig­i­tal photography—before elec­tron­ic aut­o­fo­cus, even—it was com­mon prac­tice to focus a zoom lens at its longest focal length before tak­ing the pic­ture at the desired (if dif­fer­ent) focal length. This tech­nique is no longer pos­si­ble because con­tem­po­rary vari­able focal length lens­es designed for pho­tog­ra­phy are almost exclu­sive­ly var­i­fo­cal lens­es, which do not main­tain set focus across their zoom range. In prac­tice, most pho­tog­ra­phers do not know the dif­fer­ence because the aut­o­fo­cus algo­rithms in their cam­eras com­pen­sate for the slight vari­a­tions.