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Photographic lens design

The design of photographic lenses for use in still or cine cameras is intended to produce a lens that yields the most acceptable rendition of the subject being photographed within a range of constraints that include cost, weight and materials. For many other optical devices such as telescopes, microscopes and theodolites where the visual image is observed but often not recorded the design can often be significantly simpler than is the case in a camera where every image is captured on film or image sensor and can be subject to detailed scrutiny at a later stage. Photographic lenses also include those used in enlargers and projectors.

For general lens design, see Optical lens design.

- a photographic lens whose focal length is fixed, as opposed to a zoom lens, or that is the primary lens in a combination lens system.

Prime lens

- variable focal length lenses. Zoom lenses cover a range of focal lengths by utilising movable elements within the barrel of the lens assembly. In early varifocal lens lenses, the focus also shifted as the lens focal length was changed. Varifocal lenses are also used in many modern autofocus cameras as the lenses are cheaper and simpler to construct and the autofocus can take care of the re-focussing requirements. Many modern zoom lenses are now confocal, meaning that the focus is maintained throughout the zoom range. Because of the need to operate over a range of focal lengths and maintain confocality, zoom lenses typically have very many lens elements. More significantly, the front elements of the lens will always be a compromise in terms of its size, light-gathering capability and the angle of incidence of the incoming rays of light. For all these reasons, the optical performance of zoom lenses tends to be lower than fixed-focal-length lenses.

Zoom lenses

- a lens with a focal length about equal to the diagonal size of the film or sensor format, or that reproduces perspective that generally looks "normal" to a human observer.

Normal lens

Camera lens