I was thinking of upgrading my digital camera, so I looking at new ones. Â I thought some had some great lenses on them as they state "30x" on some and others up to "60x". Â BEWARE, this is false and is intended to confuse people into thinking they are getting more "zoom" than they really are getting.Camera lenses have a focal length. Â I won't get into a definition here, but 50-60mm is basically the same as the human eye sees. Â Wide angle is less than 50mm and anything above 60mm is considered a telescopic or telephoto lens. Â Many modern camera lenses have a zoom feature where you can change that focal length from wide angle to telescopic. Â Normally, a 200mm lens is also called a 4x lens because it magnifies 4x what the eye normally sees. Â That's why telescopic sights for rifles are usually designated 3-9x or a non-zoom setting of 4x. Â What camera manufactures are now doing is tricking people with their "x" designations. Â For instance, take the following camera:Â It is advertised as 30x. Â Now, that seems like a very good telescopic lens. However, on the lower part of the lens body, you see the actual focal length is 4.3-129.0mm. Â This means it goes from VERY wide angle to about 2x telescopic. Â Not nearly as much telescopic ability as it seems! Â What they are actually doing is using the 30x to define the entire zoom range (4.3 X 30 = 129) Â so their "x" value is completely different from what most people are used to. Â If you are looking for a wide angle camera, this one would be great. Â I'm more interested in being able to zoom in on things for closeups or for things that are far away from me.Canon is not the only camera manufacturer doing this! Â So just beware so that you know what you're actually buying.Side note: Â the other numbers on the bottom of the lens body (1:3.4-5.8) are called the f-numbers (or focal ratio) and define how much light the aperture of the lens will allow to pass for the range of the focal length. Â This number doesn't matter to most hobby photographers.
@Retired_Engineer:
Thanks, but this proves that an engineer is incapable of NOT "getting too deep into it".
.....but that must be why the girls like you.
...thanks for the in depth review. 4951