May 2021 • Nebraskaland 35
once, you needed a shorter focal length on your lens. Wide-
angle lenses also are terrifi c for photographing a dramatic
sky over a sweeping landscape.
However, if you want a big bison to fi ll the frame of an
image, a wide-angle lens would be a bad choice. You'd have
to get so close to that bison you'd end up as a statistic instead
of a renowned photographer. To make your camera make that
bison — or bird or moon — look like it's much closer to you,
you need a telephoto lens.
A telephoto lens has a long focal length, which magnifi es
an image, and greatly reduces the fi eld of view. It also
compresses what you see, making images at diff erent
distances from you look like they are closer to each other. The
binoculars you use for birdwatching have long focal lengths,
which is why a bird looks bigger when viewed through them
— and why you don't see much of the bird's surroundings as
you try to fi gure out if its beak is straight or slightly curved.
On a 35mm camera, or the equivalent, a lens with a focal
length of 35mm or less is classifi ed as a wide-angle lens. A
lens with a focal length of 85mm is a telephoto lens (though
if you want to photograph birds, 300mm is about the shortest
you'd want). In between those two focal length ranges is
a "normal" lens, a 50mm lens. A normal lens is so named
because it provides a fi eld of view and perspective similar
to what you see with your eyes. For that reason, they are a
favorite of portrait photographers and others who want to
A wide-angle lens helps show the depth and breadth of this Sandhills landscape.
