Post #4051234
2026-07-23 15:51 UTC
A quick and very pedantic note on long lens nomenclature:
Lenses with a narrow field of view and a long focal length (> ~90mm or so on 35mm cameras) are called, appropriately enough, "long" lenses.
Many, but not all, long lenses employ an optical design where their physical length is shorter than their optical focal length. These are called "telephoto" lenses. Most, but not all, telephoto lenses are long, and most, but not all, long lenses are telephoto. But he terms aren't interchangeable.
Replies (1)
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@mattblaze@federate.social 2026-07-23 15:51
And none of this has anything to do with whether a lens is a "zoom", which refers to lenses with a focal length that can be varied across a range to achieve different angles of view without changing lenses. Many people casually use "zoom", "telephoto", and "long" interchangeably (usually when they just mean "long"), but that just confuses people who understand the technical meaning of those terms.