Tip of the Day: Why is Focal Length Important?

Focal Length is a measure of how much closer you can bring a distant object. A normal lens in 35mm format is 50mm. Normal is a closest measure of what your naked eye sees, when you look at any given subject. In other words, Any lens above 50mm focal length will get you closer to your subject. This, for example means that a 500mm lens will get your subject 10x closer than a standard 50mm. The longer the focal length, the closer distant objects appear, and the narrower the angle of view is. On the other hand, wide-angle lenses have short focal lengths (16mm for example), and have a broad angle of view.