Digital SLR Superguide: Using a dSLR
Working with your dSLR Scoping out the lenses and support system for your dSLR  Of lenses and support Lens perspective Focal length multiplier Stop that shaking Holding your camera properly Tripods
Of lenses and support
There is a wide and extensive range of lenses and accessories to complement SLR cameras. There are lenses ranging from 14mm fisheye to a whopping 1,200mm lens (available only by special order and certainly not for the weak or fainthearted).
Let’s take a quick look at lenses and what they can achieve. 
Lens perspective
Different lenses can yield different effects based on their focal length and distance to the subject, among other factors.
A lens with a longer focal length will have a "compression effect", where the foreground seems closer to the background. This is very good for portrait pictures, when you want them to stand out from the background. More apparent depth can be created in the picture by using a wide-angle lens, allowing the background to remain in focus. The 50mm perspective is closest to what we see with our own eyes. Using this effect, dramatic effects can be used, for example, using a wide-angle lens to impart a "you-were-there" feel or using a long telephoto to concentrate the focus on a single part of the picture.
Focal length multiplier
The Focal Length Multiplier (or FLM) is probably one the most misunderstood terms about dSLRs. dSLRs tend to have a sensor that is smaller than a 35mm film frame, so images obtained are equivalent to cropping out the center of a 35mm film frame. As lenses are still made with 35mm cameras in mind, the picture angles of various lenses are calculated to reproduce an image on a 35mm frame.
In essence, what the crop factor means is that you're using a bigger lens than necessary for the capture. For example, using the EOS 30D, the focal length of a 50mm lens is approximately 80mm (i.e. 50mm x 1.6 = 80mm). The crop factor has both pros and cons to it. The good news is that you can now achieve super telephoto focal lengths without buying costly and unwieldy lenses. For example, a 100-300mm zoom lens, with a focal length multiplier of 1.6, becomes a 160-480mm lens. The disadvantage is that a 18mm super wide-angle lens is now only about 28mm, making it almost impossible to obtain the kind of super wide-angle coverage that most professionals desire. This has led to the development of special APS-sized lenses, namely the EF-S lenses for Canon and the DX range for Nikon. These take into account the smaller sensors and compensate accordingly, allowing smaller lenses with wide-angle capability to be introduced to the photography community. | |||||||||||||
Using a dSLR
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