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Old September 29th 05, 01:45 AM
Eugene
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Just some links you may want to check out...

http://photonotes.org/cgi-bin/entry.pl?id=Primelens
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prime_lens
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/enc...prime_lens.htm

Please stop spreading misinformation. The first usage of a term is not
necessarily the correct one. If you start referring to zooms as "prime"
you're just going to make yourself sound stupid. Whatever you think it
meant originally, is not what it means now.

Zoom lenses ARE prime lenses, notwithstanding the now-popular misusage of
"prime."

A prime lens is the camera lens as distinct from some other lens or
lenticular device (close-up lens, tele converter, etc.) used with it. It has
meant that since long before zoom lenses became commonplace, and therefore
no need to use another term to mean "non-zoom."

"Prime" is properly used in the sense of primary, main, chief or
original--all dictionary definitions for "prime."

There is NO dictionary definition for "prime" which means fixed focal length
or single focal length, or fixed or single anything else.

It would be nice if this nonsensical misusage, which obviously is based on
someone's misunderstanding of the term some years ago (and then spread like
cancer through the power of the Internet) could be stamped out. Surely "FFL"
is at least as easy to type as "prime" anyway, and there never was any
reason other than shortness to replace "fixed focal length" with the
incorrect term.

N.