Chris Brown wrote:
In article .com,
Peter wrote:

I am willing to bet that some (possibly all) of the "macro" lenses
in the brochure are not really macro lenses intended primarily for
1:1 and greater magnification.

Actally they are. Canon have lots of lenses with so-called "Macro" zones on
their focus ring, which aren't actually 1:1, but AFAIK all the lenses in the
"Macro" category are true 1:1 or greater lenses.

I think you misunderstand me. A _real_ macro lens is not one
which has a focus ring which goes up to 1:1, but a lens which
is primarily intended for 1:1 or greater magnification.

Real macro lenses have names on them like:
Leica (or Leitz) Photar
Leitz Micro-Summar (old)
Carl Zeiss Luminar
Carl Zeiss Jena Mikrotar
B&L Micro-Tessar (old)
Nikon (or Nippon Kogaku) Macro-Nikkor

They usually have no focusing ring and very often have the
same thread mount as microscope objectives. The old Leitz
Micro-Summars and B&L Micro-Tessars can often be had
quite cheaply, the modern ones tend to be very expensive.

Nikon is unusual in that they reserve the word "macro" for their
true macro lenses. Nikon uses "Micro-Nikkor" for their lenses
designed for normal close-up work.


I would not be even slightly surprised if the word "telephoto" were
used more than once in the brochure to describe something that is
not actually a telephoto lens.

If you're going to object to the "misuse" of telephoto, you're fighting a
cause which is even more lost than the "prime" caus. I rather suspect that
the vast majority of non-LF photographers don't actually even understand
that it ever had a different meanning to its current one. What woul dyou
have people call what the whole world and their granny now calls "telephoto"
lenses? Narrow-angle, perhaps?

Narrow-angle it could be, and I have seen it used, but the normal
expression is "long-focus lens." As I posted in another part of
this thread, Olympus has made compact 35mm cameras for years which
have 35mm telephoto lenses on them which are thus both wide-angle
and telephoto. I know the lens on the Olympus XA was like this and
I believe it is also true for the Stylus Epic.

If you get your terminology from advertising literature, you are
probably going to get it wrong.

If you want to be prescriptive about language, then you're off to a really
bad start by chosing English to fight your battle in. Perhaps you'd have
better luck with Latin?

Some battles in camera language have been won by the purists.
It used to be really common in the first half of the twentieth
century to use "Depth of Focus" incorrectly for the depth on the
object side of the lens. The purists won, and practically everyone
gets the "depth of field" vs. "depth of focus" distinction correct
nowadays. If you doubt me on this, look in a Leica Manual from
1935 to 1947 where the writers get the terminology wrong. In the
1951 and later editions, as well as almost any modern photography
book, the terms are used correctly.

Peter.
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