"Chris Brown" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Tony Polson wrote:

Since there is no accepted definition of a "prime" lens we should just
drop the term, as it serves only to confuse.

Feel free to go ahead. The rest of the world will carry on using it.

"The rest of the world" is defined as the few dozen people who post in a
couple of newsgroups?

Camera manufacturers don't use "prime" to mean FFL. They never have. They're
not part of "the rest of the world," I guess?

Lens manufacturers do sometimes use "prime," and they use it to mean actual
prime lenses. Not FFL lenses, necessarily. Zeiss and Schneider, for example,
have catalogued variable prime lenses. Now can you guess what a variable
prime lens is? No? It's a prime lens of variable focal length. (Not a zoom,
because a true zoom has to be parfocal.)

I'll bet there are a lot more people (and a lot more knowledgeable) in Zeiss
and Schneider than there are in your "rest of the world" that thinks "prime"
means fixed focal length.

N.