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I used an aperture of f8 to get the entire scene in focus. This is different to the approach I used with in the earlier photos made with telephoto lenses, where I wanted the background to be out of focus.

The effect of focal length is easier to see if you use prime lenses as there’s a dramatic change when you switch from one to the other. It’s less distinct with zoom lenses.

The true strength of lenses lies in their composability. You can combine multiple lenses to delve deeper into a data structure, and the resulting lens remains a first-class value that can be easily passed around within your program. This composability makes lenses an exceptionally flexible tool for managing complex data.

Standard lenses are said to have a perspective similar to that of the human eye. A photo made with a standard lens doesn’t have the compressed perspective of a telephoto or the exaggerated perspective of a wide-angle.

The telephoto lens has a narrow field of view and captures just part of the scene. This focal length is good for capturing detail, but not for including the entire scene.

For example, if you are using a telephoto lens is there a way you can use the compression effect – that is the way it magnifies the background and draws it closer to the subject – more creatively?

Transducersprogramming

The distance between the camera and the subject compress perspective, pulling the background close to the woman and baby. This is quite dramatic. Combined with the moody lighting it creates a cinematic effect similar to that used in some movies.

To elaborate, a lens is a first-class value that encapsulates two primary operations: viewing (or getting) a specific subpart of a data structure and updating (or setting) that subpart. Lenses are particularly valuable in functional programming languages, especially those that prioritize immutability, such as Haskell and Scala.

The wider field of view of wide-angle lenses mean that you can fit much more of the scene in the photo. That’s one of the reasons wide-angle lenses are popular for landscape photography.

Optics functionalprogramming

I was able to make a portrait of the woman standing against the wall and include the background. This helps give the portrait a sense of place. Compare that to the previous images where you see far less of the portrait subject’s environment.

The concept of lenses originates from category theory in mathematics. However, in practical terms, you can envision a lens as a tool that allows you to “zoom in” on a specific part of a data structure. For instance, if you have a complex nested data structure, such as a JSON object, you can utilize a lens to focus on a particular nested field. This abstraction enables you to interact with that field as if it were a top-level entity, thereby simplifying your code.

Wide-angle lenses encourage you to get close to the subject, which has the effect of pushing the background into the distance and making it seem further away.

The Helios 58mm is an old, manual focus lens that you can use with most modern cameras using an adapter. It’s known for the swirly bokeh effect you get with the aperture wide open.

Lenses are composable getters and setters that facilitate the manipulation of immutable data structures in functional programming.

That doesn’t mean you should ignore the in-between focal lengths as there are always times when they come in useful. But it will help you learn how those three important focal lengths work, and what the differences between them are.

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Functionallenses

Just like the first photo, this portrait has a shallow depth of field thanks to the wide aperture of f2.8. This helps separate the model from the background.

Functional lens glasses

The focal length may be shorter but there’s still a narrow field of view. The 85mm lens behaves in a similar way to the 150mm lens in this respect and you can’t see much of the background in the photo. This is another reason why an 85mm lens is such a good portrait lens.

But if you step back and use a smaller aperture the background comes into focus. In this sense a standard lens is extremely versatile.

It’s a good idea to ask yourself how to use the characteristics of your lenses to best effect. It’s about working work with your lenses rather than fighting against them.

As you learn more about your lenses you will become better at selecting the best one to create the effect that you want.

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In summary, lenses are a powerful tool for working with immutable data structures in functional programming. They enable you to focus on specific parts of a data structure and update those parts in a manner that adheres to the core principles of functional programming.

Hopefully the examples in this article help you understand how the focal length and aperture of your lenses affect the look of the photo.

The combination of wide aperture and long focal length means there isn’t much depth of field. Part of the background is out of focus which helps create separation between the woman and the buildings behind her.

We made the portrait in a forest and I positioned the model in a shaft of light falling between the trees. As a result the background was darker than the model which also helped create separation.

Lenses also have other characteristics that contribute to the look of the photo. One of these is bokeh, the aesthetic quality of the out of focus parts of the photo. Factors like the shape of the lens aperture and the quality of the lens elements affect the bokeh.

For that reason it’s handy to think of a zoom lens as several focal lengths in one. For example, if you have an 18-55mm kit lens, you can think of it as three lenses with focal lengths of 18mm, 35mm and 55mm. Some zooms have important focal lengths marked on the barrel to help you with this.

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In functional programming, lenses uphold the principles of immutability and pure functions. In contrast to imperative languages, where you might update a field of an object by directly assigning a new value, functional languages typically treat data structures as immutable. This means once a data structure is created, it cannot be altered. Instead, you must create a new copy of the data structure that reflects the updated value. This approach can be cumbersome, especially for deeply nested structures. Lenses offer a clean and efficient mechanism to perform these updates without violating functional programming principles.

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It’s harder to see in this photo as the background is out of focus, but the compression effect evident in the first photo is also happening here.

I used an 85mm lens on a full-frame camera to make this natural light portrait. I set the aperture to f2.8 to blur the background. This is a typical setting for portraits.

I used a focal length of 150mm and an aperture of f2.8 on an APS-C camera to create the above photo. It was made in the city of Potosí, Bolivia.

In this example, the kit lens is a wide-angle lens at 18mm, a standard lens at 35mm and a short telephoto at 55mm. They behave quite differently. Understanding how the choice of focal length affects composition, as well as perspective and field of view, helps you choose the best one to use.

Standard lenses are interesting – if you get close enough to your subject and use a wide aperture then you can throw the background completely out of focus.