Doug Kerr
Well-known member
Some of you might have noticed that I do not use the adjective "prime" to mean "lenses of nominally-fixed focal length".
That's because of the different meaning the term had when I first encountered it - still a legitimate meaning (but not the one we commonly see here).
When I first encountered the term (probably in the 1950s) it was used - mostly in the field of professional cinematography - to mean the "main" objective lens on a camera, as distinguished from "auxiliary" lenses that might be fitted to it, such as:
• Closeup lenses
• Focal length converters (both inboard and outboard)
• (After the onset of "widescreen" formats) Squeeze (anamorphic*) auxiliary lenses.
The term carried no connotation of nominally-fixed focal length, and of course at that time, there was not any common use of zoom lenses anyway.
When zoom lenses emerged, they were of course considered a new type of prime lens, and were typically found in a new subsection of the "prime lens" sections of the catalogs of cinematographic lens makers.
Then, while I wasn't looking (evidently between my first and second childhoods, or perhaps more precisely during the period of gradual transition from one to another), somebody hijacked the term to mean lenses of nominally-fixed focal length.
Well that sort of thing happens a lot. I remember when "ho" was part of a hyphenated utterance usually attributed to Santa Claus.
Best regards,
Doug
That's because of the different meaning the term had when I first encountered it - still a legitimate meaning (but not the one we commonly see here).
When I first encountered the term (probably in the 1950s) it was used - mostly in the field of professional cinematography - to mean the "main" objective lens on a camera, as distinguished from "auxiliary" lenses that might be fitted to it, such as:
• Closeup lenses
• Focal length converters (both inboard and outboard)
• (After the onset of "widescreen" formats) Squeeze (anamorphic*) auxiliary lenses.
*Originally called "anamorphoscopic"
The term carried no connotation of nominally-fixed focal length, and of course at that time, there was not any common use of zoom lenses anyway.
When zoom lenses emerged, they were of course considered a new type of prime lens, and were typically found in a new subsection of the "prime lens" sections of the catalogs of cinematographic lens makers.
Then, while I wasn't looking (evidently between my first and second childhoods, or perhaps more precisely during the period of gradual transition from one to another), somebody hijacked the term to mean lenses of nominally-fixed focal length.
Well that sort of thing happens a lot. I remember when "ho" was part of a hyphenated utterance usually attributed to Santa Claus.
Best regards,
Doug