What is a "lens"?

What is a "lens"?

Mark Comon (Vice President, Paul's Photo, Torrance, CA) gives expert video advice on: How does a digital camera take a picture? and more...

A camera lens is probably the most important single part or component of the camera that you own. Most people think a lot of times about buying a camera; they decide about which camera by looking at the features and then buy whatever lens is on sale. I think that's a mistake because the lens is clearly the most important part. It's the eyes of the camera; think about yourself and how you react with the world with bad eyes versus good eyes. The lens is the eyes; the better the eyes, the better the picture is that's going to be taken. Now, how does the lens work? It works just like our eyes do. There's a glass lens that focuses the light, and the better the lens focuses the light, the clearer the picture you'd have. Of course it focuses the light on the imaging picture of the digital camera, and it focuses the film of the film camera.