Template talk:Infobox photographic lens

Some issues with this template

I have some issues with this template.

It assumes that we're talking about single-lens reflex cameras of 35mm film format or the full-frame or smaller sensored digital cameras of similar form factor. There are many more camera formats out there, including 35mm rangefinder and a variety of bigger and smaller cameras.
It has no field for a lens' actual focal length, just its '35mm equivalent'. A lens has only one real focal length or range; 35mm equivalents just help those unfamiliar with a format translate it into a frame of reference they're used to.
Some lenses are usable on cameras with several different sensor or film sizes. Thus there may be multiple equivalents. E.g. a Canon EF lens can be used on 1.0, 1.3 and 1.6 "crop factors" and will have a different field of view on each.
A lot of the thinking behind the fields is Canon-centric.
No lens is produced with a 1.3 crop SLR in mind, yet it is one of the 'fov' options.

If you don't mind, I will be thinking of ways to broaden the scope of this template - it would be a shame not to be able to use it on articles on e.g. Hasselblad or Pentax 6x7 lenses. Matthew Brown (Morven) (T:C) 07:59, 5 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If what you want done can't be done simply then I recommend forking the template. Just a suggestion. Cburnett 00:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I created the template as a vehicle for capturing details about Canon lenses - so the shortcomings in the content are based purely on this rather narrow point of view. Of course, with some help from a wider audience, it should be simple to extend and modify the definition to be more representative. Any suggestions on new tags or clearer definition is welcome, starting with the suggestions made already oyster 12:32, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Category problem.

I see that this template automatically adds articles to Category:Photographic lenses. This creates redundant categorization when a lens belongs in a more specific category, such as Category:Minolta lenses. Lenses in the latter should not also appear in the former, per Wikipedia's guidelines.--Srleffler 04:39, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, that was easy to fix. The field "category" now allows you to specify an alternate category in which to put the article.--Srleffler 04:52, 17 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Number symbol preceding "Diaphragm blades" is superfluous

Could we remove the "#" before the "Diaphragm blades:" label in the infobox? Clearly the parameter is a quantity, so the number symbol is redundant. The infobox labels would have a cleaner left-aligned look without it. – voidxor ^{(talk | contrib)} 07:29, 15 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Retail price??

Is "Manufacturers standard retail price" something which should be included in an encyclopedic article?
– Thinking about it, for historical products it can make sense to note what the price was – but to keep track of current prices? I guess this must have been discussed somewhere, I mean generally for the whole encyclopedia, so now I go looking for that discussion – anyone got a link? --83.255.55.91 (talk) 14:58, 6 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think it makes sense. I might read about one lens, and then see that another lens has some other features, and wonder how that might be reflected in the price of the two items. Economics is a valid encyclopaedic subject and should be reflected. Samsara 11:52, 11 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

fw_latest and succession

@Matthiaspaul: I have some concerns about the changes recently made to this template. Two points:

Firmware version numbers may be difficult to determine and are odious to maintain accurately. Many of our software articles suffer from the problem that the version numbers are not frequently updated and may be several years out of date. We need our readers to be able to trust the accuracy of the information we present.
Succeed/replace: There is a more general framework available for this, {{Succession box}}. I wonder if it doesn't make sense to scrap both of those parameters and instead use the general succession box pragma.

Samsara 19:38, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, Samsara.

ad 1) I understand your concern in general, but I don't know, if the solution should be to not provide valid and important information (where available) just because it may change again in the future. I see that this can be a problem in software articles, when the software gets updated very frequently or exists over very long periods of time, but is not in a mass focus. In the case of photographic lenses, firmware updates are rare and typically stop after a number of years (that is well within the time span for which the item will still generate interest among actual users), so, I think, it is less likely that firmware version entries won't get updated before the product reaches its end of life and will be of historical interest only.

Thinking about how to improve the situation for readers in general, we could add a special parameter indicating the time of last edit, something like a pop-up toolhelp bubble displaying a "valid as of yyyy-mm-dd" message, when a user hovers over the corresponding data entry. That should be relatively simple to implement. In either case, these parameters are optional.

ad 2) I added the succeed parameter because I found it rather odd to only have a replace parameter, after all, there will be about as many predecessors as successors. I wasn't aware of the {{Succession box}} framework, but I just had a look. However, this appears to be a solution tailored for articles about people. While we could develop a customized version of these templates for our purposes, I do not know how to address the principal problem, that various other parameter values will often change between lenses as well. The case, where multiple lens revisions can be covered in the same info box, is the exception rather than the rule. So, the potential advantage of being able to handle more than one revision in the same template may be limited to a few occasions.

Greetings, --Matthiaspaul (talk) 21:41, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Just a quick note on no. 2 - the succession box is actually in use on some camera articles, e.g. Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7 and I believe some other m4/3 articles. Greetings, Samsara 22:55, 19 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I see. Thanks for pointing me to it. It's used separately there, not embedded into the infobox. As far as I read about it (but didn't test), it requires start and end points to be specified, right? I ask because for lenses both are sometimes difficult to determine with accuracy, in particular for older lenses. Nevertheless, my comments above were just that, comments, I'm not against using it at all. In fact, in full-blown articles (not the mere stubs most lens articles are right now), I could see use for both, short mentions of predecessor and successor in the infobox near the top of the article, and an actual "timeline" built from succession box templates at the bottom of the article.

--Matthiaspaul (talk) 11:09, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The second line on the template can be arbitrary text - "Until 2013" would be possble or even "Before 4th century BCE" or "As long as Foobar remains in fashion" (not recommended, but possible). I also just made a change so the text can be omitted entirely. Samsara 13:53, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Diameter

If I ask what the diameter of a ball is, am I likely to be misunderstood? Will I be offered a section of the ball at an arbitrary point, or the thickest point? I think the same goes for lenses - other websites commonly list the diameter as simply "diameter", I think the "Max." is superfluous. KISS principle. Samsara 22:17, 20 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Add parameter feature-af (Feature autofocus supported) - your opinion needed

I think it would be nice to add the parameter feature-af (Feature autofocus) with value yes or no.

I think this would be useful, especially for manual focussed lenses, to see with a short look that it is manual focussed lens; that autofocus is not supported by this lens. I think it is an Important information, as nowadays most of the lenses are auto-focussed. And Lot of lenses like little bit exotic Samyang, Handevision but also well known and very expensive lenses like Zeiss Otus don't support autofocus. This might be not known, not expected, by everybody.

So my aim is, that everybody sees with a short look, that AF is not supported. But this feature can also be use to indicate that autofocus is supported

What is your opinion? Should I add this parameter? Feedback is welcome. --GodeNehler (talk) 07:24, 26 June 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Suggested application

I'd come across several lenses, in which the lens type (tele / supertele) was used instead of the the suggested application/genre (e.g portrait, landscape, etc.). Should there be a change of this field? --Angerdan (talk) 00:27, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to the explanation on the Template page: type = Zoom, Prime or Special. There is nothing mentioned about portrait or landscape. From my point of view, a tele / supertele is a special form a prime lens. So, therefore it is ok. --GodeNehler (talk) 06:22, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Tele/supertele isn't an application, so the entered values in some used templates doens't fit to the name of the template. Like portrait or landscape isn't a lens type. I do suggest to list all photographic genres relevant for lens choices in the "application" explanation of the template. And to specifiy the possible lens types as combinations in the "type" template explanation. Otherwise the descriptions would be mixed together in future uses of the lens box like before. --Angerdan (talk) 11:33, 10 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]