Nomenclature

[Killtimer]

Specifically the term "prime". I'm just getting back into serious photography after a very long hiatus... my last serious cameras were a Linhoff and a 'Blad, so a long time.
I'm delving into photography social media a bit and I've noticed that anything not a zoom is now called a prime. I always thought a prime lens was one that approximated the FOV of the human eye. Anything else was a telephoto, wide angle or zoom. I'm just curious when this changed, not that I'm surprised, most everything else has also changed.

 

[Unframed Dave]

I've always considered a fixed focal a prime, not based on anything, just a perception.

 

[iamdlewis]

I seem to remember in high school way back in the time before digital that we had prime and zoom lens. You would have a wide angle prime which was something less than 50mm, a wide angle zoom which was something that started wider than 50mm and it really didn't matter what the longest was. I am not sure what we considered telephoto because nobody had anything longer than a 75mm.

So I've pretty much always known fixed lengthens as Prime and anything with adjustable lengthens as zooms with a descriptor before of wide, standard or telephoto. Though I don't really know where telephoto starts or where wide ends. I feel that wide is <35mm with standard being 35-100 and telephoto >100.

 

[Killtimer]

I'm beginning to feel really old. Let me put it this way. I got out of the business just as digital was dawning, and I mean scanner based AV stuff, the consumer digital camera was still a dream. At that time not one of the majors, Canon, Nikon, Leica etc. even made a pro-grade zoom so the zoom/fixed focal length thing didn't really exist. In 25 years in business I only had a single zoom that I can remember... Actually might still have it along with a dozen or so Canon FD lenses in a box in the basement.

 

[Landshark99]

early on zooms were inferior to prime lenses, but there were a number of pro quality zooms available before the digital revolution, by the major camera companies

 

[Killtimer]

were a number of pro quality zooms available before the digital revolution, by the major camera companies

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that. The first zoom that had anywhere near the resolution and contrast that would be useful was Vivitar. I know Canon had nothing and many of my contemporaries were Nikon users. There were many discussions on the relative merits of each, but I can't ever recall zooms being discussed. I will admit that 35mm was only about 10% of my shooting but I was an accredited Canon user and had access to their complete product line through the local service centre. I was out of the game by the '90s so no idea what happened after that.