What does it mean when a camera review mentions the "wide angle" of the lense and the "telephoto"

The specific sentence from a review I was reading was...

'You can get as close to your subject as 2 cm at wide-angle and 90 cm at telephoto on this camera.'

"Wide angle" is when the lens is taking in more of the scene. The wider the angle; the more further away it appears you are from your subject. "Telephoto" is when the lens is taking in less of the scene. The more telephoto; the more it appears you are moving in closer to your subject. When the camera is in the wide angle mode you can physically get as close as 2 cm to the subject and still be in focus. In the telephoto mode you can physically get as close as 90 cm to the subject and still be in focus.

A standard lens is 50mm. that is what the human eye sees. Anything under 50mm. is classed as wide angle because you can get more in the viewfinder. Anything greater of 50mm. is classed as a telephoto lens. If you can obtain a range say from 70mm. to 200mm. then you have what they call a zoom lens. Basically, a telephoto lens is a fixed aperture and a zoom has a region of scale. The telephoto lens will always provide a better photo especially on portraits which a 115mm. lens. Usually to be able to get within 2 cm. of a subject you would normally need a macro lens.

On a camera, whether a digital or film model, there is a basic range in millimeters it works from. Like on my 28-90mm lens, it starts out on the wide angle (28mm)with the lens more open, and as it goes toward the zoom end it less open to get more detail on the shot. So with the camera in mind, on the wide end (usually between 28-35mm) you can get as close 2 cm a way from the subject matter. When you at the full end on the zoom end, you can get as close as 90mm away... meaning you must be further away. So then being close as 2cm on the wide end brings you up close (i.e. a close up or macro), then on the zoom end you have to be a certain length away to be in focus and get the shot. Hope this helps.

Here's a chart that I'm making up just to get you started. It is in 35 mm equivalents. If you are putting a lens of this focal length on most DSLR's, you would have to do some math. Multiply the numbers I gave by .67 if the camera has a 1.5 "lens factor" or by .625 if it has a 1.6 factor. For example, in my list, I say that 50 mm is the "normal" lens for 35 mm cameras. If the DSLR has a factor of 1.5, this would mean that a 33.5 mm lens would be "normal" for that DSLR.

Ultra Wide - 10-20
Wide Angle - 24-35
Normal - 45-55 (50 mm is the accepted "normal")
Medium Tele - 85-135
Telephoto - 150-300
Super Tele - 400-600

Here is a mini-tutorial I made myself to compare focal lengths. This is NOT a lens test or a camera test! It is merely intended to show the difference between various focal lengths. The lens was the Nikon 18-200 VR lens, which is (by definition) an 11X lens, but that 11X does not tell you what the final image will look like. I added one more frame taken with a 300 mm lens. The camera was a Nikon D200 so there is a 1.5X "crop factor," "lens factor," or "focal length multiplier." There is further explanation on the image itself. It would help if you click on "All Sizes" above the image.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04...

This was done with two different lenses: the Nikon 17-55 and 70-300:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstei...

The terms just describe whether the lens is zoomed out or in. When you zoom out as far as you can go, you are at the wide angle end of the zoom range. When you zoom right in, you get to the telephoto end.
The statement just means that angle of view is not the only thing that changes when you zoom in. At the widest angle, the lens will focus as close as 2 cm but, as you zoom in, this minimum focus distance increases to 90 cm.