Want to take the very best picture of a small coin or the Grand Canyon’s panoramic vistas? You don’t have to be limited by the lens on your point-and-shoot digital camera. Conversion lenses work with cameras that don’t readily accept interchangeable lenses.

These lenses typically attach to the camera’s existing lens, either directly or with the aid of an adapter. Certainly, photo-editing software allows you to create similar effects after the picture is taken. But editing software often affects image quality. Resizing and cropping images lowers the resolution.

A lens actually changes what the camera records. A zoom lens, for example, will capture a distant object at full resolution.

Here are some tips for picking out lenses:

Magnificent magnification

Macro, or close-up, lenses let you take phenomenal pictures of flowers or very small objects. Not to be confused with telephoto lenses, macro lenses focus on objects close to the lens.

The magnification of a macro lens is usually expressed as a ratio. With a 1:1 lens, the object appears life-sized in the picture. A 2:1 macro lens doubles an object’s natural size.