PRETORIA (Reuters) - The ANC in South Africa's richest province backed Deputy President Kgalema Mothlanthe on Friday as its choice for leader of the ruling party, keeping him in the hunt for a position that would tee him up to be president of Africa's biggest economy.
However, Motlanthe refused to immediately seize on the support of African National Congress (ANC) members in Gauteng, the province that includes Johannesburg and Pretoria, as the chance to launch a formal challenge to President Jacob Zuma.
Zuma is firm favorite to win re-election to the helm of the ANC at a party leadership conference next month, despite a slew of scandals and sluggish economic growth in the three years since he won the national presidency in elections.
He has also been criticized for his handling this year of three months of violent labor unrest in the mining sector that included the police killing of 34 striking platinum miners on August 16. The labor strife dented South Africa's image with investors and led to downgrades by credit ratings agencies.
Speaking to the foreign media in Pretoria, Motlanthe said he felt "neutral" about the Gauteng backing, adding that he was yet to make up his mind whether or not to run against Zuma.
"I'm still agonizing over it," he said.
Besides Gauteng, KwaZulu Natal - the province with the biggest voting clout in the December ANC election - has come out in support of Zuma, as has the smaller Free State.
South Africa's remaining six provinces are due to reveal their decisions later on Friday and - barring any last minute surprises - all the signs point to Zuma securing enough backing at the Dec 16-20 conference to win re-election.
Zuma himself became leader of Nelson Mandela's 100-year-old liberation movement in 2007 after spearheading a grassroots internal campaign to unseat then president Thabo Mbeki, who was seen by many ANC members as aloof and too pro-business.
(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Pascal Fletcher)
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Nadine Wolf protests the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act outside the offices of Sen. Charles Schumer and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Jan. 18, 2012 in New York City 
Dear Lifehacker,
It's important to know the difference between zoom lenses and prime lenses. A zoom lens does what you might expect: it zooms in and out, allowing you to magnify your subject. A prime lens can't zoom. If you want to move closer or farther away with a prime, you move your legs rather than turning a zoom ring on the barrel (i.e. the body) of the lens. Why would anyone prefer a prime to a zoom? Primes are often cheaper, offer sharper results, have wider apertures (which means they can take in more light, thus performing better in low light situations), and generally handle their specific function better than a zoom. That said, for enough money a zoom can perform just as well and offers more versatility. Obviously you have an advantage if you don't have to constantly change lenses. Zooms allow you to essentially change the lens, and therefore the type of shot you're getting, by zooming in or out. Primes do not.
Lens titles have two measurements. The first is focal length, as we just discussed, and the second is aperture. Aperture determines how much light your lens can let in. When a lens has a wide aperture, designated by a small number called an f-stop (e.g. f/1.8), it captures more light. When a lens has a narrow aperture, designated by a larger number (e.g. f/5.6), it captures less. Wide apertures allow you to take photos when less light is available because the lens can see more of the light. Take a look at the photo to the right. The pictured lens current has a wide aperture, and you can see a lot of light passing through the front glass of the lens straight through the back. If that hole were smaller, the aperture would be narrower and less light could pass through. Aperture isn't just a concept, but something you can actually see when you look at a lens.
Fisheye lenses are the widest lenses you can buy. As pictured to the right, sometimes they're so wide that your image looks like a circle and your camera actually captures part of the inside of the lens barrel, too. Fisheye lenses are used when you need to photograph absolutely everything possible in the frame or you want the look of extremely exaggerated depth. When you look at fisheye photos you'll often find lots of pets and people staring directly into the camera because it makes their faces look funny. Of course, more practical uses include photographing small spaces or distorting reality to create a specific meaning in your image. If you want to see an example of a fisheye effect in real life, just look through a peephole in a door.
Wide angle lenses create exaggerated depth just like fisheyes do, but to a lesser extent. When you want to capture a lot in your photo, you need to go wide. A wide angle cause some distortion, however. For example, if you were photographing a ladder laid horizontally across the frame it would appear to curve. The photo to the right demonstrates this effect. Look at how the walls curve inward as you look at the image from bottom to top. (The inward angle occurs, in part, because of the low perspective, but the curvature is a distortion resulting from the wide angle lens.) Although some very expensive wide angle lenses attempt to correct this distortion somewhat, and you can use post-production tools like Photoshop to make those corrections as well, the effect isn't necessarily bad. When you use a wide angle lens, simply know the image will distort and the depth will be exaggerated so you can use it to your advantage.
Standard lenses mirror what the human eye sees most closely. If you want your photos to look natural, standard is the way to go. A 50mm lens is generally considered to be the closest to what the human eye sees, although some will argue a 35mm is closer. Regardless, both produce beautiful, natural-looking photographs. Additionally, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm are common focal lengths for inexpensive prime lenses (especially 50mm). This is great because it's a way to find lenses with wide maximum apertures (e.g f/1.4, f/1.8, f/2, and f/2.8) without spending a lot of money. If you're looking to take portraits or close-ups of nature, a 50mm offers the most options. Many prefer 85mm for portraits, however, as it flattens the depth of the image even more (and depth isn't particularly flattering to the human face?just look what a fish eye lens does and you can see). Regardless of what you choose, everyone should have a lens in the standard range. While they may not offer special features, they're rarely a bad choice for most types of photos.
When you need to get closer but can't, you pick up a telephoto lens. While you have the great advantage of getting closer to your subject without physically moving, telephoto lenses flatten depth to the point where it may look a little unrealistic. Consider this example: if you photographed two people walking towards you and one was many meters behind the other, a telephoto lens could make it look like both people were almost next to each other. Flattened space isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's important to know a telephoto lens causes it so you can take that into account before using one. As you can see in the example to the right, telephotos can isolate single subjects beautifully even when they're far away. If you choose a telephoto lens, make sure to spend the extra money and get one with optical stabilization. Everything is magnified by a telephoto lens, including the small movements of your hands and body when holding the camera. You'll end up with a lot of motion blur if the camera isn't stabilized, and since you won't have a tripod with you at all times you can save yourself some ruined images if the lens can help stabilize itself.
Super telephoto lenses can shoot the moon. When you want to photograph something that's really far off, this is the type of lens you need. Super telephoto lenses have the same pros and cons of regular telephoto, but to more of an extreme. If you're not aiming as far away as the stars, you can achieve some cool effects such as those seen in the example to the right. The background is, essentially, obliterated and reduced to an incredibly smooth blur. Because telephoto lenses flatten space more than any other type, you can achieve beautiful selective focus in your images.
Some lenses offer additional features on top of their focal length that can create interesting effects. Macro lenses allow you to focus on an object that's incredibly close?often times closer than the human eye can see. Tilt-shift lenses selectively focus on an area of the image and create a miniaturization effect. These two types are the most popular, but you'll find more if you start exploring. For example, Lens Baby offers its own brand of selective focus lenses that can create blur in parts of the image that a standard lens cannot achieve.
