Why do so many people have big telephotos?
- Thread starter Raymond Lin
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I have a long lens with a camo neoprene cover coupled with camo clothes as it makes look like i am a pro wildlife photographer that knows what he is doing ..always works in the hides until i get my old 28-135 mm out my bag and then i am no longer worth talking to as a proper wildlife photographer only uses long lenses ,as already said it all depends on what you are intersted in ..
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I have a 200-500 to shoot wild birds. Many of my subjects are very small and very nervous around people, so a long lens is a necessity to get the detail I'm looking for. Other than that, you could hide in wait with a shorter lens, but by having a longer lens the birds come into range more often!!
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- Stewart
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I can neither confirm nor deny what I might or might not have access to. But in applications like this the total number of pixels isn't terribly important; it's the pixel density which matters.I'd have thought you'd have had access to one of Canons 120Mpixel cmos's and so could shoot with the 35mm lens and crop...
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- Stewart
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Not completely true. Try this experiment. Shoot a portrait at 400mm. Change to a 14mm lens and reshooot without either you or your subject moving. Crop, enlarge, compare. What do you see?
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- Graham
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This thread must be one of the most pointless threads Ive read on TP.
Why not turn it on its head and ask why so many people use short lenses?
Its surely all about using the correct equipment for what you wish to shoot.
Why not turn it on its head and ask why so many people use short lenses?
Its surely all about using the correct equipment for what you wish to shoot.
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The next question will be "Why do so many people use flash"? After all, you could simply wait till there is more light (daylight) or move someone nearer a window?
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Pixels? (I understand about the perspective part)
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I could be wrong, but my guess is this: Apart from more noise and loss of sharpness, assuming the that the same camera is used and that neither lens distorts the image by much, the uncropped 400 shot and the crop-enlarged 14mm shot will look the same. I think perspective change has more to do with distance to subject than it does with focal length per ce. However a portrait framed with a long lens will look different to one framed the same by a shorter lens, but of course the distance to subject will have changed.
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The question was why do a lot of beginners go for a very large telephoto lenses even though it's probably the wrong choice for them and not why do people use telephoto lenses.
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I use it as a means of sub-conscious weight training
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yeagh thats why I use my 400 2.8 used on an almost daily bais.. cus I am lazy haha
I should get off my backside. run onto the pitch and take some closeups
Mate I’m not talking about a 400 2.8 or a 70-200, we’re talking about those £150 tamron 75-300 f6.3 superzooms that get bundled into a package deal for new photographers and used very much only by tourists, who then wonder why their photos are blurry after shooting 300mm on crop at f6.3 inside a dark building
The barrier to entry on high quality fast aperture telephoto lenses is expense and bulk, but it’s a nessecary evil, but I’m pretty convinced that 90% of 75-300 f6.3 sales are up sold by a salesman before they really know what they’re doing and realise that most likely 105mm is close enough for them
I have a 70-200 2.8, Kinda an essential lens for a professional, but I don’t really enjoy using it, not only just the size and weight but I don’t like photos taken from far away as the compression and perspective isn’t appealing to me, even portraits I like to shoot at 50/85
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Really? I could have sworn the question was......
“I can't help but notice these.
1 - when someone is starting out, they almost always want a big zoom as much as their "walkabout" zoom. The 2nd lens they would get is a 70-200 or a 70-300.
2 - there are a lot of people here with a lot of big telephoto zooms, 100-400, 200-400, 150-600 etc.
How many people here don't have any lenses longer than 135mm? That's currently my longest lens and I don't even have a tele converter and shoot FF.”
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I can see a bit there asking about people starting out, can't you?
Unless you really do think Raymond was only asking why people use telephoto lenses, if so then I can't help you.
a big difference in facial distortion
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Raymond made two statements and only the first concerned beginners. The second statement concerned those of us on this forum, whom mostly are not beginners.
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If the camera and subject stay in the same places for both shots, there should be no difference in distortion.
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I think its because we like variety? I think a lot of people have a "favorite" subject - mine for example is wildlife. However, I also love portraiture and family images of my loved ones - hence having some nice 2.8 glass. We're not one trick ponies, we all like variety!
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WHAT! Of course there's distortion on the wider lens. Lenses with smaller focal lengths distort the face so it looks thinner, as you get longer it gets more realistic and wider,which is why 50mm on a crop, 85mm on a full frame is generally used as it produces the correct size/shape of the face.
It was one of the exercises we did on my degree course
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Apart from distortion, will the 400mm focus on the subject at a distance you'd shoot a 14mm at? Closest focussing distance of the Canon 400mm f2.8 is 2.7m so there's also the possibility the 400mm shot would be very out of focus
The bit you are missing is not moving the camera. Use the 400 mm lens at an appropriate distance to get a good portrait. Stay where you are and then use the 14 mm lens - the person will now be very small in the image. As Stewart suggested, crop and enlarge the very small portrait taken at 14 mm to be the same size as the portrait taken with the 400 mm lens. The distortion should be pretty much the same in both shots.WHAT! Of course there's distortion on the wider lens. Lenses with smaller focal lengths distort the face so it looks thinner, as you get longer it gets more realistic and wider,which is why 50mm on a crop, 85mm on a full frame is generally used as it produces the correct size/shape of the face.
In your example pictures, the camera has moved between shots.
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Dangermouse
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I use a 150-500 simply because the authorities and police don't allow me near military aircraft, yet my lens does, its that simple.
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Nope... you are changing your distance from the camera to subject here.... If shot your portrait at 400mm but then changed to a 14mm but you or your subject did not move the perspective would remain the same. t
Pound Coin
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One will probably have just the head, or part of it in focus and the other will have everything in focus.
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Why would not all of it be in focus? If you take the photo from, say, 20 feet away and f/8, the 400 mm lens should have sufficient DOF to have the whole subject in focus.
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Whilst it is true that a longer lens gives a more flattering perspective to a portrait it is important to remember why...
Perspective is a factor of distance, the lens focal length has nothing to do with it, so a longer lens gives a more pleasing result because you will be further away...
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It has everything to do with it in that case, as you do not get the same result merely by getting closer with a shorter focal length, In that video [which was painful to watch as I can't stand Fstoppers] He pretty much proves that the shot using the longer focal length has the much more pleasing backdrop. No matter what he did the short focal length lenses did not look like 'portraits' more, 'snap shots'. End result is all that matters to me. I don't know why we're all hung up on the portrait side of this though, we've listed dozens of other uses for longer lenses besides.
I was simply pointing out that the focal length of the lens has nothing to do with the perspective, perspective is a function of distance.
Not using Stewarts quite extreme example try taking a subject with a 100mm lens, then change to a 50mm lens, neither you or the subject move and you use the same exposure for both images, then crop the 50mm image to match the framing of the 100mm image... what is going to different between the two?
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It's probably time to stop explaining.
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Judging by some of his wedding shots the OP might benefit from a longer lens to take up some of the "dead space"
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Nope
As above, the ‘distortion’ is caused when you move closer to your subject to get the same framing.
The 2 shots as described by @StewartR would be identical
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Mis read ofthe question.WHAT! Of course there's distortion on the wider lens. Lenses with smaller focal lengths distort the face so it looks thinner, as you get longer it gets more realistic and wider,which is why 50mm on a crop, 85mm on a full frame is generally used as it produces the correct size/shape of the face.
It was one of the exercises we did on my degree course
Wider focal lengths don’t distort, subject distance distorts.