Long Telephoto Lenses
by William Lulow
Long telephoto lenses serve the purpose of bringing your subject closer and making in appear larger in the frame, so that the viewer can see details that would normally be too small to see otherwise. They are really specialized lenses and should only be used when trying to achieve specific results.
Long telephoto lenses:
- Are usually heavy and require a tripod (some long lenses are actually mounted on the tripod and then the camera is attached)
- Compress distances and therefore, elements within the frame
- Only give a very narrow field of view
- Are usually expensive
- Should be used to gain access to subjects normally too far away
- Provide a very shallow depth-of-field
Long telephoto lenses are usually in the following focal lengths:
- 135mm
- 180mm
- 300mm
- 400mm
- 600mm
Canon 300mm Canon 400mm Canon 200mm
For example, the middle lens here is about $6,500. That’s just for the lens. Obviously, these lenses are for special applications. They are not for average types of images. If you are shooting animals on a safari, where you cannot get very close, you will need a lens of this type. If you are a sports photographer and you want to fill the frame with a player from the distance of the press box, you will need one of these lenses. Any specific occasion where you cannot get physically close enough to your subject to fill the frame, calls for one of these guys. Because they are so heavy, most long telephotos require some kind of support. That can come from a tripod, a monopod, or even a bean-bag placed on the window sill of a Land Rover while on safari. As a matter of fact, I recommended this technique for a student who was actually going on a safari in Africa. They come empty so they don’t take up much room with all your other gear and can be filled on location with sand, dirt or small rocks to create a stable platform.
One technique I have found helpful when using these lenses is to mount them on your tripod and then leave the controls loose so that the tripod head can move easily to follow action. You still get the benefit of increased stability, plus you can still move the rig easily. If I have a shot that calls for one of these behemoths, you can easily rent them from a company like BorrowLenses.com. If you are a sports photographer for a newspaper or magazine, on regular assignment, the publication should have an arsenal of long lenses. They are really much too expensive for the average photographer to buy. In the days of film, my 35mm Nikon kit consisted of six lenses from 24mm up to 200mm. I actually shot most of my rock concerts with the 200mm f/4. The film was push processed to around ISO 1600 (B&W) and I was able to make excellent 16×20 inch prints.
Singer/songwriter, Paula Cole shot with a 135mm f/2 lens, f/6.3 @ 1/125th of a second with an ISO of 2000.
Judy Collins, photographed in Denver, Colorado in 1972, in my days of shooting film. The image was made at a concert with a Nikon 200mm f/4 lens, wide open at 1/125th of a second. The film was Kodak Tri-X pushed processed to an ASA of 1600 and developed in fine-grain developer.
LPGA championship golfer Nancy Lopez, shot during a tournament from a great distance with my 200mm f/4 lens. All of the images shot with my longer telephoto lenses made exquisite 16×20″ enlargements.
So the main take-away from this piece should be that these long telephoto lenses are really meant for situations where the photographer cannot get close enough to the subject to fill a frame. They are also useful to allow really close-up shots from long distances. They are hard to maneuver, impossible to hand-hold and very expensive. While I was shooting these LPGA golf tournaments, I was actually able to borrow a 600mm lens from Canon at the time. They delivered it to my studio back in the 1980s and picked it up when I was done with it (usually just for one or two days). Unless you shoot sports every day, and are on staff at a sports magazine or other entity, they are not worth the investment. If you wish to try them out, you can rent them from a company called “BorrowLenses.com” Otherwise, save your money.
