How To Shoot With A Long Telephoto Lens

How To Shoot With A Long Telephoto Lens

by William Lulow

Long telephoto lenses serve the purpose of bringing your subject closer and making it appear larger in the frame, so that the viewer can see details that would normally be too small to see otherwise.

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

Long telephoto lenses are usually in the following focal lengths:

• 135mm
• 180mm
• 300mm
• 400mm
• 600mm

                                                                            Canon 300mm                                              Canon 400mm                                        Canon 135mm

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 physically, you will need a long telephoto lens. 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 that you can use. 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.

These days, I rely on my 135mm f/2 to provide close up shots of my musician subjects from a distance. Sometimes, if that lens crops out too much of the performer, I will switch to my 85mm f/1.8. This is still a telephoto, but a medium one. Whereas the 135mm translates to a 216mm lens on my crop sensor, the 85mm one becomes a 136mm lens which is usually long enough to allow me to capture just one single performer in the frame.

It’s good to have these lenses be the fastest they can be. The 135mm f/2 is a really fast and sharp lens. When the ISO is pushed to 1600, say, it will allow me to shoot at f/7.1 a good deal of the time. That makes for very sharp images indeed. Here’s one example shot with this lens:

One of the other things a long telephoto will allow you to do is to use its very shallow depth-of-field to render the background more out of focus. This comes in very handy when you want to emphasize one particular object:

Notice how the flowers stand out against the soft background. This is sometimes referred to as “bokeh,” which means the overall soft quality of the background that enables the subject to “pop.”

Here’s another example:

Again, these lenses are usually hard to hand hold. So a tripod or some extra support is needed for optimal results. Also, remember that telephoto lenses also limit your field of view. The longer the lens, the more limited your view is. So, make sure you use it to bring your subject closer.