The Joys and Challenges of Super-Telephoto Lenses

B&H Photography Podcast

Jill Waterman

Podcast, Photography, Arts, Visual Arts, Bh, Photo

4.6 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 25 January 2018

⏱️ 72 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

We welcome back Chris Williams, of Lens Therapy Live, and photographer David Speiser, of lilibirds.com, to the B&H Photography Podcast for a discussion on the applications, techniques, and specific features of super-telephoto lenses. Super-telephotos lenses are most often used by sports and wildlife photographers—however, photojournalists, law-enforcement, and even landscape photographers are known to use them, as well. They offer the build quality to withstand tough conditions and the optical quality to capture distant subjects clearly.

For this conversation, we define super-telephoto as a lens with a six-degree angle of view, which, on a full frame sensor, corresponds to a 400mm lens. On APS-C format DSLRs you can get an even longer reach with your super telephotos and, while Fujifilm, Olympus, and Panasonic offer a few super teles for their mirrorless cameras, the ultra-long lenses are still the domain of the professional DSLR. There are high-quality super-telephoto zooms from Sigma and Tamron, but our conversation concentrates on the fast-aperture, prime lenses made by Nikon and Canon. We discuss their unique features, image stabilization systems, filters, methods of support, and the techniques used to handle them effectively.

Join us for this very informative episode and, while you are at it, subscribe to our show.

Guests: David Speiser and Chris Williams

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the B&H Photography Podcast.
0:04.0	For over 40 years, B&H has been the professional source for photography, video, audio, and more.
0:09.6	For your favorite gear, news, and reviews, visit us at bnh.com or download the B&H app to
0:15.4	your iPhone or Android device.
0:17.6	Now here's your host, Alan White's.
0:19.8	Greetings and welcome to the B&H Photography Podcast.
0:23.8	Just a reminder, the B&H Photography Podcast can in 5D Mark 4 sweepstakes is on and you
0:30.6	have two chances to win or you have to do as be a subscriber to the show.
0:34.8	And at the end of this episode, we're going to give you all the details on what you have
0:38.4	to do to qualify.
0:39.6	Stay tuned.
0:40.6	Today's show is about super telephoto lenses, specifically telephoto lenses with angles
0:46.1	of view of 6 degrees or less.
0:49.2	For full frame cameras, we're talking about lenses 400 millimeters and longer for APS-C
0:54.6	cameras, which have smaller sensors.
0:57.1	The threshold starts at around 250 millimeter.
1:00.6	And for Micro 4, third format cameras, lenses 200 millimeters and longer.
1:05.7	Whenever I talk about telephoto lenses, I can't help but think back.
1:09.5	About a lens review I wrote about 10 years ago for the B&H newsletter.
1:12.9	It was a Canon 1200 millimeter F-56 LUSM lens that found its way to the B&H use department.
1:20.5	I called the article of the mother of all telephotos.
1:24.0	Less than 20 of these special order beasts were produced back in the early 1990s.
	...

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