59
Rarity. There were only approximately 20 of these now out of production lenses ever made. When they were in production they sold for about $90,000 (US). Due to the time needed to grow the large fluorite crystal used in the 3rd element of the lens, once ordered they took about 18 months to produce.
Autofocus Capability. These lenses include auto focus ...
51
Who in the world buys large primes?
Wildlife and sports photographers, mostly.
I'm struggling to see how one would find use in a long focal length prime, 300mm and above for example: without zoom, isn't your shot composition always at the mercy of how close or far away your subject is, meaning heavy cropping is almost always necessary in post?
It's the ...
40
Those are done using the compression of a telephoto lens. Longer lenses will magnify the subject, so will make the moon look bigger. It will also make buildings and other objects bigger, but by moving yourself further away from those earthbound objects you can reduce them back to a smaller size. But you can't really get further away from the moon, so it ...
36
You can't. I don't care what you've seen on CSI, this just isn't possible in the real world. Even taking Canon's ridiculously big (and now discontinued. Oh, and $100,000) 1200mm lens, The Digital Picture say:
faces were recognizable at distances up to a mile or more
However, you're talking about six times that distance. You could think about mounting a ...
33
Because the distance from Earth to each of the other planets varies due to orbital mechanics, the size of each planet as seen from Earth can vary significantly. Which planet is the largest and the order of relative sizes changes frequently.
For example, right now as of April 1, 2018 the following are the angular sizes of the planets as viewed from Earth:
...
32
There are several related questions here.
Are mirror lenses good at all (opinion)
Are mirror lenses good for wldlife shots in daylight.
Are cheap mirror lenses value for money.
Relevant: I own a Minolta 500mm AF f8 "Reflex" lens- the only model of AF "mirror" lens ever made AFAIK and one of the better quality ones around. I think that as long as you ...
28
The flattening or compression effect is not caused by a particular kind of lens, it applies to all lens in the same way. Actually, this property of lenses applies to our own eyes as well. The factor that affects flattening is the distance from the camera to the subjects.
Consider the following exercise:
Place two friends 1 meter away from each other. ...
25
By specifying that you want to do your surveillance photography in "good sun light", you have already shot yourself in the foot. The best time to do this kind of photography is at night or in the very early morning before the heat from the sun has time to create the "thermals" that make extreme telephoto photography almost impossible, even with the very best ...
24
Normally Jupiter is easily the largest seen from Earth, but depending on orbits, it could sometimes be Venus (next time in September, and then next in 2020).
This site will answer about details relative to exact date: https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/planets/distance
19
my (beginners) understanding of landscape photos is that you generally want them to be with a wide-angle lens
My understanding of landscape photos is that they should contain some landscape! I can understand the association with wide angle lenses, though. You typically want to get a lot in, a photo of a rock is not a landscape photo.
Any focal length can ...
19
The general consensus in this thread is that detailed photography of a subject at a range of 10km is exceedingly difficult, and probably impossible using commercially available equipment — and there's plenty of evidence to support that in the other answers.
However, there is a way to photograph extremely distant targets in extreme detail — it's just not ...
18
I believe the effect has to do with the RATIO of distances from the camera to various parts of the subject / scene. For example, if you take a wide-angle shot of a person's face, their features are exaggerated because the camera-to-nose distance might be half of the camera-to-ear distance.
On the other hand, consider the same shot taken with a telephoto ...
17
If you're shooting with a tripod — a good, solid one, not a sub-$100 deal — image stabilization isn't very important. If you're shooting in a controlled environment with strobes, it's not very important either. Or, if you're shooting in very bright light where you can get good depth of field and a fast shutter speed (to today's standards of pickiness, much ...
16
It's very hard to say without knowing your photography style and common usage.
I think the simplest explanation of stabilisation is "it's like having a cheap, flimsy tripod on your camera at all times... without the hassle of a tripod". It can be incredibly beneficial, and it can be useless (and a battery drain).
Personally, I shoot a lot of (non-sporting) ...
14
'End' in this case is just referring to the end of the zoom range available. So zooming in on an 18-55 lens would take you to the 55mm end of the zoom range, which would be the telephoto end, and the 18 mm end of the zoom range would be the wide angle 'end' (although on this lens the telephoto end isn't very telephoto).
So while it may sound like a physical '...
14
There is no answer to your general question.
Prime lenses are usually sharper than zooms at the same focal-length and aperture, mostly at wider apertures when the sensor out-resolves the lens. At one point lenses can out-resolve the sensor and then you will see equal sharpness in your images despite a potential difference in lens sharpness.
If someone were ...
13
Absolutely. Even if price is not an issue, an F/4 lens offers an important saving in weight.
Now, it is important to understand that aperture is one difference but the most significant is image quality. A cheap 55-200mm is rather poor and you have to stop it down to F/8 or even F/11 to get decent results which is very restrictive.
Still you can get a high ...
13
The 1200mm lens you cite is something of an aberration, since it's built-to-order, not a general-market lens — see Why are some big telephoto lenses so expensive compared to telescopes? and Why are some lenses so expensive?. But the general rule holds true: lenses for DSLRs and most mirrorless cameras are gigantic compared to those in superzoom cameras. ...
13
As others have said, 10 km is not feasible due to the physics of light and atmospheric distortion. However, I'd like to address another aspect of this that hasn't been mentioned yet: if someone is standing 10 km from you and you're both at the same altitude you won't be able to see them because they'll be behind the horizon!
If a person is 1.8 meters (~6 ft)...
13
There is no direct relationship between Telephoto focal lengths and Macro capability. There are some fixed focal length prime lenses that fall into the Telephoto range in terms of focal length and also are capable of close enough focus to be Macro lenses. But a lens doesn't have to be a telephoto lens to have Macro capability and there are many Macro lenses ...
11
I think of wide angle lenses primarily for landscapes too, and I take a lot of wide angle landscapes. But telephotos are good for compressing the foreground and background. If mountains are in the distance you can use the telephoto to emphasize them. Or a full moon can be enlarged by a telephoto. Below isn't the greatest example of this, but a typical ...
11
It is worth mentioning the 'moon illusion' as well. The moon will look big to the human eye when close to the horizon but it is an illusion - try a photograph and see it 'shrink' to it's proper size.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion
And as a direct answer to your questions, long lens and careful placement of foreground interest.
11
There is no direct relationship between Telephoto focal lengths and Macro capability.
Macro lenses allow closer focusing than most lenses. By allowing you to get the subject closer to the camera, it allows you to increase the size of the subject in your photo. Macro capability is measured in terms of Maximum Magnification (MM) that is only indirectly ...
11
If, specifically, you want to cover telephoto and macro, and not necessarily general-purpose nearby photography or wide angle shots, then yes, this is no problem, because relatively long focal length macro lenses are a common design. Sony, for example, has a 100mm f/2.8 macro lens. This won't quite give you the reach of a more extreme telephoto lens (...
11
Your 200mm will still be a 200mm. It will project the same image on the sensor. In DX mode, all that will happen is the camera will throw away the outer areas of that captured image and retain what would have fallen on a DX sensor. This is something you can do yourself in post-processing, so I don't think there is much benefit (apart from smaller file ...
11
Though the angular size of Venus in the Earth sky is larger than any other planet, because Venus is an inferior planet that largest angular size happens only when Venus in the the direction of the Sun. Jupiter has the next-largest angular size and it occurs when Jupiter is in opposition, thus is is also in it's most well-lit state (for an observer on Earth). ...
10
It depends on where she's feeling the limitations. I have a kit made up of 15mm, 40mm, and 70mm prime lenses (on a dSLR with the same 1.5× format as the Nikon D90), and for me, that's just about right. (I'd probably trade the 40mm for a 35mm were I starting over — tough call.) For my style, I don't miss having a zoom at all.
Since she has (and is presumably ...
10
I would choose the 7D for a few reasons:
The effective maximum aperture of the 5D Mark II combo will be f/5.6 X 1.4 = 7.84, nearly f/8. This will somewhat cancel out the light-gathering advantage of the full frame camera.
You will still have a bit less effective reach with the full-frame camera, even considering the small pixel-count difference and even ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
