Go the distance

All the lenses we’ve selected for this Big Test have telephoto super-powers

Favoured focal lengths for super-telephoto zooms used to be around the 80-400mm range, giving twice the max reach of a 70-200mm lens. Nikon has mostly stuck to this formula, but its AF-S 180-400mm f/4e TC1.4 FL ED VR with a built-in extender is a notable exception. It’s a beast at 3500g and its price of £10,999/$12,397 puts it beyond the reach of most. By contrast, the 200-500mm here is affordable for an own-brand lens, and it’s the only zoom here to boast a constantaperture design. Zoom lenses aren’t the only way to go either, so we’ve added two 500mm primes to the contender list.

Sigma and Tamron have both been supersizing the reach of super-tele zooms over recent years, stretching the maximum focal length to 600mm. The extra reach of current Sigma and Tamron super-tele zooms is nice to have, although the aperture rating shrinks to f/6.3 at the long end of the zoom range.

Mod cons tend to include fast and whisper-quiet ring-type ultrasonic AF systems, along with effective optical stabilization, which is pretty much essential when shooting handheld, or even with a monopod, at such long focal lengths. The rule of thumb for handheld photography is that you should use a shutter speed that’s at least as fast as the reciprocal of the focal length of the lens (‘effective’ focal length for crop sensor cameras). That equates to 1/500 sec when shooting with a focal length of 500mm on an FX format body, or about 1/1000 sec when shooting at 600mm on a DX camera.

It’s possible to use any of the lenses in this test group with the same make of teleconverter. We wouldn’t recommend this, however, especially with a lens that shrinks to f/6.3 at the long end of its zoom range. In this case, you’d end up with a widest available aperture of f/9 or f/13, using a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter respectively. This makes autofocus difficult or impossible with DSLRS. Another thing to bear in mind is that, at the time of writing, Nikon still doesn’t offer a native Z-mount supertelephoto lens, so you’ll need to use an F-mount lens via an FTZ mount adapter for Z-series cameras.