Telephoto lenses
Making the most of longer focal lengths
Telephoto lenses give you more ‘reach’, allowing you to capture distant subjects. They are a natural fit for wildlife and sports photography, where you often can’t get close to the action, but the unique qualities of these lenses make them useful for all sorts of photographing and film-making.
The reason telephoto lenses give you reach is down to the narrow angle of view they capture. A standard 50mm lens on a full-frame camera captures 46 degrees diagonally, whereas the RF 1200mm F8L IS USM – Canon’s longest focal length – has a diagonal angle of view of just over two degrees. Everything looks more magnified when viewed through a telephoto lens, which makes it more challenging to keep track of moving subjects.
Telephoto lenses also appear to give a more compressed view, with objects looking closer to each other than they are in reality. The background, in particular, will look much closer to the foreground due to the narrow angle of view. This is because a much smaller area of the background will be captured by the lens, compared with a standard or wide-angle lens. This has advantages for portrait photography, as it’s much easier to frame a person against a complementary part of the backdrop, and put it out of focus with a wide aperture.
You can take advantage of the ‘compression’ of a longer focal length when shooting cityscapes and landscapes, in order to make scenes appear more densely packed. Forests can look fuller, mountains more dominant and buildings appear more crammed together.