Telephoto lens portraits

Why You Should Shoot Portraits With a Telephoto Lens

This is your invitation to experiment and play around with the types of lenses to see what works for you, but if you are looking to capture spot-on portraits every time try the telephoto lens.

There's so much to consider when it comes to capturing your subjects: the lighting, the expression, the story. Before you even get started, you might be wondering what lens to use.

When it comes to choosing the right lens, it depends on what you're looking to achieve. Capturing a subject with a wide angle lens allows you to tell a broader story because that wider angle means you'll include more of the background in the picture. If you're looking to showcase a person in their element and how they interact with their surroundings, this kind of lens is ideal.

The downfall of wide angle lenses, however, occurs when you use it to shoot up-close portraits of someone's face, or head shots. When you use a wide angle lens, keep in mind it's called wide angle for a reason: it literally distorts the features of someone's face to make them look wider. Now, I don't know very many people who want to look wider on camera and I am sure you don't either.

If you're looking to get more accurate and flattering facial proportions then you should consider shooting with a telephoto lens. I use the Sigma 70 to 200 f/2.8, which is a slightly more cost efficient model than other popular brands out there like Canon. All in all, it should save you around $1,000.

There are a few key reasons why shooting portraits with a telephoto lens creates better results, and that's not just because it gives a more accurate depiction of the face.

The 2.8 aperture creates a greater depth of field, which blurs out the background. This literally makes the subject the focus of the photo versus kit lenses with smaller aperture settings that keep a lot more of the background in focus than not. The larger aperture of a telephoto lens also allows more light to come through, which is beneficial in natural, low light scenarios.

Also, being able to zoom in provides a much more comfortable working distance when you are shooting portraits of someone. That said, your opinion on spatial distance depends on what kind of photographer you want to be. Some photographers really enjoy working up close with their subjects while others prefer some extra space.

Keep in mind, if you are in a travel photography scenario and you want to be more stealth, you can use the telephoto to capture a moment from farther away without interrupting what is going on. It can be harder to get away with this with a shorter focal length lens because you'll actually have to get closer. This is also assuming that you want to get a nice close up of the person versus just shooting a wide shot of them that includes their surroundings, which would be another approach to storytelling.

This is your invitation to experiment and play around with the types of lenses to see what works for you, but if you are looking to capture spot-on portraits every time try the telephoto lens.

Photographer Megan Snedden uses photography to capture people's brilliance and tell stories. Follow her on Instagram @megansnedden

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Storyteller & Photographer at MeganSnedden.com

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ULTIMATE Telephoto Lens Guide (+ Top 12 Lenses!)

Telephoto lenses are one of the great tools of photography – they let you reach out and bring faraway images into close up.

We see the results of telephoto lens use every day in images of sports, the natural world, architectural details and news reporting – subjects the photographer can’t physically get close to.

They can also be used in other situations such as portraiture and for unique creative effects. In this guide, we’ll discuss how telephoto lenses work and how best to use them.

Then we’ll look at some of the best options – both zooms and primes – available to suit any budget.

So, let’s get started!

Table of Contents

What is a Telephoto Lens?

Telephoto focal lengths can result in very large lenses. | Fujifilm Xf 200mm f/2

Lenses are constructed from a number of lens elements and are described by their ‘focal length’. We speak of a 50mm lens or a 300mm lens, for example.

However, the focal length is not the physical length of the lens but an optical measurement between the ‘optical centre’ – where the light rays converge in the lens – and the sensor at the back of the camera.

The focal length determines the ‘angle of view’ – what the camera takes in of the scene we’re looking it.

Different lenses have different angles of view. A 50mm lens may have an angle of about 45 degrees. A wide-angle lens stretches out to take in 80, 90, 100 degrees of the view.

A telephoto or ‘long lens’ will have a narrow angle of view such as 25 degrees or even narrower – this, in turn, leads to a magnified image.

Lenses between 70mm and 135mm are often called ‘medium’ or ‘short telephoto’, those from 135-300mm simply ‘telephoto’, and those above 300mm ‘super (or, if you like, very expensive) telephoto’.

Sports and wildlife photographers use telephoto lenses to give their audience a view of the world, in sharp detail, that they simply couldn’t see with the naked eye.

Less obviously, a telephoto lens can be used in just about any situation to good effect.

From portraiture to macro photography, to even landscape photography and beyond, the possibilities of how you use a telephoto lens are endless.

Here’s a list of telephoto lenses of different focal length range with some suggested uses:

70 – 200mm – a wonderfully versatile zoom lens that’s perfect for portraits, sports, weddings and wildlife.
85mm – a classic portrait lens, it’s also widely used at weddings.
105mm – often used for weddings and portraits.
135mm – a prime lens that’s often used for portraits and weddings, but also great for sports or wildlife photography.
100 – 400mm – this focal range is perfect for sports and wildlife.
600mm and up – super-telephoto lenses that are ideal for sports and wildlife.

There are various focal length range options for both crop sensor and full-frame camera models, with varying degrees of image quality.

Canon manufactures the most zoom lenses of all the different camera brands (which is why you often see the iconic white-barrelled Canon lenses lining up on the sidelines of sporting events), but Nikon and Sony also produce some great ones too.

You can also check out our guide to all the various types of lenses here.

Telephoto lenses can be either ‘prime’ or ‘zoom’. A prime lens has a fixed focal point and, having chosen your subject, you simply adjust the focus to create the frame of the picture.

With a telephoto zoom lens, you can adjust the area of magnification by zooming in or out of the view in front of you.

Photographers often use the ‘zoom in, stand back’ method in portraits to capture their subjects without being intimidatingly close and to avoid lens distortion.

You’ll often hear ‘telephoto zoom’, ‘zoom’ and ‘telephoto’ used interchangeably to mean pretty much the same thing, but at least now you understand the strict definitions!

The main reason that telephoto lenses (and telephoto zoom lenses) are expensive is because of the optical components. These components – the glass – have to be made to an extremely high level of precision and set into finely machined but robust lens housing.

While some telephotos fall into the reasonable range of costs for DSLR owners, some do become very specialist items indeed.

In some places, it may be possible to hire these types of lenses. This can give you an opportunity to try things out before purchasing or, as an alternative to purchasing, to hire one for a particular shoot.

What Is a Telephoto Lens Used For?

Let’s have a closer look at the various merits of using a telephoto lens or a zoom lens in your photography.

1. Making subjects appear closer to the camera

Here you can see the difference between wide-angle and telephoto focal lengths. | Sony 24-200mm f/2.8-4.5

The most common use of telephoto is to bring things closer to your field of view (see guide). A long focal length lens can pull in a building in a landscape; a squirrel in a fir tree; the actions of sport; the expressions on the faces of guests at a wedding.

Most of the above situations are ones where the photographer can’t get closer to the subject or, if they did, it would impact on the subject (for example, they’d frighten the squirrel away).

Even in a situation such as a wedding where the guests expect photographs to be taken, they may react to the presence of the camera. So sometimes closer isn’t best and letting the lens do the work offers advantages.

Using a telephoto lens heightens your selectivity of the potential image in the scene in front of you. You’re going for the ‘photographic jugular’, so to speak.

In portrait photography, by using a telephoto zoom lens, you can really hone in on a particular feature of the subject’s face, for example.

2. Creating compression in an image

Credit: Hollie Mateer

A telephoto lens adds a new dimension to the images you take. It ‘compacts’ or ‘compresses’ space, making objects in the foreground, middle ground, background and far distance seem to stack up behind each other.

We see figures set against buildings closer to their proportionate scales – the figures look smaller and the buildings behind larger – than the more usual perspective view of ordinary lenses.

In the image above shot with a telephoto zoom lens, the out of focus buildings in the background appear closer to the subject than they actually were. By using a long focal length lens in this way, more context can be given to the photo.

3. Creating blurred backgrounds

Using a shallow depth of field with a telephoto can create nice background blur in portraits. | Credit: Hollie Mateer

One effect of using telephoto zoom lenses is that the depth of field tends to be narrow and the background becomes blurred.

For photographs of wildlife, this is often a great benefit, allowing the subject to take centre stage and the confusion of the background to visually melt away.

For a portrait photograph, the effect is to isolate the head and face or body from unnecessary background detail. Use a shallow depth of field (shoot at the maximum aperture of your lens) to accentuate this effect even more.

Widening the aperture will decrease the depth of field with any lens softening the focus on areas beyond it. Hit the right spot and you can create bokeh effects.

A telephoto lens is particularly good for creating bokeh, and you don’t always need to shoot at f/2. 8 or lower – some zoom lenses can be shot at f/4 – f/5.6 and still produce creamy bokeh, especially when used in conjunction with a full frame camera.

4. Getting closer to details

One use of telephoto is capturing finer details. | Credit: Patrick Mateer

Isolating a subject in a scene concentrates our view of it and can make fine detail and texture an important part of the image.

Recognising this, telephoto lenses can be used to select small details that would be lost or become subordinate in a larger view: the hair of a fox or the pattern of colour on a bird’s tail feathers; the weave of a piece of cloth or the design of a tattoo.

In landscape photography, a selected part can become just as expressive of a feeling or place as a wide-angle shot.

Consider for instance a crack in a rock face with loose stones, lichen and flowers. Select it with a telephoto and this small area can fill an image and become a giant landscape.

Macro (or ‘micro’) lenses are often telephoto lenses too, and allow you to get extra close to the details.

5. Taking portraits without distortion

Credit: Hollie Mateer

A telephoto lens can help to keep the parts of the face in proportion when photographing a portrait. This results in a more flattering portrait and a happier sitter/subject than using a wider lens.

Anything wider than a 50mm can really start to distort your portraits. So instead of a wide-angle lens, try shooting portraits with an 85mm, 105mm or even a 70-200mm.

Stand back with a 70-200mm for example, then zoom in on the subject for your portrait image and a more natural field of view.

You’ll note a pleasing lack of distortion in the face and the figure – plus, due to the compression, a 70-200mm lens gives an impactful effect to the image overall.

6. Capturing sport and nature effectively

Credit: Emilio Garcia

There are some things that really benefit from being captured from afar with a telephoto lens with a decent zoom range.

Take sports photography: more often than not, you just can’t get close to the action! If you’re photographing a football match, you simply can’t get on the field with your wide-angle lens and get up close!

Also, taking shots of animals and birds demands patience and a good telephoto.

Nature and sports photography require a lot of time, so we do recommend the use of a monopod. This will allow you to keep steady with a big lens while being able to change the position of your camera quickly as needed.

See our guide on how to use a monopod for some tricks you might not already know.

7. Trying out astrophotography

Focal lengths such as 70-200mm can capture excellent details in astrophotography. | Credit: Patrick Mateer

One subject that loves telephoto lenses is the moon. This image of the moon was captured with a 70-200mm f/2.8 lens, then cropped in a little. The telephoto lens enabled an incredible amount of detail to be captured.

So the next clear night you have, why not try it out yourself? You’ll find you can capture a surprising amount of detail in the moon and even planets with your telephotos!

You can find some great astrophotography tips for beginners here.

Recommended Telephoto Lenses for All Budgets

If you’re in the market for a telephoto lens, here are our recommendations on which give the best bang for your buck, whether you’re a beginner, hobbyist or professional photographer.

With the exception of Fujifilm, all the lenses below can be used on crop sensor (APS-C) or full frame camera bodies.

Remember that when using them with an APS-C sensor camera, you’ll need to take into account a multiplication factor, which will make your telephoto lens even longer!

For Canon Cameras

Budget: Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 – Not a dedicated telephoto, but a versatile lens that’s incredibly good value, with a remarkable reach. For crop sensor/APS-C cameras.
Midrange: Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2 – This full-frame telephoto lens allows for beautifully sharp images with a shallow depth of field. As it’s a zoom lens, it allows for varying focal lengths. For the price, it really is the best buy and is also available for Nikon and Sony cameras.
High-end: Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS III USM – Canon’s flagship 70-200mm lens is a real investment, but it’s the professional’s choice. It offers outstanding build and image quality – with fantastic image stabilisation.

See more of the best Canon lenses here.

For Nikon Cameras

Budget: Nikon AF-S NIKKOR f/1.8G ED – 85 mm – For the price, this lens is a real best buy. Giving sharpness to rival the Nikon 85mm f/1.4G, it’s an ideal lens for wedding photographers and hobbyists.
Midrange: Sigma 745306 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG HSM – A favourite lens of hobbyist sport and wildlife photographers. You get an incredible longer focal length of 600mm and good image quality for the price.
High-end: Nikon NIKKOR Z 70-200mm f/2.8 VR S – Nikon has long led the way with their 70-200mm lenses and the new mirrorless Z model has stolen ahead of its DSLR equivalent (the amazing 70-200mm f/2.8 FL E). Unrivalled image quality and built to withstand all conditions, this 700-200mm works in tandem with the new Nikon focus tracking on the MK 2 versions of the Z6 and Z7, making it a fantastic choice for the professional.

See more of the best Nikon lenses here.

For Sony Cameras

Budget: Sony SEL55210 E Mount APS-C 55-210mm f/4.5-6.3 Telephoto Zoom – This lens for a Sony E mount camera gives superb value for money and is a great introduction for beginners looking for a telephoto lens. With f/4.5 to 6.3 aperture, it’s not the ‘fastest’ of lenses, but it does give superb reach in terms of focal lengths.
Midrange: Tamron SP AF150-600mm f/5-6. 3 Di USD for Sony – A super-telephoto lens that offers great value for Sony camera owners. Tamron is well known for producing third party lenses of extremely high quality that produce images of exquisite sharpness.
High-end: Sony FE 70-200 mm f/2.8GM OSS – With an 11-blade aperture, this beautiful 70-200mm lens allows you to create creamy bokeh with your compressed images. It’s also incredibly sharp in terms of image quality and is the choice of many professionals.

A 70-200mm lens is seen as a ‘must-have’ lens in many professional photographers’ camera bags. Even if it’s not used on every job, having that added reach and versatility of a zoom can enable the photographer to overcome many difficult situations.

Sony is famous for the AF tracking in their mirrorless cameras, meaning their telephoto lenses can achieve fantastic results, even with fast-moving subjects.

See more of the best Sony lenses here.

For Fujifilm Cameras

Budget: Samyang MF 85mm f/1. 4 MK2 Fuji X – Samyang offer a range of fantastically well priced prime lenses for all major camera brands. This manual focus 85mm for Fuji X cameras is great value. Samyang lenses are loved by photographers and filmmakers alike.

Midrange: Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR – This superb and fast lens gives an equivalent focal length of 137mm on a crop sensor Fuji camera. So, it’s an ideal portrait lens and one of really high quality.

High-end: Fujinon XF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 R LM – This super-telephoto lens gives an equivalent focal length of 152-609mm. This means it’s an ideal lens for wildlife or sports photographers. As it’s a big lens, it comes with superb image stabilisation.

See more of the best Fuji lenses here.

Final Words

We hope you’ve enjoyed this guide to telephoto lenses. As you can now see, they do a lot more than simply bring things closer. In fact, they offer unlimited opportunities for experimentation.

For telephoto inspiration away from nature, sport or portraiture, check out the work of street photographer Ali Boombayé who often shoots telephoto.

Boombayé sums up just how effective a telephoto lens can be: “Using a telephoto lens also allows me to surgically extract elements out of the landscape and accentuate a sense of scale.”

Then, after you’ve selected the next telephoto lens you’re looking at buying from our list above, get out there and start shooting!

If you have any questions at all, please don’t hesitate to ask us in the comment section below.

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Portrait, telephoto or wide: how to choose a lens for shooting | Articles | Photo, video, optics

A good lens is more important than a camera. Yes, the camera, of course, affects the amount of noise, but it is the optics that is responsible for what kind of picture the viewer sees.

What to shoot a portrait with? What is a "shirik", and how does it differ from a telephoto? Are there universal lenses? We tell you what types of lenses are and which one is better for a beginner to choose.

Collecting a whole "staff" of lenses is expensive and not always justified for a beginner. It's best to start with one lens based on photography preferences / Source: unsplash.com

Types of lenses

Camera lenses can be classified according to different characteristics: body and lens material, manufacturer, attitude to amateur or professional optics. For example, the key point is what is in front of you: a “fixed” lens or a zoom.

Prime or zoom: which lens to choose

A "fixed" lens, or prime lens, is an optic with a fixed focal length. Simply put, you can’t zoom in or out with it, thereby changing the framing and viewing angle.

Often these lenses have a higher aperture ratio, which allows you to shoot in darker conditions and in poor lighting conditions. On the other hand, they won't give you as much creative freedom as zooms.

For beginners, a prime lens has both pros and cons:

+ you get better and faster optics and improve your photography skills: you will have to immediately think about composition and move around the location to line up the frame;

- a fixed focal length does not allow a beginner to "feel" different viewing angles. You will not be able to shoot wide (a wide-angle lens that captures a large number of objects), and then with a slight movement of your hand turn the lens into a telephoto lens (a television lens with super-zoom; allows you to photograph objects that are far away close-up).

In the case of fixed lenses, you will need a whole set of photo optics for experiments or you will have to buy adapters / Source: unsplash.com . These are "glasses" that can change their focal length - increase and decrease the viewing angle. So, for example, in a reportage, you can first capture the entire scene as a whole, and after a moment shoot large portraits.

But a zoom lens also has pros and cons:

+ is ideal for beginners or hobbyists who don't want to spend money on a set of expensive and heavy lenses;

- such lenses often have a low aperture ratio, and sharpness (when compared with fixes) and a blur pattern on the background - bokeh may also suffer.

Now consider how lenses are divided by focal length or, to put it simply, the width of the viewing angle. The connection is as follows: the smaller the focal length, the wider the viewing angle, which means that more objects fit into the frame.

Wide Angle Lens

Wide Angle Lenses are wide angle lenses that capture a lot of space in the frame. The focal length of such “glasses” is from 6 to 35 mm. Many zoom lenses shoot in the wide-angle range: 18-135mm, 18-55mm, 24-70mm.

Fisheye deserves special mention. This is an ultra wide-angle lens that intentionally distorts the proportions of the frame. For example, it creates the effect of a bulge that “bulges” the picture on the viewer, or turns a square frame into a round one - as if the image was placed inside a glass ball.

Due to the design, the angle of view of the fisheye can exceed 180 degrees / Source: unsplash.com

What to photograph with a wide-angle lens

Landscapes. Due to the wide viewing angle, the whole scene is captured, which allows you to convey the beauty of the landscape. But for objects that are far away, it is better to have a telephoto lens in the kit.

Architecture. The whole building will fit in the frame, and the photographer does not have to move far from it. But keep in mind that a small distance from the camera to the subject can greatly distort the perspective and proportions of the building. In this case, you need to move further or prepare to edit the perspective in post-processing.

See also:

3 easy ways to fix perspective in Photoshop

Interiors. A wide-angle lens is indispensable when shooting indoors. It allows you to capture the entire room as a whole, even if the space is very small.

Reports. Without wide-angle optics, it is impossible to convey the scale of events. Only a width can accommodate a hundred people in a frame.

Portraits. With a wide-angle lens, you can get unusual, deep portraits. They show what surrounds the hero of the picture, where he is. The main thing is not to distort the proportions of the body: watch the angle and distance from which you photograph the model.

Kit lens and standard lens

Standard or normal lenses are "glasses" that show the picture as the human eye sees it. Their viewing angle varies from 40 to 55 degrees, which equates to 40-60 mm in terms of focal length. That is why the 50 mm lens (or “fifty kopecks”) is considered a classic. It is these lenses, all other things being equal, that will give minimal distortion - in the photographs you will not get rounded walls or a protruding nose, as with widths, but at the same time you will not have to go to the other end of the street, as is the case with telephoto optics.

It is universal. It can be used to photograph objects, people, reports, nature, architecture.

For the beginner, 50 mm is the ideal starting point. You don’t have to struggle with distortion and look for an angle (as is the case with wide-angle lenses) and go far to make a portrait (as with telephoto cameras) / Source: unsplash.com

Kit lenses are the cheapest manufacturer’s lenses that come with the camera. They are not the best quality, but usually cover a wide range of focal lengths. The most famous of them are 18-55 mm and 18-135 mm. This allows a beginner to start photographing immediately after buying a camera, without breaking his head over the choice of optics.

Telephoto lens

Telephoto lenses, or telephoto lenses, are "glasses" with a large zoom that allow you to take a close-up picture of an object, even if you are far away from it. The focal length varies from 70mm to 500mm, 800mm and even 2000mm.

A separate subcategory of telephoto lenses - portrait lenses. These are any lenses with a focal length between 50mm and 135mm. It is believed that these are ideal values at which the proportions of the face are not distorted. In addition, such lenses create a beautiful background blur.

See also:

Bokeh effect: how to take a beautiful photo with blur

“glasses” with a focal length of 50 mm or 85 mm are considered classic portraiture / Source: unsplash.com

What to photograph on a telephoto

Details of landscape, architecture and interior. Would you like to take a close-up photo of a bizarre stucco molding on an old cathedral? The telephoto will allow you to "catch" distant details. But keep in mind that without a wide or stock lens in the kit, you can miss a lot of good shots.

Animals. Animal photography is impossible without long-focus optics. It is with her that photographers and cameramen who shoot wildlife most often work.

People. Long lenses capture the proportions of a person's face well. But in order to shoot a portrait on a telephoto, you have to move far enough from the model.

Reporting, sports events, concerts. The telephoto lens will allow you to get portraits and close-ups, being far from the subject. This is convenient, for example, when shooting matches from the stands.

Macro lens

Macro lens is an optic that allows you to take a picture of the subject very close without losing focus. For example, with it you can take a picture of an ant while standing close to it, while with a telephoto lens you have to move a few meters away. The range of focal macro lenses is wide - from 25 mm to 100 mm.

What to shoot with a macro lens

Wildlife and plants. Thanks to the design of the macro lens, insects and flowers will take up the entire frame without losing quality.
Large portraits and facial features. Especially in quiet studio environments where you can take the time to manually focus or wait for slow autofocus.
Details and textures.

Wool, drops, pollen, iris - with such optics you can show interesting textures / Source: unsplash.com

Product photography. Macro lenses are used for shooting small objects. For example, bijouterie and jewelry.

Tilt-shift lens

Tilt-shift lenses (from the English tilt shift - shift and tilt) - a lens that allows you to shift and tilt its optical axis. This helps to eliminate perspective distortion, create panoramas and get sharpness on objects that are at different distances from each other.

It is precisely because of the latter property that tilt-shift lenses often turn out like toy landscapes / Source: unsplash.com

What to photograph with a tilt-shift lens

Landscapes, architecture and interiors. The lens will help you take a photo without perspective distortion, where the lines will be strictly vertical and horizontal.
Items. By shifting the focus, the entire composition can be sharpened. Otherwise, you will have to shoot many identical frames with different sharpness from a tripod and combine them in a graphics editor.

See also:

Tilt-shift lens: what is it and why is it needed0003

Bad lighting on set: what to avoid, how to fix it

High key: what it is, how to shoot, lighting schemes

Summary. Which lens to choose for a beginner

Consider a wide range zoom lens if you're new to photography or if it's a hobby for you that you don't plan to spend a lot of money on by buying expensive optics kits.

Kit or stock lens - a universal classic for a beginner. Suitable for almost any genre, does not distort the proportions in the frame. Few opportunities? Take a closer look at adapters that will help you make the angle wider or turn the lens into a macro.

Wide and telephoto lenses are the next step. You can look at them when you feel that the capabilities of the lens and image quality are no longer enough, or if you are aiming to go into a certain genre from the very beginning. For example, architecture, landscape, sports, reportage or interior photography.

Macro lenses, tilt-shift lenses are interesting toys that will either amuse you and collect dust on the shelf, or help you further develop in photography, expanding your possibilities. Buying them for a beginner can be an expensive and pointless investment that he will not appreciate if he does not have enough experience.

How to shoot with a telephoto lens: Secrets and tricks

The telephoto lens is a great tool for many genres of photography, but its apparent ease of use is deceiving. In particular, a telephoto lens is more sensitive to any camera shake and also provides a shallower depth of field compared to a wide-angle lens. But, on the other hand, a telephoto lens opens up many opportunities for the photographer and gives the widest scope for creativity. In this article, we will talk in detail about how to photograph with a telephoto lens, discussing its advantages and disadvantages.

Contents

1 Shooting with a telephoto lens: Focusing on details
2 How to use a telephoto lens: Creating abstract photos
3 How to shoot with a telephoto lens: Transferring zoom
4 How to shoot with a telephoto lens: Getting enough depth of field
with a telephoto lens: Using a shallow depth of field
6 How to take pictures with a telephoto lens: Watch out for camera shake
7 Conclusion

Shooting with a telephoto lens: focusing on details

If you need to focus the viewer's attention on the small details of the scene you are shooting, then a telephoto lens will do the job perfectly.

Telephoto lenses, with a narrow field of view, are more suitable than any other for shooting small areas of the scene. Whatever you are photographing, a telephoto lens can isolate the details of the scene you are shooting much better than a wide-angle or normal lens. This does not mean that you cannot capture fine details with a wide-angle lens, no. Just with a telephoto lens, it will be much easier to do this.

What to focus on? The answer to this question depends on the genre of photography you are going to take. If you're a portrait photographer, for example, you can capture a model's face without distracting background elements. When shooting a landscape, you can focus on one of the mountain peaks and turn it into the main subject of your photo. Also, don't forget about macro lenses, which are usually telephoto lenses - they allow you to photograph even the smallest details.

This is perhaps the most important telephoto feature a photographer can use. By the way, even when photographing a landscape - not always, but more often than many people think - one detail of the landscape can be more spectacular and more interesting than the entire surrounding landscape:

How to Use a Telephoto Lens: Taking Abstract Photos

Telephoto lenses are great at isolating image details, making them great for taking abstract photos .

For example, by shooting a small area of a landscape, blurring the background and thereby removing any context in the image, a photographer can create an abstract image. That is, an image where everything is simple: light, color, shape and composition. If the viewer cannot tell what is actually depicted in the photograph, then in such a photograph the aesthetic qualities underlying it come to the fore.

Of course, not all photos need to be abstract, and not all abstract photos need to be taken with a telephoto lens. After all, even with a wide-angle lens, you can capture small details, especially if you place the camera as close as possible to the object being shot. But if you want to take a photo of a particular detail, separating it from the background, you should use a telephoto lens - the best tool for this purpose has not yet been invented.

How to shoot with a telephoto lens: Transferring zoom

If you are close to a tree with a mountain in the background and choose to photograph it with a wide-angle lens, the tree will look quite large in the photo compared to the background:

The reason for this is perspective. The closer you are to any object, the larger it looks in relation to the objects in the background. And it may seem to you that this effect is completely independent of the type of lens that you use, and it's all about the distance between you and the subject being shot. However, if you are very close to your subject and using a wide-angle lens, your field of view will be so wide that it will give the viewer a sense of increased perspective (we discussed the effect of perspective exaggeration in a previous article on shooting with a wide-angle lens).

The flip side of this coin is that when using a telephoto lens, it seems as if you were much farther from the subject than it really was. That is, returning to our photo with a tree and mountains, if you shoot a tree, standing a couple of meters away from it, with a wide-angle lens, you will get an image of a giant tree against the backdrop of modest mountains. But as soon as you step back a couple of steps, take a telephoto lens and zoom a little on a tree, the picture will change - the photo will show off a tree against the backdrop of majestic mountains:

This technique can come in handy in a wide range of photography genres, from landscapes to sporting events. If you want to give majesty and scale, for example, mountains in the background, or reduce the size of an object in the foreground, use a telephoto lens.

Of course, the sense of scale in an image cannot be conveyed solely by the features of the optics you use - perspective, one way or another, is related to your position relative to the subject - but a telephoto lens gives you the opportunity to create in the image the feeling that at the time of shooting you were far away further than it really was.

This technique is often used by portrait photographers to compensate for perspective distortion and make the model's face look more natural. Take a look at the example below:

When shooting with a focal length of 300mm, the photographer can capture a shoulder portrait with realistic body proportions. At a focal length of 14 mm due to perspective distortion, the model looks less natural.

If your goal is to convey the scale of some objects in comparison to others, then your task is simple: take a few steps back, zoom in on the subject, and then compose the shot. Looking at the resulting image, you will notice how different it is from what was shot with a wide-angle lens.

How to Shoot with a Telephoto Lens: Getting Enough Depth of Field

When you zoom in to the zoom-in side, the depth of field is drastically reduced.

With an ultra-wide-angle lens such as a 14mm, it's incredibly easy to capture landscape within the entire depth of field. Even at a not too wide aperture, for example, f/5.6, you can get high detail at a distance of 2.5 meters to infinity.

However, already at 50mm - the most "standard" focal length (and not only for telephoto lenses) - in order to capture the same depth of field, you will need to stop down to about f/22.

Telephoto lenses can give amazing results when shooting landscapes, but if you want all the details of the scene to be sharp, then your subject must be far enough away from you to do this.

Can this problem be solved? If f/11 or f/16 doesn't give you the depth of field you want, try moving a little further away from your subject, assuming you can, of course.

Shooting with a telephoto lens: Using a shallow depth of field

So, as we already understood, when using a telephoto lens, you have to deal with a shallow depth of field.

Shallow depth of field, on the one hand, is one of the most attractive features of photography, and on the other hand, the most annoying feature of telephoto lenses. If you want to get a photo that is sharp across the entire camera area, then a shallow depth of field can give you a lot of headaches. If you need to gently blur the background, a telephoto lens is what you need.

In landscape photography, it is not easy to imagine a situation where the photographer would like to get a background out of focus. However, if you've ever photographed animals in their natural habitat, you know that a telephoto lens can be a great tool for this type of photography:

Shallow depth of field makes your photography easier. Highlighting the subject, she seems to tell the eyes of the viewer what exactly should be paid attention to.

To smoothly and aesthetically blur the background, use the widest aperture available to your lens, such as f/2.8, get close to your subject, and then zoom in as you wish. As a result, you will get a beautifully and evenly blurred background.

How to take pictures with a telephoto lens: Watch out for camera shake

Telephoto lenses are more sensitive than others to camera shake and camera shake.

For example, if you do not have good handheld shooting technique, then wide-angle optics will forgive you, but telephoto lenses, on the contrary, will reveal the problem of camera shake in all its unsightly “glory”. The same problem occurs when shooting with a tripod - a gust of wind when shooting with a telephoto lens can lead to a blurry photo even in cases where images taken under the same conditions with a wide-angle lens will appear absolutely sharp.

How to solve this problem? When shooting with a telephoto lens, be prepared to use a tripod more often than usual. If you're filming a sporting event, or a scene that requires you to be constantly moving, try using a monopod. When shooting in windy conditions, try not to extend the thinnest sections of the tripod legs - this will increase the stability of the entire system.

And don't forget to use the zoom from time to time when viewing pictures on the camera screen to see if the photos are sharp enough. If not, then try to find the cause of this, and eliminate it.

Of course, the need for all these manipulations does not make shooting with a telephoto lens easier, but telephoto lenses allow you to get such an interesting perspective that the result is worth all the effort expended.

Conclusion

So, telephoto lenses can't be called universal lenses suitable for shooting absolutely any photographs.

If you need to capture a wide field of view, then a telephoto lens is not suitable for this (except when you decide to shoot and stitch a multi-row panorama in the editor). Or, if you want to exaggerate the size of nearby objects - for example, the foreground of a landscape - then there are much better tools for this.

And if you want to show the viewer the scale of the scene being shot, or separate the subject from the background with a shallow depth of field, then a telephoto lens is exactly what you need.