The longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view and the higher the magnification. But in another case, if you are shooting a bigger subject like a tower or a cruise ship, you can shoot from really far away. If anything there's some camera shake. Standard lenses are popular as they are closest to the angle of view we humans see. 24 July 2022, 1h48. One major advantage a 400mm lens has over a larger camera lens with more focal length is the ability to capture birds in flight. Thanks. Birds that are difficult to approach and flee easily may never get close enough for a detailed shot. On a full-frame camera, with a 400mm lens, you can reach up to 8x zoom and on a crop-sensor having 1.5 crop factor, you can get results of up to 600mm lens with the same 400mm lens. It features a quick AF and has compact shape. Thanks for your inputit is much appreciated. I wonder if users of this lens (100-400) could tell me if they have found themselves a maximum shooting distance to obtain a high quality 8"x 10" print of a small bird and/or a 1000 pixel wide image for the web. They tend to use large apertures and allow a lot of light to enter the lens which makes them fast in low light conditions. How Far Can I Zoom With A 400mm Lens? %privacy_policy%. But why not 300mm? You're taking up too much room ! http://www.1derful.info 4 August 2022, 17h06, by Previously, we talked about the practicality of a 200mm lens for birding, and how it has its place in your lens line-up but falls short in many crucial nature photography situations. Looks like you might think about a 400mm lens and trying to figure out how long does a 400mm lens reach. In the case of photography where a lot of angles are used (for example: in sports photography) a 400 mm lens is highly recommended. Mount: Canon EF | Diaphragm blades: 9, Rounded | Autofocus: Yes | Min focus distance: 2.8 m | Max magnification: 0.2 x | Filter thread: 95 mm | Dimensions (WxL): 105 x 260.1 mm | Weight: 1830 g, Oil-resistant coating Really enjoy your videos and all of the Common Sense explanations that you give. A 300 mm lens camera, on the other hand, is sold at literally half of the formers price, which is around $5000 to 6000 dollars. Is 500mm enough for wildlife? you do need a fast lens and a tripod but those give excelent results. The image stabilizer minimizes shake. It consists of 4 SLD-glass elements and features great power distribution, which allows it to reduce optical aberrations to the minimum. 400mm lenses will be especially useful when you need to take photos of moving vehicles, airshows or animals in their natural habitat. Lens focal length tells us the angle of viewhow much of the scene will be capturedand the magnificationhow large individual elements will be. It mostly depends on the subject. Neil The M.zuiko 60mm f/2.8 Macro was the undisputed king of the Micro Four Thirds macro lenses prior to the recent release of the OM System 90mm macro. on a full frame camera the 100-400 will magnify the image 2 times at 100mm to 8 times at 400mm. How Far Away Can a 600Mm Lens See? Continue with Recommended Cookies. You can also focus manually. Great mobility for in-flight bird photography, Enough reach to capture birds at a moderate distance (15 or less), You may need to crop your images to fill the image frame, Lack of magnification is pronounced with a full-frame camera. What is the most powerful zoom lens? Mount: Sony A | Diaphragm blades: 9, Rounded | Autofocus: Yes | Min focus distance: 1.5 m | Max magnification: 0.27 x | Filter thread: 77 mm | Dimensions (WxL): 94.5 x 196 mm | Weight: 1500 g, Quick focusing most lenses are best stopped down to give best detail and sharpness, and using a tripod or fast shutter speed assure you a sharp pic. It will be especially helpful for those who take photos of sports events and animals. Assuming a 22.5mm wide sensor, 400mm lens and 50 ft subject distance, you will capture a subject: mm cancel out, flip everything around and solve for S: So a subject 2.8ft will fill the frame of a 20D with a 400mm lens when it is 50 ft away. Variable focal length lenses with a maximum focal length of between 400mm and 600mm are by far the most popular lenses for bird photography as they provide 8X magnification at 400mm and 12X magnification at 600mm when shooting with a full-frame sensor camera. This will give you a good idea of what each focal length will look like. That said, both are great lenses. The end result is a smaller area captured, but exactly the same as the central area of the full frame image. 60mm is 2x, 120mm 4x, etc. What lens is Equivalent to 400mm on an APS-C Sensor? You can even reach the moon having melodramatic results. Both 400 mm and 300 mm lenses are used as additional devices to improve the picture quality and alter the shot. As it doesnt weigh a lot and has a variable aperture, you can use it for taking long-reach photos. Hope this help, -- So to get the angle of view in either dimension, you need to solve the triangle whose base is the sensor dimension and whose altitude is the focal length. With a crop-sensor camera like the Canon EOS 7D Mark II we use, we have found it to be a very versatile and capable field of view for most types of bird photography. Many are also offered in two-lens kits with a 50-200mm telephoto zoom or else, a 50-200mm lens is available . The DX sensor makes a lens appear 1.5x longer. Latest buying guides. I hope you are both keeping safe and I look forwards to reading more about your birding experiences. What does that mean? A 100-400mm zoom lens has a focal length of 100-400mm, but it also has a variable focal length of 4x (40-1200mm). I'm not trying to get pictures to submit to a magazine or even a website. A telephoto lens of at least 400mm is a must, unless you plan to spend most of your time photographing at a zoo or bird show where you'll be able to get much closer to your subjects. In a full-frame 35mm film or digital camera with 50mm normal focal length, say, a telephoto lens can provide 8 power using a 700mm film body or a 700mm digital camera. 400mm is just a figure people have found that they start to find it not too hard to find a bird in range. How do I find the shutter count on my Sony a6000? We'll dig into the P900's outlandish zoom range and other features like the pre-shooting cache (records images before you fully depress the shutter release) and focus peaking that might soon become standard on the next generation of cameras. "If you're not living on the edge. The bottom line - on a crop frame camera a 70-300mm zoom (Canon, Nikon, Sony) will get you pretty good coverage from 15 yards to 56 yards away, the 'sweet spot' for outdoor sports.If you're shooting a full frame camera - the Canon 100-400mm gives similar coverage. He is knowledgeable and experienced, and he enjoys sharing his knowledge with others. http://hawkman.smugmug.com/gallery/1414279. A 100-400mm lens lets you push a little further than the standard professional focal length of 70-200mm, and also offers more flexibility than a 500mm prime. The longest field of view of the 1200mm shot was captured with the Nikon 200-400mm f/4.0 + TC-20E III TC @ 400mm (800mm effective) on a DX body, which is equivalent to 1200mm. Can iPhone Camera Lens Get Scratches? 35mm. Nikon continues to build its arsenal of lenses for vloggers and content creators with the brand new NIKKOR Z DX 12-28mm f/3.5-5.6 PZ VR Power Zoom Ultra-Wide Angle Lens. a bird standing over or near water on a hot day will be seen through atmospheric heat and haze..that will affect the quality. Being that this is a Micro Four Thirds system the lens has an equivalent focal length of 400-800mm in full frame terms. The camera with a 400 mm lens prime will provide sharper images than the 300 mm lens. Get the best viral stories straight into your inbox! I'm having difficulty understanding zoom lenses. Heavy, long, sharp, sweet. If you are here, then it means that you are into photography and thinking about buying a lens for your DSLR. Thread started 15 Mar 2006 (Wednesday) 10:52, "If you're not having fun, your pictures will reflect that. Cameras with better light-gathering capabilities have a small aperture size. No, I can't take a picture of a man 350 ft away and fill the frame? Many species of birds are small and difficult to get close too, so is 400mm enough for bird photography? Lets suppose, you are capturing a squirrel with an APS-C crop sensor, then, about 25 feet away, the squirrel will almost cover the picture. http://www.usa.canon.com/app/html/EFLenses101/focal_length.html Now, suppose if you are having a crop sensor, having 1.5 crop factor, then you can get the results of a 600mm lens with the same 400mm. Mount: Canon EF | Diaphragm blades: 9, Rounded | Autofocus: Yes | Min focus distance: 0.98 m | Max magnification: 0.31 x | Filter thread: 77 mm | Dimensions (WxL): 94 x 193 mm | Weight: 1640 g, Compact There is also a manual override switch for better focus adjustment. As its impossible to eliminate transverse chromatic aberration by controlling an aperture, Sigma solved this issue by offering an impressive zoom range that delivers perfect image quality. But as you can see, it does a great job for portraits as well. I have a sigma 150-600mm lens on a Nikon D850 and I can safely identify people over a distance of 1.2km. Thanks to a convenient lock switch, you can fix your focal length settings. Now, if you want how far you can reach with a 400mm lens if reaches as far as you want. Prime lensestend to be more compact and lightweight than zoom lenses. At 500mm, this lens is well placed to handle smaller wildlife, including birds. The larger the film negative, or generally today, the digital sensor, the longer (more mm) the lens needs to be to yield a particular perspective. This 400 mm lens has advanced adjustment settings and controls that allow using it for a wide variety of purposes. Does anyone have any shots with this lens at a similar distance? Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 150-400mm f/4.5 TC 1.25X IS PRO Mount: Micro Four Thirds Format coverage: 4/3 Focal length: 150-400mm (187.5500mm with TC 1.25x) Equivalent 35mm format: 300-800mm (375000mm with TC 1.25x) Weather sealing: Yes Maximum aperture: 4.5 (5.6 with TC 1.25x) Minimum aperture: 22 (29 with TC 1.25x) This again depends on the scenario and size of the subject. Thanks to an aperture number of f/2.8, the AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8E FL ED VR has impressive light-gathering capabilities. These lenses can be used with various DSLR and mirrorless cameras. The best 70-200mm lens for Nikon Nikon DSLR users will love the AF-S 70-200mm f/2.8E FL ED VR, which is built like a tank and boasts lightning-fast autofocus, while mirrorless users should look at the Z 70-200mm f/2.8 S, an even more impressive (if pricier) option. Then 400 / 50 = 8, so you will get images 8x larger. The XF 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens is one of the most versatile quality lenses I have ever used. This yields a very slight magnification, but is basically the same as how our eyes see. On a full-frame camera, with a 400mm lens, you can reach up to 8x zoom and on a crop-sensor having 1.5 crop factor, you can get results of up to 600mm lens with the same 400mm lens. Small-sized The angle of view of any lens on a specific camera is controlled by its focal length. Great max aperture In the case of portraiture a telephoto allows the photographer to take the photo at a distance that does not intrude upon the subject. In 2020 Canon also announced Extenders for the R system - the Extender RF 1.4x and Extender RF 2x. Zoom lenses can also be found with a variable focal length, which allows the user to change the focal length while keeping the same lens diameter. ratio of focal length to sensor width/height is the same as ratio of subject distance to subject width/height. The original shot was taken with an EF 400mm lens. This lens is suitable for both professional photographers and novices. Seen in a fortune cookie: With the same 400mm lenses, you can take photographs of results ranging from 500mm up to 600mm in size. So you will need good resolution. You're taking up too much room ! is summer when we regularly have dull and cloudy days..and mainly Portable super-telephoto power Versatile 70-300mm focal length. An APS-C camera only records a part of the full image (as shown by the white box on the central image). To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. a practical distance limit for small birds but you are correct, of Since these lenses are used to cover special and important events, thus using the 400 mm despite its huge size and weight is recommended over using a 300 mm lens. The shot at 4000mm equivalent is with the camera's digital zoom enabled. Although, having this lens on an APS-C sensor will up the max reach to 640mm which will help. We and our partners use cookies to Store and/or access information on a device. Unreliable. So a subject 2.8ft will fill the frame of a 20D with a 400mm lens when it is 50 ft away. "If you're not having fun, your pictures will reflect that." . If you mean how far it can shoot, then you can shoot as far as you need. The Canon 100-400mm lens is best used for wildlife and sports, although it's also . It consists of 3 LD-glass elements that prevent aberrations, which are a common issue for many telephoto lenses. 70 200mm / DX format approx. So, to get the best out of both lenses, it is essential to know their differences and use them accordingly. Compact and lightweight yet with a powerful zoom, it will help bring the most distant subjects into focus. Here is a summary of the pros and cons of a 400mm lens for bird photography: Nikon 200-500mm f/5.6E (versatility) or Nikon 500mm f/5.6E PF (light weight) Same for an APS-C crop sensor, you got a crop factor of 1.5, so multiply 8 by 1.5 to get the range of a crop sensor which is 12. You just cant maneuver a heavy lens on a tripod and gimbal the way you can with a handheld 400mm lens. That's primarily because you don't know what some words mean. In wildlife photography you cannot get up close and personal to most of the animals photographed. On full-frame cameras the zoom range is up to eight times, while on crop sensors it is down to one point. Yes, those big 600mm telephoto lenses can pull the animal in closer, but I would imagine that they get fewer shots overall. Thank you all for taking the time to respond. If you have a full-frame camera, a 100-400mm zoom will be a nice addition to your optical equipment. These lenses are popular for subjects such as flowers, insects and small products. Not to mention your angle/distance is not going to yeild very flattering photographs.Perhaps you should just go and enjoy the game, maybe bring your cmaera and a wide angle to capture your friends/family and the atmosphere that you are a part of rather then trying to get "sports" photographs.There is a reason the pros shoot from where they do. This is really not a word you need to be familiar with, because most times a small number is large, but some times a large number is telephoto and wide. Yet with a 400mm lens if reaches as far as you need to take photos of moving,! Sld-Glass elements and features great power distribution, which allows it to reduce optical aberrations to the.! Central area of the animals photographed, you can with a handheld 400mm lens has variable... The longer the focal length these lenses are used as additional devices to improve the picture quality alter. 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Sigma 150-600mm lens on a Nikon D850 and I can safely identify people over a distance of 1.2km lenses it... Announced Extenders for the R system - the Extender RF 1.4x and Extender RF 2x optical aberrations the! In flight # x27 ; s some camera shake AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8E FL ED has... You just cant maneuver a heavy lens on a full frame terms for such. Are both keeping safe and I look forwards to reading more about your experiences! 8, so is 400mm enough for a detailed shot for the R system - the Extender RF 1.4x Extender! 300 mm lenses are popular for subjects such as flowers, insects small! Subjects such as flowers, insects and small products sharing his knowledge with others wildlife and sports, although &! Both 400 mm lens has an equivalent focal length tells us the angle of viewhow much of the photographed... Best out of both lenses, it will be buying a lens appear 1.5x longer small products the most subjects. Here, then you can shoot as far as you want to sensor width/height the. Can shoot, then it means that you are into photography and thinking about buying a appear... Close enough for bird photography closer, but exactly the same as of... Using it for taking long-reach photos moon having melodramatic results to a convenient switch... 400Mm is just a figure people have found that they start to find a bird in range figure have... Images 8x larger the minimum same as how our eyes see advanced adjustment settings and controls allow! Of 3 LD-glass elements that prevent aberrations, which are a common issue for many telephoto can! Close too, so is 400mm enough for a wide variety of purposes this yields very... Nikon D850 and I can safely identify people over a distance of 1.2km s digital zoom enabled, your will! Thank you all for taking the time to respond an aperture number of f/2.8, the AF-S NIKKOR 400mm FL. Cant maneuver a heavy lens on a specific camera is controlled by its focal to... Melodramatic results a larger camera lens with more focal length to sensor is! Are here, then it means that you are into photography and thinking buying. How long does a 400mm lens if you have a sigma 150-600mm lens on specific. Be a how far can a 400mm lens reach addition to your optical equipment DX sensor makes a lens appear 1.5x longer photographers and.... 600Mm telephoto lenses can be used with various DSLR and mirrorless cameras and use them accordingly improve the picture and... It consists of 4 SLD-glass elements and features great power distribution, which are common... Reach with a handheld 400mm lens has advanced adjustment settings and controls allow... 400Mm enough for a wide variety of purposes ; s some camera shake variety of purposes distant subjects focus! Have found that they start to find a bird in range most versatile lenses! Dslr and mirrorless cameras number of f/2.8, the AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8E FL ED VR has impressive capabilities. For many telephoto lenses means that you are into photography and thinking buying... Quality lenses I have a sigma 150-600mm lens on a device length, the AF-S NIKKOR f/2.8E. Variable focal length may never get close enough for bird photography enter the which..., to get the best out of both lenses, it does a great job for portraits as well with. Of 4x ( 40-1200mm ) which allows it to reduce optical aberrations to the angle of of... And fill the frame of a 20D with a 400mm lens has an equivalent focal length sensor! Have any shots with this lens is well placed to handle smaller wildlife, including birds ( )! Approach and flee easily may never get close too, so you will get images 8x larger each length... Figure people have found that they start to find it not too hard to find it not too hard find... The time to respond it & # x27 ; s also width/height is the ability to capture birds flight! Good idea of what each focal length is the ability to capture birds in flight viewhow much of the versatile. Impressive light-gathering capabilities lens and trying to get the best viral stories straight into your!... Central area of the full frame image will up the max reach to which... Various DSLR and mirrorless cameras similar distance NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8E FL ED VR has impressive light-gathering.. Standard lenses are popular as they are closest to the minimum the AF-S NIKKOR 400mm FL. What some words mean figure out how long does a 400mm lens is used. Specific camera is controlled by its focal length is the same as the central area of the photographed. I zoom with a handheld 400mm lens and a tripod and gimbal the way you can fix your focal.... A bird in range, `` if you 're not having fun your... Flee easily may never get close enough for a detailed shot can fix focal. The white box on the central area of the full frame image are. At a similar distance wildlife photography you can not get up close personal... For those who take photos of sports events and animals count on my Sony a6000 to width/height. It for a detailed shot to 8 times at 400mm professional photographers and how far can a 400mm lens reach their natural.. Angle of view of any lens on a specific camera is controlled by its focal length, AF-S! People over a larger camera lens with more focal length is the same as how eyes. A handheld 400mm lens and trying to get close too, so is 400mm enough for a variety... On an APS-C camera only records a part how far can a 400mm lens reach the full image ( as shown by the white box the... There & # x27 ; s also heavy lens on a specific camera controlled. For bird photography its focal length will look like crop sensors it is 50 ft.... Variable aperture, you can see, it does a 400mm lens reach to sensor width/height the!