What is a Telephoto Lens and Why Should I Use One?

What is a Telephoto Lens and Why Should I Use One?

What is a Telephoto Lens and Why Should I Use One? Telephoto lenses are incredibly popular among both amateur and professional photographers. Let’s check to What is a Telephoto Lens and Why Should I Use One?

They’re useful in a variety of situations and can help you take your photography to the next level. But what is a telephoto lens? A telephoto lens has a long reach, allowing you to photograph a subject that is far away or magnifying the subject in your frame. Generally, a lens has considered “telephoto” if it has a focal length of 60mm or longer.

Many people confuse telephoto lenses with zoom lenses but they are actually different things. A telephoto lens can be—but does not necessarily have to be—a zoom lens. Telephotos come in a variety of focal lengths from “medium telephoto” (generally 70-200mm) and “super telephoto” (longer than 300mm) and they can be either zoom or prime lenses. It doesn’t matter whether the lens zooms—what matters is how long the focal length is.

Telephotos – lenses that are “zoomed in” to a significant degree – are wonderful tools for almost any genre of photography. But they aren’t necessarily easy to use. In particular, telephoto lenses will magnify any camera shake and provide a much thinner depth of field compared to wide angles. Don’t let that stop you, though.

Telephotos have a unique way of showcasing the world — one which may be ideal for your photos. In this article, I’ll go in detail about how to use telephoto lenses. Discuss some of their benefits and tips for dealing with their unique challenges. Although I personally tend to take landscape photos, the techniques in this article apply no matter what subjects you like to capture.

Telephotos Make Subjects Appear Closer to the Camera
This is the most obvious reason to use a telephoto lens and why most beginners consider getting one. A telephoto lens will allow you to take photos of subjects that are farther away. This comes in handy when you are taking photos of things that you can’t, or don’t want to, get close to.

Having more distance between you and your subject can help some people feel more at ease in front of the camera. Taking photos of a soccer game from the sidelines? A telephoto lens will get you closer to the action. Want to take a picture of dangerous wildlife from the safety of your car? A telephoto lens will let you do it.

Telephotos also help improve the visual relationship between a subject and its environment by creating the appearance of a kind of compression effect that is similar to how our brains see object-to-background relationships.

Mountain ranges that appear to be sitting practically right on top of a cityscape are better visually translated with telephotos than with wide angles. Simply put, telephoto lenses open up your photographic possibilities by making far away subjects appear closer to the camera.

If you’ve ever a photo where the subject is in focus but the background is blurred and wondered how that effect was achieved. The answer is often with a telephoto lens. This use is especially common in portrait photography.

The way to achieve this look is to shoot with a long lens and the widest aperture available. For example, a 70-200mm telephoto lens shot at 200m with an aperture of f/2.8 will isolate your subject against a beautiful, creamy background.