TESTING TELEPHOTO LENS
March 2004 - 21 photos
March 2004 - 21 photos
In March of 2004 I purchased a Canon EF 100-400mm telephoto zoom lens with Image Stabilization to go with my new digital camera, a Canon EOS 300D, (Digital Rebel), purchased in December. When used with this camera, the lens acquires 1.6 more magnification due to the camera's cropping of the image with a smaller sensor size. That means the 100-400 becomes equal to a 160-640mm. Quite the lens at 13x.
Being winter there wasn't a lot to take pictures of, but I wanted to try it out and see what it would do. Using it with the Digital Rebel would produce a magnification of 3x to 13x, so I expected quite a lot. The first thing I chose to shoot was a sign up the street above the houses at the end of the cull-de sac in front of my home. The distance to the sign was about 350 yards. Shooting through my front window with the wide angle lens and then another shot with the full zoom of the telephoto lens to see how close it would bring the sign. I was very impressed.
Following that I took a photo of Ben Lomond peak with the wide angle lens set at 2x and then two shots with the big zoom at 13x. I marked the 2x shot with two rectangles showing the area of the two close up photos. Again I was very impressed. What do I think of this lens? It does all I ever expected from it. Granted it is not as good as a fixed prime lens, but it is more versatile and less expensive.
Most of the photos after that are shots of the moon. They weren't quite as large as you see here, I took the privilege of cropping away all that black to make them bigger. Later on I added a few moon shots taken with a newer camera, the Canon 20D, and then one with the newest, the Canon 40D, much better detail. The last moon shot is of the moon and Venus together taken with the Digital Rebel. I didn't expect Venus to show as more than a point of light, but was pleased to see that it had an apparent disk size.
When looking at the moon shots, if you really want to see the difference each camera makes using the same lens, you need to look at the larger photos to observe the fine detail.
When looking at the moon shots, if you really want to see the difference each camera makes using the same lens, you need to look at the larger photos to observe the fine detail.
For a real look at telephoto zooming, I added some shots taken at Clyde lake. The shot with my regular lens was taken from high up on a ridge overlooking Clyde lake. There were two people sitting on the rock slope at the edge of the lake having lunch. I circled them with a red circle so you could find them. The second photo is with a 400mm lens and 2x adapter, about 26x. The third photo is a digital enlargement of the 26x photo and you can see a flag on the guys shirt and the words "Old Navy". Not bad from a quarter mile away.
Another great example of telephoto zooming is some shots of my neighborhood taken from the top of Ben Lomond mountain. The first shot is of Ogden with North Ogden in the close foreground. I marked the neighborhood area with an arrow. The next shot is at 26x showing streets and houses clearly. The last shot is of my neighbor waving an American flag. This photo was cropped/magnified 5 more times using the previous photo.
- 21 photos -
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For those of you interested in buying a good telephoto lens, I would tell you to consider getting one with IS, (Image Stabilization). I now buy all my lenses with IS and wouldn't shoot without it. At first I was using tripods and monopods but have since found that I can shoot the moon or anything else, without any support, hand held. Also any lens with IS allows you to shoot 3 stops slower speed without blurring. I can shoot down to 1/15th of a second with my EFS 17-85mm wide angle to 5x zoom. I prefer Canon Digital Camera equipment over any other brand and think Canon has the best Image Stabilization of any camera company. I have read that Canon is the leader in 35mm lenses as well.
The photos shown here were taken with a Canon EOS 300D, (Digital Rebel) a 6.3 Megapixel SLR Camera, with wide angle to 2x optical zoom. Most of these photos were taken with the Canon EF 100 - 400mm IS "L series" Zoom lens, (3x to 13x). Since building this page, I have traded the Digital Rebel for the Canon EOS 20D, a Digital SLR at 8.2 megapixels. The The original photos were taken at 3072x2048. These photos are now set to 750x500 for faster loading. You are welcome to look at or download any of the photos. If you use them on any other webpage, please give credit and refer back to me.