Short Telephoto Lens and Why It’s Valuable for Outdoor Photography

The lenses I use depends on what type of photography I'm doing. For example, my landscape kit is very different from my wildlife kit. But there's one lens in particular that seems to always be with me no matter what type of photography I'm doing, and that's a short telephoto zoom. For example, if I'm shooting landscape, a short telephoto allows me to zoom in on intimate landscape details. If I'm shooting wildlife, the short telephoto is great when the animals are a little bit closer to me and I don't need the long reach of my super telephotos or if I wanna take a wider view to show the animal in the context of their environment. And when I'm doing street or travel photography, a short telephoto zoom is perfect for zooming in and capturing people as they're going about their daily lives. Now there's a lot of different focal lengths out there that fit this short telephoto range, but one of my favorite lenses is a 70 to 200 millimeter lens. So what are the features of a short telephoto zoom that I like so much? Well, first of all, I really like the range. It's perfect for a variety of situations. I like the fact that these are relatively lightweight, at least compared to some of the big super telephoto lenses that I use for wildlife. So I can shoot with one of these handheld for long periods of time without my arms getting tired. What I really like is the wide-open 2.8 aperture. That lets in a lot of light which makes hand holding a lot easier. It's also better for the autofocus, as well. It makes the autofocus more responsive when there's a lot of light coming into the camera sensor. Now there's a few features you're gonna want to consider when you're buying a short telephoto zoom. One feature that's really important is having an internal zoom. So as you can see here, when I zoom in and out the lens isn't telescoping back and forth. So that's a really important feature because it keeps the lens at the same size at all times, it makes working with the lens a little bit easier. Second of all, you'd like to have focusing that's consistent as you zoom in and out. So for example, if I focus at 70 millimeters, and then I zoom into 200 millimeters, the focus point doesn't change, my subject is still in focus. Another feature that you're gonna wanna have is image stabilization. So what this means in practical terms is when I engage the vibration compensation, I should be able to shoot at much slower shutter speeds than normal. So let's say I'm at 200 millimeter. Normally, I would think that I need about 1/200 of a second to get a sharp shot handheld, but with the VC engaged, I can probably get away with 1/100 of a second or even 1/50 of a second, maybe even slower. So all these features combined, that wide F2.8 open aperture that lets in a lot of light, the vibration control image stabilization, and the relatively short focal length means that I can shoot handheld with this lens in a variety of lighting conditions, even low light, and still get really sharp images.