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reach/focal length?


12 years 6 months ago #155442 by fluff
How do you figure your focal length, or if you have enough reach?

Say you know most of your shots are going to require long reach.. a softball game, a dance recital, etc...

How do you compare the focal length (magnification) of one lens vs another?
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12 years 6 months ago #155443 by Pekkea 05
The longer the focal length, generally the higher the magnification/reach/telephoto effect. However, you can have a long focal length lens that is not a telephoto.

The apparent focal length of a lens is affected by the image sensor size and the spacing from the rear lens element to the focal plane.

As an example Nikon dSLR's using an APS-C size(DX) image sensor have a 1.5x crop factor. If a 200 mm focal length is used (zoomed to or fixed) the image on the sensor will have the same field-of-view as a 300 mm lens (200mm x 1.5 = 300 mm)on a full frame sized image sensor of any brand (Nikon FX).

Canon APS-C sized sensors are slightly smaller than Nikon APS-C sensors and have a 1.6x crop factor. Cameras using 4/3 image sensors, which are smaller still, have a 2x crop factor.

Professional sports shooters typically use 400 mm lenses on full frame sensored camera bodies for field sports like football, soccer, and baseball. However, they also usually have a second camera body ready with a shorter focal length lens so they are ready for closer in action.
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12 years 6 months ago #155444 by wedding 2015
From what I heard from a facebook friend, when the lens gets really long, and really heavy, and a real pain in the butt to carry, then you know you have enough zoom. I never plan on carrying a lens with that much zoom.
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12 years 6 months ago #155445 by fluff
So, what would be the equivalent of a P&S camera's 3x zoom, or 4x zoom?

Let's say I was looking at a 200mm lens, what would be the equivalent magnification?
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12 years 6 months ago #155446 by fluff

wedding 2015 wrote: From what I heard from a facebook friend, when the lens gets really long, and really heavy, and a real pain in the butt to carry, then you know you have enough zoom. I never plan on carrying a lens with that much zoom.


That's too much zoom.
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12 years 6 months ago #155448 by Pekkea 05

fluff wrote: So, what would be the equivalent of a P&S camera's 3x zoom, or 4x zoom?

Let's say I was looking at a 200mm lens, what would be the equivalent magnification?


The "3x" or 4x" is just to tell you how wide the range the zoom is, there is no equivalent.

100-400mm = 4x lens
10-40mm = 4x lens
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12 years 6 months ago #155519 by icepics
The reason the sports photographers are using long lenses is because they're shooting a sport played on a large field or they're up at press box level at a good distance from the playing surface. I use a 135mm to shoot hockey at ice level, higher up would require a longer lens (unless you want to photograph the the entire ice surface which I've done at times for a specific reason).

If there's a camera store where you can try out a lens on a camera, then you can look thru it and see what is in view from a certain distance (like across the street) - see what you're getting in the viewfinder from various distances with different length lenses.

For a dance recital I'm not sure how far you'd be from the performers. For football it depends on where you are, if you can stand along the sidelines or are shooting from the bleachers. Depends on how big a lens you want to carry around, and with the longer lenses usually a tripod is used. I could manage a 200mm occasionally myself but am most comfortable w/135mm (but I use more all metal cameras which are heavier). Depends I guess on how often you'd be using it for each type event.
Sharon
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