Feb 5th 2012

This post is in response to a question put to me by Helen, a lady on one of my recent workshops.  During the day with me she became hooked on the joy of nailing great portraits of her kids and wanted to invest in some glass to continue her photographic journey and her love of portraiture.  She wanted to know what the basic options were as well as the reasons for spending a little more so she could make an informed choice about her next lens purchase: a telephoto zoom lens.

Nikon D200, Nikon 70-200mm.  1/80 at f2.8 ISO 800.  Isolating eye cathing details from a distance is perfect foil for the long end of the telephoto lens.

First, a word of advice on your buying strategy.  I live by the mantra that you should always buy the best quality glass you can afford.  If you’ve read my FAQ’s in the About section you’ll know that I place having top lens quality above the latest camera body.  You could easily update your camera every two or three years, if you’re keen, but top glass will hardly date and can last a lifetime.  Buying cheap or mid range stuff when you really aspire for top quality results to match the investment in your camera is a hard financial pill to swallow but, if you consider buying a cheap one then upgrading “when you feel ready” it’ll only cost you more in the long run.

Also, a quick word on where to buy: visit camerapricebuster.com.  It tracks all the price changes and lists the cheapest place to buy in the UK at any given time.  Prices listed in this article are current as at the time of writing.

Now, before we launch into the nitty gritty, lets just rewind briefly and think about what we’re talking about here: what is a telephoto zoom lens and why do we need one? 

Well, unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has a full post about this here but it gets a bit techy and dull so let me summarise for you.

A telephoto zoom describes a lens with varying focal lengths (you know; 18-55mm, 70-200mm etc) where the physical lengthening of the lens allows the photographer to zoom in on a distant subject.  In this sense we usually think of the ‘long lenses’ like the 70-200mm, 70-300mm focal lengths as the telephotos but it actually means any lens that performs this function via two lens groups inside the lens.

In a telephoto zoom lens, the telephoto group of lens elements is positioned close to the focal plane where the camera’s sensor is and they distort the light coming from the front lens elements. Through some complicated physics that is beyond me, this gives the illusion that the focal length is much longer than it actually is.

The bottom line is that these telephoto zoom lens elements allow us to achieve a 300mm lens that isn’t actually, physically, 300mm long yet we can still achieve the appearance of a 300mm lens.  It means we save space and weight.  

Note here that I'm only referring to the 'telephoto zoom' lenses, not the fixed focal length telephotos (150mm, 200mm, 500mm etc) and references in this article to 'telephotos' means the telephoto zooms on the market.  I use these zooms and they offer the majority of us a more flexible range of focal lengths all-in-one, as it were, rather than a single fixed focal length telephoto.

Now, why do we want a zoom lens (or fixed focal length) telephoto anyway ?  Well, anyone who has tried to take a portrait with the kit lens that came with their camera will know that getting close enough is a major issue-you’re practically on top of your subject with a frame filling head shot.  More importantly than that, that nice soft, out of focus background with a pin sharp subject which we expect from a good portrait can be a bit of a disappointing exercise, especially after all that sales spiel the guy in the camera shop gave about the kit when we bought it. 

EOS 5DMK II, 70-200mm, 1/250 f4.0 ISO 400 -0.3 exp comp.  A classic portrait with a sharp subject and soft background.

If you’ve been on one of my workshops you’ll have heard me drum into you what the key factors that are required for a great looking portrait are and how we combine that aperture and the focal length is part of that.  In short, a telephoto is a must have for shots of the kids growing up, doing sports day, playing in the field or of people on our travels or interesting subjects we want to isolate from the chaotic world around them.Like a lot of things in life, it’s just not that simple and the idea that one lens will do everything is a misnomer, a fallacy. 

What we need is specific tools for specific jobs and, whilst that medium telephoto (the 18-55mm) lenses have their place (especially the decent ones with a constant aperture of f2.8 throughout the zoom range) great portraiture and the ability to isolate distant landscapes or points of interest is only achievable through use of a telephoto in the 70-200mm, 70-300mm range.

Lens Options

OK, now we know what they are and why we need one lets look at our options.  These basically hinge on a price/quality dichotomy.  The more you can afford the better the quality in terms of build and, more importantly, the glass in those lens elements we looked at above.

Your options fall into three categories; cheap, not so cheap and the really not very cheap at all.  In real terms I mean from just over £100 up to £13,000. Yes, that’s not a typo; you really can buy a lens for £13,000 and if you’re into lens porn you can look at it here.

Meanwhile, back in the Real World, we’re probably thinking ‘well, I just wanna know if I can get away with the cheap ones or if I need to chuck a bit more in the kitty for a middle one or, if I beg borrow and steal, what will I see in benefit terms from a top end  one.’  By a top end I mean around the £1,000-£1,800 mark, depending on if you can get it new or second hand..

Now a word on makes: you can buy lenses made by your camera manufacturer or you can buy lenses made by third party manufacturers.  I’ve listed all the Canon options but, if you are a Nikon user, you’ll have roughly the same equivalents in terms of price and quality from Nikon.  The third party manufacturers make their lenses for both Canon and Nikon so the advice applies to both systems.  I have used lenses from all of them in my time, Sigma and Tamron included, so I have first hand experience.  The third party manufacturers usually offer roughly the same ‘spec’ at a cheaper price, or a bit more spec for the same price; that’s their USP.

OK, lets get on and look at our options in more detail.

The Cheap

Here are the current options on the new market, all listed on Camerpricebuster.com where you can click through to see them on screen:

I’ve used these lenses and achieved perfectly acceptable results.  I had the old 75-300mm f4.5-5.6 USM when I was a student.  It was light and did the job.  But then again, I wasn’t asking a lot of it in my early, photo-naïve days and now I’d find it plain frustrating, not sharp enough and likely to fail in some steamy jungle.  In fact, that happened to me in Malaysia once with my mid range Canon zoom…

But, if this is your budget and you’re not looking for a rugged lens or for pin sharp results this is the way ahead.  If you have a low spec camera these lenses are suited to your gear.  There’s no point putting cheap glass on a decent camera though because the sensor out resolves the glass; that is it is limited by the quality of the glass in front of it, which kinda defeats the point of having the good camera.

Crucially, these lenses (apart from the last one in the list from Sigma) don’t have IS in the name tag; that’s Image Stabilser if you’re a Canon man, Vibration Reduction for the Nikonites, Optical Stabilisation for the Sigma peeps and Vibration Control in Tamron Land.  So, you’ll find your camera shake from hand holding will cause your images to be soft at any shutter speeds less than a 1/350 second which is a BIG limitation.  Often light levels drop (shooting kids in the park in the evening, or blowing out their birthday candles) will be real trial and error.  Mostly just error actually.

So the Sigma one has this OS but the reviews indicate it’s still very slow to focus so, whilst it lets you hand hold at slower than normal shutter speeds (handy for low light etc) it still may not actually lock on in the first place, which is really the business end of what a lens needs to do in the first place.

As for the USM bit, well, don’t even think about the non-USM option.  This is Ultra Sonic Motor Drive for Canon lenses and the other manufacturers have their own snappy abbreviation for this too. 

It basically means it’s a lens that focuses fast and quickly but, you get what you pay for here.  Trying to photograph anything that’s moving or slightly unpredictable without USM is a non starter; by the time it finally whirrs into focus eons will have passed; kids have fallen asleep, dogs have grown old and bred families, and revolutions have taken place in that exotic country you were trying to do some cool candid travel portraiture in.  At these prices, the USM is not going to be the best, it’ll do for locking quickly onto a still, well lit subject but that excludes a lot of subjects from our repertoire; candid, documentary work, horses/racing cars/kids bounding towards us all spring to mind…

EOS 5DMKII, 70-200mm, 1/250 f4 ISO 400 -0.3 exp comp.  Kids don't hang around long and you need to work quickly and so does your kit.  Here fast focus, IS and an apeture of f4 made it happen.  At f5.6 on a cheap lens without IS  I'd be into camera shake terrirory.

You’ll also find the weather proofing is non existent and any sand or grit flying in the air will work it’s way into your lens, potentially killing it not long after purchase.  The cost of repair will be akin to buying a new lens, trust me…

Finally, why is there a 100-300mm lens in amongst all the 75-300mm ones?  Well, I looked at this and it looks like one of the old style lenses. That’s not to say it’s no good, just that it’s old and therefore cheap.  The blurb says: ‘The five zoom groups make the length only 121.5 mm (cool-nice and small then).  With rear focusing, the lens does not change length or rotate during focusing.’

This last bit is more interesting-it means the lens wont ‘extend’ out the front as you zoom in-it’ll do it all internally which means there is less gaps for dirt and dust to get in.  Also, if you have a filter screwed on the front, it wont spin round as the lens focuses-it stays upright where you placed it which I would find handy as I often put a polarizer on my lenses for my landscape work which need to be set and left to work properly.  If the lens started spinning it around as it zoomed in or focused it would drive me nuts.

From the reviews I’ve seen, the general consensus on all these lenses is that the focus can generally be slow and ‘hunts’ in and out trying to lock onto the subject-a source of major frustration as those ‘moments’ pass you by in a flurry of lens activity and little photography to show for it.

So which one would I buy in this group?  Well, I’d go for the 100-300mm from Canon.  At least it’s all-in-one design offers some build quality advantage over the others but, that aside, these lenses are not for people trying to take photography seriously or looking for spontaneous shots where the subject is moving or in anything but bright midday sunshine.

The not to cheap

Here things get a little bit more exciting; we have some decent lenses in here:

Note first off that only the first Canon and the Tamron f4-5.6 have image stabilizing engineering (IS, VC).  Note also that these are the only two with the cheaper lens style aperture ranges; from a maximum aperture of f4 at the wide 70mm setting through to the smaller f5.6 at the 300mm end.  That’s the f4-f5.6 bit in the name title. 

Where it just lists one aperture it means it’s the widest aperture it can achieve (you can go smaller) but it’s constant throughout the focal range of 70-200mm.  In practical terms it means that your exposure at 70mm will be the same at 200mm, whereas the others will be faster at 70mm (cos the aperture is wider) than at the 200mm end (where the aperture is one stop smaller).  This loss of light results in slower shutter speeds and, potentially, blurry pictures…

So it’s a trade off-they are basically sticking the same style lens from the cheap category with the variable aperture settings with a bit of IS to justify the extra cost.  Reviews also indicate that that the blurry-ness of the background when shooting portraits is not that great.  This would be a deal breaker for me and I’d turn my attention to the non IS ones which all have a wider f2.8 or f4 aperture not just at the wide, 70mm end but throughout the focal range. 

Nikon D200, 70-200 f2.8.  1/8 f2.8 ISO 100.  Picking out a coherent shot from a wide view where so much is going on is made easier with a telephoto.

In theory this gives us two advantages: 1) we don’t need the IS so much as we have a wider aperture letting in more light allowing for a faster shutter speed to counter the effects of camera shake.  2) the wider aperture means an even shallower depth of field so we should get nice soft, blurry backgrounds for our portraits.

I’ve not seen the Tamron one but the L in the Canon one indicates it’s got their top end glass in it and build quality will be very robust.  Your getting a pro quality lens here with this option, albeit without Image Stabilisation or the widest f2.8 aperture.  I would argue though that with a higher ISO (to allow for a faster shutter speed) you’re back in business and a mono pod or steady position with your arms braced on your knee in a crouching position will alleviate camera shake and you’ll enjoy the benefits of this amazing lens. 

The blurry-ness of the backgrounds is also connected to the quality of the glass too, not just the depth of field so, with this top end glass in the Canon f4 you will achieve lovely soft backdrops at f4, rather like the f2.8 lenses also in this category.

EOS 5DMKII, 70-200mm.  1/1000 f4 ISO 320, -0.33 exp comp.  The excellent glass has helped make the shallow depth of field from the f4 aperture nice and soft in the background.

I have used the Nikon f2.8 equivalent back when I was a Nikon shooter and it was pin sharp and well built.  I’ve also used the Sigma and my wife still owns hers and swears by it.  Comparisons with my top Canon lens show it’s hard to see the difference in pure sharpness terms unless you enlarge your prints significantly.

These are all serious lenses and if I had to choose one I’d go for the Canon f4 or the Sigma; the f2.8 aperture and the strong build quality make this a real lens you can work with but, at the current price on offer, the Canon is a pro lens at a mid range price.  That might just sway it for me…

My experience with Tamrons has always been good; I used their 17-50mm f2.8 and if the big brother in the zoom listed here is similar in quality the sharpness will be near flawless.  I suggest you hunt through the reviews and settle on one or the other if they are all within budget.  Of them all, the Tamron has to be the ‘sweet spot’ in terms of value and lens to buck ratio, the Sigma the safe choice with the perks of an f2.8 lens and the Canon the allure of a really pro built piece of glass with all the quality that brings in your photographs.

The really not very cheap at all

Now we’re getting to the business end of the lens options.  Here we have lenses that are fast (when people say this about a lens they mean it has a wide aperture, f2.8 or less), all include image stabilising technology and all have flawless glass and strong build quality.  These lenses are all a joy to use and will withstand the test of time and could be your ‘lens for life’:

First off, note that Tamron don’t even try and compete at this level.  It’s not that they can’t in terms of quality, it’s just that anyone with this sort of money to spend will marry their camera make with their lens make.  It’s a marketing/market forces thing but I for one would be quite happy to consider their lens if they had one in this category.

So, we’re left with the Canons and the Sigma offering.  They all have IS (OS for the Sigma) except one of the Canon f2.8’s and, apart from the f4, they are all f2.8’s.  Cool, right, where do we begin then?

Well, lets think about this, you’d need the hair off a nats back to split these lenses, even at a pro level of working where you’re doing all sorts of stuff in all sorts of environments-from studios to sweaty jungles.

Obviously if you’re budget is stretched you might just creep home with the f4 at £900.  Fine, do it.  I defy anyone to produce a better shot just because they bought the f2.8 for an extra £150.

In fact, I’d take the f4 over the f2.8 that doesn’t have IS any day.  90% of my portraits are done at f4-I like the depth of field-not too shallow, just enough to blur the background nicely.  We’re going to be zoomed in so much, even at 70mm, that the blurry-ness in the background in a portrait will be beautifully soft (they call that blurry-ness ‘bokeh’, by the way…) and I expect IS for something in this price bracket-it’s a great help in steadying the ship in low light.  I’d actually say the non IS f2.8 is a red herring.

What about the Sigma?  Well, yes, I’d also take that over the non IS Canon f2.8-Sigma produce great lenses after all and, again, the IS would be the clincher for me. 

Would I take it over the Canon f4?  Toughie.  Probably not, I’d plump for the f4; it’s cheaper and it’s Canon so it suits the software in my camera.  Some techy will tell me that’s irrelevant but you look for little things like that to decide between two great options.

And what of that monster f2.8 with IS at £1,769?  Well, yes, it’s a beauty.  It’s the lens every Canon owner craves and it’s better than anything Nikon offer in the same price/spec bracket.  It’s a legend of a lens (that’s sad, but true…) and, yes, I own it.  I got lucky; I bought the first model (they now have a II in the name) second hand and it is flawless.  Strong, fast and optically near perfect.  You get what you pay for. 

EOS 5DMKII, 70-200mm.  1/2sec at f11 ISO 100, tripod mounted. Pre dawn in the Val d'Orcia and my lens has picked out staggering detail in the misty valley and the distant hills, miles away.  Having made the considerable effort to get there I don't want my kit to let me down.

But, and this is a big but, would someone standing next to me in the real world with a stunning vista like this framed in front of us with the cheapest one in this category, the f4, not be able to take the same shot as me and to the same standard?  I’d basically argue ‘no’.  For landscape work, f8, f11 is still the sweet spot for the aperture to deliver the light through the middle of the lens where the glass is at it's very best.  I don't think you would be able to tell the shots apart on a purely technical level.

The bottom line though is I wouldn’t pay top whack for this lens; if I hadn’t found one second hand I’d have bought the f4 because I can’t justify almost an extra grand on basically one extra stop of aperture. 

If you can find the f4 second hand in good condition you’re laughing.  Keep an eye on Ebay, put your name down for one at the local camera shops.  Or, just sell your soul and get a new one….

So, what should Helen do then?

Ultimately, it hinges on budget.  Remember-buy the best you can afford.  If you’ve spent the best part of a grand on your camera I’m afraid you have to expect to spend the best part of another grand on a quality lens to match it.

I’d say the Canon f4 IS at just under a grand is the best overall lens.  If this is too much of a stretch the Sigma f2.8 in the ‘not so cheap’ band is a good option.  So too though is the f4-f5.6 Tamron with image stabilising control-getting sharp pics is crucial and camera shake really creeps in at long focal lengths necessitating fast shutter speeds of around a 1/500 second which is often simply not possible in many lighting situations.  Here IS can really save you and the shots/moments you see before you.

As for the cheap options, if these are in your budget, I’d say wait, save and use your birthday and Xmas to get everyone to rally round and go up to the next level.  If you’re serious about your photography you’ll only live to regret it otherwise…

Enjoy your photography and keep sending me your questions!