Telescopic lenses extended

[AnthonyRail]

Have a canon 100D with 75-300mm lense, while its good for railway photography, I need something with a bit more zoom for aviation photography.

Have found this: £120

420-800mm F/8.3-16 Super Telephoto Manual Zoom Lens T-Mount for canon DSLR.

Is this any good?

 

[ac6000cw]

I think your camera is compatible with Canon EF/EF-S mount lenses, so it won't fit without an adaptor, and as it's a manual lens you'll have to do manual focusing and aperture adjustment, so basically you lose most of the auto exposure capability of the camera (as well as autofocus).

Also a lens that cheap (assuming it's a new lens) isn't likely to be very high quality. There is a reason good lenses cost a lot of money - really cheap lenses tend to have high levels of geometric distortion and chromatic aberration out towards the edges. Minimising those problems needs more expensive glass, coatings and more internal lens elements, particularly for variable zoom lenses.

If you have tight budget, either have a good look around for used lenses (particularly from good 3rd party suppliers like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina, since they tend to be cheaper), or possibly investigate tele-converters that can be used with your 150-300mm lens?

 

[ac6000cw]

For example, MPB have a good selection of used Canon EF fit lenses, and some used teleconverters - https://www.mpb.com/en-uk/used-equipment/used-photo-and-video/used-lenses/used-canon-fit-lenses/

Also try Ffordes - http://www.ffordes.com/

(there are loads of used Canon-fit lenses around, so you should be able to find something suitable pretty quickly - most dealers of used photographic equipment are going to deal in Canon fit lenses, and there is always Ebay, although I've seen stuff sell on Ebay for more than you can pay from a dealer so be careful).

 

[AnthonyRail]

Thank you, saved me wasting £120.

 

[37038]

The obvious being it's only good for F/8.3-16 and no lower.

 

[ac6000cw]

The obvious being it's only good for F/8.3-16 and no lower.

Yes, agreed - hence the reason for those very expensive lenses serious wildlife and sports photographers tote around, full of large diameter (and heavy!) glass lens elements to provide larger apertures at very long focal lengths.

 

[AnthonyRail]

Yes, agreed - hence the reason for those very expensive lenses serious wildlife and sports photographers tote around, full of large diameter (and heavy!) glass lens elements to provide larger apertures at very long focal lengths.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CANON-EOS...413947?hash=item2f06cac13b:g:qucAAOSwicJZXToZ

would this be any good? im a newbie with photography

 

[ac6000cw]

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/CANON-EOS...413947?hash=item2f06cac13b:g:qucAAOSwicJZXToZ

would this be any good? im a newbie with photography

To quote from the Ebay page "This lens is fitted with a Canon EOS mount which enables you to use this lens on a MANUAL basis which after a few minutes of trial an error you will get fantastic results."

It's a simple, cheap, fixed focal length ("prime") manual lens. Possibly useful for taking photos of fairly static objects a long way away e.g. planes parked up across the other side of the airfield, if you can put it on a tripod (forget hand holding a lens like that unless it's in bright lighting conditions so you can keep the shutter speed high enough to avoid motion blur).

If you want 'mega' zoom on the cheap, look at secondhand superzoom bridge cameras. Sure they won't match the 100D for outright picture quality or low-light performance, due to having small image sensors, but because they have small sensors their long zoom range lenses are much smaller, lighter and cheaper - and they normally have image stabilisation which is a big help with long lenses.

 

[gazthomas]

With your current camera and lens being APS-C you actually have a 1.6 multiplier so your lens is actually 240mm - 480 mm. Is that not enough?

Tamron have a 150mm - 600mm lens (so 240mm - 960 mm) :

http://www.tamron.eu/uk/lenses/sp-150-600mm-f5-63-di-vc-usd/#camera=Canon/100D

This is about £700!

 

[gazthomas]

With your current camera and lens being APS-C you actually have a 1.6 multiplier so your lens is actually 240mm - 480 mm. Is that not enough?

Tamron have a 150mm - 600mm lens (so 240mm - 960 mm) :

http://www.tamron.eu/uk/lenses/sp-150-600mm-f5-63-di-vc-usd/#camera=Canon/100D

This is about £700!

And a 200mm - 500mm (320mm - 800mm equivalent) is around £450

 

[AnthonyRail]

With your current camera and lens being APS-C you actually have a 1.6 multiplier so your lens is actually 240mm - 480 mm. Is that not enough?

Tamron have a 150mm - 600mm lens (so 240mm - 960 mm) :

http://www.tamron.eu/uk/lenses/sp-150-600mm-f5-63-di-vc-usd/#camera=Canon/100D

This is about £700!

Is the multiplier something you activate in settings.

Thanks for help guys

 

[AM9]

Is the multiplier something you activate in settings.

Thanks for help guys

No, it's because the sensor is only large enough to be illuminated by the centre part of the lens. This has the effect of narrowing the angle of view which is similar to having a longer focal length lens.

 

[ac6000cw]

Is the multiplier something you activate in settings.

Thanks for help guys

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crop_factor

Because 35mm film was the standard for such a long time, particularly for SLR cameras, the field-of-view of lenses still tends to be talked about in terms of a 35mm frame size. People talk about '35mm equivalence' in the context of lenses being used with image sensors that are smaller than that - which most are e.g. APS-C (as used in your 100D) and Micro Four-Thirds. A digital camera using an image sensor the same size as a 35mm film frame is usually referred to as a 'full-frame' camera.

So relative to using the same lens on a 'full-frame' camera, your APS-C sensor camera will magnify the image by 1.6x, and a Micro Four-Thirds camera by 2x. (AM9 explains why in the post above)