Telephoto Lenses

Start to Shoot: A Complete Guide to Digital Photography Understanding Lenses Telephoto Lenses

Lesson Progress

0% Complete

A telephoto lens magnifies the image projected onto the sensor. This makes the subject larger in the frame, which is ideal for subjects such as wildlife that may be some distance away. Photos shot with a telephoto have a distinctive look, with space compressed reducing the apparent distance between the various elements in the photo. This is not due to the optics of the telephoto, but due to perspective and the distance between the camera and the subject (see lesson nine for more information about composition).

This image would have been impossible without using a telephoto lens. Even if the photographer could have moved nearer to the mountains to achieve the same frame-filling effect (and he would probably have had to be shooting from a helicopter!) it would have not been possible to achieve the same appearance of the compressed perspective.

Telephoto lenses have a very narrow angle of view – the longer the focal length, the narrower the angle of view will be. Depth of field is also restricted at all apertures, making it more difficult to achieve front-to-back sharpness than a wide-angle or standard lens. This can be used to creatively to separate your subject from its background by throwing the background out focus. (This technique is particularly effective when shooting portraits, for instance.)

Previous Topic

Back to Lesson

Next Topic