camera geeks, lense question
 

whats the difference between having say a 70-300mm telephoto zoom

and

100mm standard/medium telephoto

or

200mm telephoto

or would the 70-300mm cover those 2

here`s a bump:)

Sounds like you're asking about 100/200mm primes and a 70-300mm zoom? What exactly are you wanting to know, whether a zoom will offer you the same quality as a prime? For all intents and purposes, unless you're an anal pixel peeper (poring over your 20 megapixel images at 100% zoom looking for 5 pixel wide lens imperfections) or the zoom lens has a bad design there's really not a huge difference.

The problem with both these lenses is unless you're shooting outdoors or in a very big room they will be unusable. You need something more wide angle like a 28-70.

Assuming you want it for work or taking pictures of the family.

the difference is fast, quality glass.... yes the 70-300mm covers the focal length HOWEVER won't have the quality of say the 200mm 2.0 or the 100mm 2.0. I think the 70-300mm is 4.5-5.6 or something like that...

the big difference is how much light comes into the lens in low light situation for focus.. a 200mm has a bigger front element than the 70-300 and will allow more light to fall onto the sensor... hence easier to focus in low light. also most variable stop zooms have a 1/2 stop light fall off in the zoom

Fris,

a 70-300mm lense will give you basically a lense you can change as if it acts like a lens with a mm of anywhere between 70 and 300.

The reason why people prefer a fixed lense instead of zoom is usually picture quality and light sensetivity which is better in fixed lenses usually. The longer the mm the bigger (wider) the lens has to be to keep the same light sensetivity. Thus a zoom will always be worse at it's highest setting compared to the lowest. A zoom also usually requires more seperate optical parts thus impacting image quality.

There are two things to look at in a lens: the mm and the f, f defines the ratio between length and width. The best you can usually get is 1:1.2 (sometimes written 1/1.2 or just 1.2). The smaller the 2nd number the more light the lense takes in but also the smaller the depth of field. Most lenses have around 1:3-1:6. A zoom lens will list f as a range since the longer it gets set to the bigger the 2nd number of course is.

Lenses increase in price rapidly the wider they are btw, especially zoom lenses.

Btw, Paul, I do most of my family photos with the canon 80mm 1:1.2 usm2. At least of my daughter when she plays, let's me do photos from a bit further away.

This one will cover all those bases.

http://www.amazon.com/Tamron-18-270m...19309&sr =8-1

learned something new, insightful thread :thumbsup

See.. getting once lens to cover everything is not generally the best idea, if you care about how your image looks


if you are on vacation and can only take one lens then this would be good.. because your images are snap shoots, however if you want your images to look good.. this is not the lens for your.

here is the review.. you can see there are a lot of problems with this lens..

it is not sharp
it is doesn't capture light even ( you lose almost 1 full stop around the outside edges)

and a lot more.

http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/..._n15/page3.asp


there are reason people have different lens.. One wide angle lens.. one normal range lens.. and one telephoto.. So they can do a better job with in the range they are shooting.

Is one type of doctor for every things? There are general M.D.'s .. but they are not as good at certain things as other doctores.. If you need brain surgery.. go to a brain surgen.. Same with lens.. if you need a long lens.. get a lens that just does that.. if you need a wide angle lens.. just get that..

Most of the time i carry at least 3 zoom lens.. and when I am in the studio.. i have prime lens i use..