Buying New Gear I: Lenses

It's been a while, and I've promised multiple times to post new content more frequently than every two years... all I can say is, I'm sorry, and I actually have something to write about today. If you keep up with me on social media, you know I had a little incident a couple weeks ago in which my Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 USM II telephoto zoom lens took one for the team. It retails for around $2000, I somehow managed to buy it (eight years ago) for $1500, and the factory repair facility quote $860 to replace the two cracked elements and the broken retaining ring, plus cleaning and lubricating. I'm going to see if a local guy might be able to do it for significantly cheaper, but I'm not holding my breath. So while I've waited for word on my lens's fate, I've been shopping for replacements.

Just for giggles, I checked out a ridiculous lens that seemed to feature a ridiculous price: a 650-1300mm Opteka f/8-16 telephoto zoom (and they sell it with a doubler, so you could effectively have a 1300-2600mm lens!), for $189 on Amazon. Whaaaaaaat??? The more I looked into the details, however, the more I realized why it was so cheap, aside from (I'm sure) relatively cheap components:

It's got massive zoom capability, which seems like a great thing because that's why you bought a massive zoom lens, but realize the more you zoom in on something, the more small movements of the camera are going to affect the stability of the image. Even with a tripod, if you're zoomed all the way in, you can't have any wind or vibration (you'll probably want a shutter release cable) and if you're not using a mirror-less style camera, even the motion of the mirror swinging out of the way to take the picture might introduce too much vibration (so you'll have to be in mirror lock-up mode) And you can pretty much forget tracking a moving subject while zoomed way in, unless it moves less than a mile an hour. So lots of turtle action photography.

It's relatively heavy, at 7 pounds, so lugging it around with the rest of your kit is going to be a chore,

It's 18" long, which means when you're NOT using it, it won't fit into a lot of backpacks, so you're going to have to use it's own carrying case,

With a maximum aperture of f/8, you're either going to have to dial your ISO way up to compensate for its low light-gathering capability or only shoot in really bright sunlight (or possibly both).

So you're going to use this for stationary subjects on a clear, calm day with plenty of bright sunlight, and preferrably under conditions that stay the same long enough for you to futz about with all the settings on your camera to get the shot just right. Not exactly ideal for, say, a wildlife photographer, for instance, whose subject might up and fly away at any second. However, under the right conditions, it might just be the lens you need: I'd bet it would get pretty good moon shots on a clear night, because you're probably going to do long exposures anyway, and you could get some really good detail.

The lesson to be learned here is to think about the kind of photography you want to do, figure out range of focal lengths and general capabilities you want out of your lens, and find the glass that fits your style of photography, your technical needs, and your budget. THEN buy the lens; don't be like the folks reviewing products on Amazon who didn't read the description carefully enough and then complain that the lens is too heavy (it SAYS it's seven pounds, so giving it one star for being exactly as advertised is just silly), or that it takes really dark pictures (i.e. you don't know how to use it correctly or what conditions it's really for) or that it was hard to focus on things because your hands were shaking too much. Caveat emptor, my friends: know what you're buying before you shell out any simoleons.

In my next post, I'll discuss the pros and cons of image stabilization in lenses, whether specialty coatings really make lenses worth 10x more, and how best to care for your glass (first tip is for free: dropping them onto asphalt is not recommended.)