Telephoto or super-telephoto lenses are objects of desire for many of us. The sight of huge barrels and expansive glass is enough to make even Scrooge think of raiding his piggy bank. It’s not just the lenses themselves that tempt us, but the result that we can get with them.
However, many of those images that draw us towards a telephoto will be stunning wildlife shots or beautifully capture moments of sporting prowess. The times that we see those lenses in action will be at the Olympics or World Cup. Indeed Canon deliberately made their telephotos white to stand out at major sporting events.
Where you don’t see longer lenses so much is in the urban environment, in the built up cities and suburbs that many of us inhabit. That’s a shame because we are missing out on some amazing shots that only a decent telephoto could capture. So today, we are going to give you some reasons to take your big long lens into the big city.
But first some technical notaes.
Settings To Be Sure
For the purpose of this article, I am looking at telephoto lenses between 100-600mm in focal length. Many of the images you will see in this post were taken on my own Sigma 100-400mm on a walk around Newcastle in North East England.
Longer telephotos can be hard and sometimes disappointing to use, especially for newcomers. This is very often down to not getting the shutter speed up to avoid camera shake. Getting that speed up on what are usually slower lenses, often also requires us to raise the ISO.
When using my 100-400 in the city, I tend to shoot shutter priority with the shutter speed at 1/250th. I use dual stabilisation, the in body stabilisation on the camera and the optical stabilisation of the lens. Most modern telephotos will have stabilisation built in.
I also set an AutoISO between 100 and 12800 ISO. With modern sensors and AI de-noise tools there is little reason to fear high ISO settings these days.
Also highly recommended is a good lens hood for the sunny days and a decent camera strap, one of the downsides of longer telephotos is their weight. You want the camera to be comfortable as you stroll the city streets.
The Visual Advantages Of A Telephoto Zoom
One of the great advantages of a telephoto lens is the way it compresses the subject to background distance. That becomes even more prominent as you zoom from 100 to 400 and beyond.
It allows you to isolate subjects from a significant distance and make them stand out. You can make a statue stand out from an Edwardian terrace, or the cross of a church against a backdrop of modern architecture. There are so many subjects that come to the fore when you are carrying a telephoto lens.
With a telephoto you can also pick out the many layers of a city. From shooting down the side of a single building to capturing the multiple different architectural layers that cities possess. Capturing the architectural details, symmetry, geometry, light and shade. Reflections and warm light over dark shadows are all the preserve of the long lens.
Cities are also full of juxtapositions. The old against the new, different styles of architecture, the contrast of office and living buildings. Textures and form are also best captured with a telephoto, the lens compression adding depth to those textures.
Photographing Transportation
Transport is one of the key elements of any city, large or small. A telephoto lens allows us to capture all manner of transportation types. More importantly though, that lens compression allows us to isolate the vehicles yet still show them in their environment. Using that compression we can create leading lines with rails or road markings, drawing the eye through to the train, bus or tram.
We can freeze transport or we can use a slow shutter speed to add motion. We can pan with the vehicle or allow it to pass through the frame. We can capture multiple buses or trams at the same time, the subject distance compression giving us interesting compositions.
Shooting People In The City
If, like me, you struggle with the close up, intimate style of street photography, a decent telephoto can be a fantastic tool. Cities are defined by their people and using a longer telephoto you can capture people at work or play, interacting with their environment without ever needing to encroach on their personal space.
Yet again that fantastic subject/background compression gives us the ability to show the city streets whilst still having a well defined subject.
You can even use a telephoto in crowds. By stepping back from the crowded area, you can isolate interesting people in that crowd. A wide aperture will give you some added focal separation from the other people around.
Shooting Video
I want to touch briefly on video. It is a slightly different case scenario because you are going to need a tripod when shooting video from a long lens. However, telephoto video in cities really stands out from the crowd. The reason for that is many photographers/videographers do not want the extra hassle of a tripod and will tend to shoot standard to wide angle lenses. These can be shot handheld or mounted on a gimbal. This in turn leads to a lot of the B-Roll videos you see on YouTube looking quite generic and staid.
Using a telephoto really adds some dynamism to your clips. Instead of moving the camera and lens with the subject, you can allow your subject to move from the frame. It’s particularly useful for transport and people clips.
A long telephoto lens is not a discrete or easy lens to use all day long, however for shorter walks around urban areas it can open up massive possibilities. The sheer range of subjects that suddenly come into range above 100mm is staggering and the lens compression gives your urban shots a different look to the norm in the city. So what are you waiting for, next time you are in the big city, take your long lens.
