They usually aren't light, and they certainly aren't small, but the unique perspective a telephoto lens brings makes it an indispensable part of your kit, even when traveling. Let's review some shots taken with a telephoto to see how we can justify its size and weight.
Avoiding Distractions
In some cases, distracting buildings or people may be unavoidable. However, a telephoto can help eliminate those distractions and bring your subject, in this case the clouds and mountains, front-and-center:
While there is still a building this shot, many of the distractions have been eliminated. This single building helps frame the foreground and the mountains now loom large in the background thanks to the effects of the telephoto.
Compressing Different Planes
The compression effect a telephoto has can be used even more dramatically to tie together different planes in a scene; in the above example, the lake, the people on the bench, and the mountains behind are all in very different planes and are different sizes. However, we can bring them together and highlight all of them by stepping back and zooming in. When composing this shot, keep the hyperfocal distance in mind to help ensure that everything you want to be in focus is sharp.
This image really highlights how darktable's powerful masks can make a tough job much easier - we want to use a second instance of local contrast to really bring out the details in the mountains. Fortunately, we don't need to painstakingly create a drawn mask that follows every peak and edge. Instead, make a very quick drawn mask that roughly follows the mountains and then move the feathering radius and mask contrast sliders to the right to bring the mask to the edge of the mountains and stick to them exactly. See the before and after effects of these sliders below:
This works because the edge between the mountains and sky is well-defined and therefore easy for the mask contrast slider to distinguish. This contrast improvement makes a big difference in the final image:
Isolating a Subject Like The Human Eye
Have you ever noticed how you can watch something small far away and keep track of it? This ability to focus on an object, even one that appears small, is really useful.
... continue reading