Long Lens Landscape

[Donald]

I'm so glad I didn't know the 'rule' about landscapes being shot with wide angle lenses before I went out and bought myself a long lens.

That's in jest ... partly. I have come across those who say that you can pretty much only shoot landscapes with a wide angle lens. But, of course, a long lens gives you a different perspective. This is at 400mm on a full frame camera.

Your assessment and critique always welcomed.

Suilven: Nature and Humankind in Harmony

[Geoff F]

Works for me. Although the sky is pale there are still some nice clouds to add a bit of interest.

ps. When I have had the 'wrong lens' with me I have taken landscapes with my 150-600 lens; but it does need the closest point to be a fair distance away and clear air.

[Shadowman]

Quite a few professional photographers, namely Joe McNally; frequently discuss the use of long lenses for landscapes and they even work for some seascapes as well.

[rpcrowe]

Lovely image! IMO this image would not be as really nice as it is without the compression offered by the long focal length... That cottage would be just a speck off in the distance and the mountain in the background would look like an anthill with a wide lens...

I frequently use my 70-200mm f/4L IS lens for landscapes on my full frame as well as on my crop format cameras.

Oh, I FORGOT, besides the fact that you can't use a long focal length for a landscape, YOU CAN'T SHOOT A LANDSCAPE WITH A CROP CAMERA

[DanK]

A very nice image. I think the tight framing and compression from the long lens work very well.

[mugge]

Donald, a very different picture from you. I like the sky and the fact that you have opted not to give it 'pop.' The compressed look is interesting only but not, to my mind, working. My eyes wander to the edges of the picture and stop there. It is fun to experiment with different lenses. In landscape photography I do believe that the 'boring' wide angle rule supreme however much we wish to experiment. That is only my opinion. With excellence comes great responsibility. That is only my opinion.
Cheers Ole

[Wavelength]

Majestic!!!

[billtils]

A quick look at my dictionary finds this as one of the definitions of landscape: "a picture representing an area of countryside". In which case this is not only a superb photo but an excellent landscape.

[Black Pearl]

I'm a big fan of longer lenses for landscape photography. I like the way they home in on details and help isolate them.

Great shot by the way with a superb sense of scale.

[JBW]

I find the contrast between the foreground and background intriguing. Almost as if one shot was overlayed onto another.

And now it is time to educate the ignorant: What is compression? Please and thank-you.

[Donald]

Thank you for the comments above. I do think that long lens landscape photography brings different and exciting approach to the genre.

It's a bit like shooting with an ultra wide angle. In that case, the function is just not to get more into the frame. It's about making images that could never be made with any other lens. Similarly, long-lens shooting is not about getting faraway stuff filling the frame. It about creating images that you could never otherwise make.

Just out of interest, the distance from that closest face of the mountain to where I was standing is 12 miles. The distance from where I was standing to the house, is just under 2 miles.

[Donald]

And now it is time to educate the ignorant: What is compression? Please and thank-you.

Brian - This, I think, is quite a good explanation: -https://photographylife.com/what-is-lens-compression/

[RList]

Brian - This, I think, is quite a good explanation: -https://photographylife.com/what-is-lens-compression/

Beatiful image, Donald. Isolation of subject is why I like LL Land/Seascapes where an interesting subject may be found in even any very boring *scape. DOF...not that important if image works, like your does.

[Mike Buckley]

That article about lens compression does a very nice job of explaining that it really isn't lens compression. I remember learning about that decades ago from an article in Popular Photography magazine explaining the same thing. I still cringe to this day when I see the effect commonly explained as lens compression as if the lens is causing it.

[Mike Buckley]

It's a bit like shooting with an ultra wide angle. In that case, the function is just not to get more into the frame. It's about making images that could never be made with any other lens. Similarly, long-lens shooting is not about getting faraway stuff filling the frame. It about creating images that you could never otherwise make.

Exactly!

[Tronhard]

One thing I learned many years ago... when trying to capture a sweeping landscape of massive sand dunes rising from the sea, I tried the conventional wide-angle look and of course the grandeur of the dunes was pushed to insignificance. So I took a telephoto lens, rotated it to portrait mode and shot. The effect was much more dramatic and expressive of what had captured my attention and admiration. So like many other images, figuring out what was the critical element I wanted and concentrating on that made my capture much more satisfying.

[DanK]

Brian - This, I think, is quite a good explanation: -https://photographylife.com/what-is-lens-compression/

This may be a bit off topic, but I don't think that explanation is as clear as seems. She wrote:

Lens compression does occur when you take a picture with a telephoto lens, but it is not because of the lens or its focal length. It is because we tend to stand farther away from our subjects when we use a long lens.

But her first example is one where she cropped but didn't change distance to the subject. She later focuses on relative distances, but why do relative distances matter?

The key is angle of view, not distance per se. One consequence of angle of view is that the wider the AOV, the closer you have to stand to a subject to obtain a given size relative to the frame and, as she points out, the greater the relative distance behind the subject compared with the distance in front. But it's because of AOV that this matters, I think.

Start with this diagram of a narrow AOV:



I drew this with distances in cm, which isn't a good example for most photography, but the choice of units doesn't matter. In this diagram, I have positioned the camera so that a 4-unit subject completely fills the frame. I then drew a line indicating 10 units farther away. Given this angle of view, 10 units further away captures a length of 7.5 units.

Now look at this wider-angle perspective:



As the article noted, I had to move closer to fill the frame with the 4.0 unit object. That's not the key. The key is what happens 10 units farther away. Now it takes 13.2 units to fill the frame at that distance, and the 7.5-unit object that filled the frame with the narrow AOV (shown in this picture by a thick black line) now fills only 57% of the vertical distance in the frame.

In other words, with the wider-angle lens, the more distant object looks smaller. This is where relative distance matters: we need something to anchor our impression of the size of the things farther back, and the foreground subject does that. We we process smaller, relative to the near object, as a cue for greater distance. Going the other direction, tighten the AOV, and the distant object looks larger relative to the frame. We process that as a cue for shorter distance. Hence, "compression."

These diagrams also show why a longer lens will produce greater background blur, independent of DOF. Given a fixed distance from the lens, the longer the focal length, the smaller the object that is stretched to fill the frame--hence, more blur.

[george013]

This may be a bit off topic, but I don't think that explanation is quite right. She wrote:



But her first example is one where she cropped but didn't change distance to the subject. She later focuses on relative distances, but why do relative distances matter?

The key is angle of view, not distance per se. One consequence of angle of view is that the wider the AOV, the closer you have to stand to a subject to obtain a given size relative to the frame and, as she points out, the greater the relative distance behind the subject compared with the distance in front. But it's because of AOV that this matters, I think.

Start with this diagram of a narrow AOV:



I drew this with distances in cm, which isn't a good example for most photography, but the choice of units doesn't matter. In this diagram, I have positioned the camera so that a 4-unit subject completely fills the frame. I then drew a line indicating 10 units farther away. Given this angle of view, 10 units further away captures a length of 7.5 units.

Now look at this wider-angle perspective:



As the article noted, I had to move closer to fill the frame with the 4.0 unit object. That's not the key. The key is what happens 10 units farther away. Now it takes 13.2 units to fill the frame at that distance, and the 7.5-unit object that filled the frame with the narrow AOV (shown in this picture by a thick black line) now fills only 57% of the vertical distance in the frame.

In other words, with the wider-angle lens, the more distant object looks smaller. This is where relative distance matters: we need something to anchor our impression of the size of the things farther back, and the foreground subject does that. We we process smaller, relative to the near object, as a cue for greater distance. Going the other direction, tighten the AOV, and the distant object looks larger relative to the frame. We process that as a cue for shorter distance. Hence, "compression."

These diagrams also show why a longer lens will produce greater background blur, independent of DOF. Given a fixed distance from the lens, the longer the focal length, the smaller the object that is stretched to fill the frame--hence, more blur.

It's a matter of magnification. If you expand your drawing to the left and draw a sensor in it, you'll easier see what happens. To keep it simple take a magnification of 1 for the first subject.

George

[Mike Buckley]

I don't think that explanation is as clear as seems. She wrote: "Lens compression does occur when you take a picture with a telephoto lens, but it is not because of the lens or its focal length."

I agree that it's not crystal clear on its own. Just the opposite, that statement on its own and out of context is contradictory; if the compression is caused by the lens, it makes no sense to call it lens compression.

However, almost everyone inaccurately calls it lens compression, so she seems to go with the flow to that extent before then further explaining it in a context that proves it's not caused by the lens on its own.

My point is that if we read just her one statement and nothing else, it makes no sense because it's contradictory. If we read the entire article, the point she is making makes sense and would make even more sense if the exact wording had provided greater clarity.

Apologies that I don't have a technical background, so I don't understand your diagrams and never will.

[Glenn P]

Start with this diagram of a narrow AOV:

Now look at this wider-angle perspective:

Thanks Dan! for turning a nebulous verbalization into discrete visualizations.