Mine's Bigger Than Yours

[major_clanger]

Looking through my photos from the 2008 Farnborough Air Show, I remembered that I'd looked around during one of the flight displays and snapped this picture, but never put it online. 

I will leave it to my fellow photo-nerds to play Spot the Lens.

Comments

[watervole]

That's an eye-catching photo. I wonder if you could sell it to them to use for publicity.

[major_clanger]

They'd doubtless want a release from the chap holding the lens, which would be difficult as I took the picture over five years ago!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Holy frack - 1000mm? Bigger?

I'm amazed he's hand-holding it!

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Looking at the particular layout of grip rings and switches I think it's the EF 500mm f/4 IS, which was about £4,000 when introduced in 1999. The replacement version is about twice the price!

There are some examples (of this, not the new version!) going for Buy It Now on eBay at about £5,000. I suppose that if you do shell out for one of these monsters you can be comforted that at least it holds its value for resale.

Those apparently weight about 5kg. Good upper body exercise, aviation photography...

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Yikes! Seems a bit big - but I suppose they've used the longer length to simplify the optical path and minimise distortion etc.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

There was a fashion for catadioptric camera lenses a couple of decades ago, being much more compact than normal designs, but they fell out of fashion when electronic exposure control came in, as the optics mean that you can't use a conventional aperture diaphragm to control light transmission; you have to use manually-inserted neutral density filters. Also, the bokeh (out-of-focus light pattern) is doughnut=shaped, which can look very odd in pictures.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've got a 500 mirror lens, it's rarely useful - colours are muted and it's always a little fuzzy.

No, what I meant was that there there are various optical tricks which can reduce the real length, as opposed to the focal length, but it adds complexity to the optics. That one looks pretty close to a true 500mm.

[unwholesome-fen.livejournal.com]

Yes, the end bit being presumably the lens hood. You can get longer lenses still, but I think they pretty much build them to order for you for 1000mm and above.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

I really like this photo.