How far away should I be to fill the frame with a tiger using a 300mm lens on Canon APS-C?
Asked 8/29/2014
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I want to photograph a tiger on safari and fill most of the frame using a Canon APS-C camera with a 300mm lens. Roughly how far from the animal would I need to be? A ballpark answer in meters or feet is fine.
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
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There are many species of tigers and they vary in size. Suppose that the tiger in mind is a male Bengal tiger. They have an avarage nose-to-tail length of 270 to 310 cm.
Using a 300 mm lens on an Canon APS-C camera will give you a horizontal angle-of-view of about 4.3 degrees. To fill the frame with a subject measuring 3 meters horizontally you'd have to stand 40 meters away. Depending of how you want to frame the shot you might have to move closer/further away.
There are many tools that you can use to calculate this distance available on the Internet. This one for example.
Originally by user21986. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user21986
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
A rough estimate is about 40 meters (around 130 feet) if you want a full tiger to fill the frame horizontally.
Using a 300mm lens on a Canon APS-C body gives a horizontal angle of view of about 4.3°. If you assume a large tiger is about 3 meters long nose to tail, that works out to roughly 40 meters distance to fill the frame width.
The exact distance will vary because:
- tigers vary in size
- your framing may be tighter or looser
- the animal may not be perfectly side-on
- vertical vs. horizontal composition changes the fit
So treat 40 m / 130 ft as a practical ballpark, not an exact number. If you want only the head or upper body, you’d need to be much closer; if you want some surroundings included, you’d be farther away.
You can also use online field-of-view calculators for other subject sizes, focal lengths, and camera formats.
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