What focal length do I need to photograph wildlife from about 600 meters with a Canon Rebel T7?
Asked 6/7/2020
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2 answers
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I use a Canon Rebel T7 and often see bears and other wildlife from around 600 meters away while driving for work. I’d like photos that look fairly close up, almost like using the camera in place of binoculars. What kind of lens or setup would I need for that distance, and is there any affordable option?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
6y ago
2 Answers
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Without spending orders of magnitudes more on the lens than on the body I know of two options. Both having the disadvantage of requiring manual focus on your body.
The first option that I have tried is to buy a mirror lens, for example the 1000mm MTO-11ca that I have. This can be handheld in good light at least on my canon 5d mark II. You will need shutterspeeds of about 1/2000 or faster to avoid camera shake at f/10. So sunny day works, cloudy day needs tripod. (a variant on this is to buy a spotting scope or a small telescope and mount the camera to that)
The second option is to buy an 150-600mm zoom lens (sigma and tamron have options). On its own this will make the bear quite small in the frame but if you are ok with loosing autofocus you can combine that with a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter for good image quality according to the tests I have seen. I have not shot with this myself but the resulting aperture is similar to the mirror lens. If you are willing to upgrade the body as well some newer canon cameras can autofocus at such small fnumbers (that eos r should do it, maybe the m6 mark ii you would have to check).
Originally by user59662. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user59662
6y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
At roughly 600 meters, getting a truly close-up wildlife photo is very difficult with an entry-level setup. On a Canon APS-C body like the Rebel T7, even around 800mm only gives a field of view wide enough that a large animal such as a bear would still take up only a small part of the frame, so heavy cropping would still be needed.
In practice, this means there isn’t really a budget-friendly lens that will perform like binoculars at that distance. Real 800mm-class wildlife lenses are large, heavy, and expensive.
Lower-cost possibilities mentioned were:
- a 150-600mm zoom, which will still make the animal fairly small at 600m
- adding a 1.4x or 2x teleconverter, though that may cost you autofocus
- a manual-focus mirror lens or adapting a spotting scope/small telescope
Those alternatives can work in good light, but they bring tradeoffs such as manual focus, very fast shutter speed needs, tripod use, and reduced usability.
So the short answer is: for close-up images of animals at 600 meters, you generally need extremely long focal lengths and should expect compromises unless you spend a lot.
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