Common Mistakes Landscape Photographers Make With Telephoto Lenses

Most landscape photographers turn to wide angle lenses for the majority of their work, but there is an entirely separate world of great images waiting to be made with telephoto lenses. That being said, telephoto lenses come with their own challenges and pitfalls, and this great video will show you some of the most common mistakes landscape photographers make with them and how to correct those errors.

Coming to you from Mark Denney, this helpful video will show you some common mistakes landscape photographers make when shooting with telephoto lenses and how you can fix them. Telephoto lenses often get overlooked for landscape images, but they are a fantastic way to create more abstract shots or to take advantage of compression to bring various elements in the frame closer together. The great thing is that for landscape work, you do not need a bulky and expensive 70-200mm f/2.8 lens; a compact and affordable 70-200mm f/4 will cover your needs and allow you to explore lots of interesting shots. Check out the video above for the full rundown. 

And if you really want to dive into landscape photography, check out "Photographing The World 1: Landscape Photography and Post-Processing with Elia Locardi." 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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3 Comments

Actually a really good video for a change. I get really frustrated with corny jokes and so much self-promotion in most. Thank you for a very thorough report

What's the difference in the quality of the photo with or without the IBIS on?

Another mistake often made using telephoto lens for landscape is that the photographer doesn't realize that the Hyper Focal Distance is often very far away and that the Depth of Field is much shorter. As a gigapixel Landscape photographer, I usually am shooting at 100mm to as much as 300mm. If I have objects in the foreground that I want in focus I use focus stacking to recover the DOF.

This image was shot with Canon 5DSR, Canon 70-200mm lens @135mm, f/11, 1/125th sec. exposure, ISO 100. It is made up of 45 focus stacked images, 3 rows x 15 columns 25% overlap in portrait orientation. Each focus stacked image is made up of 13 different focal distances from 6 ft to beyond the Hyper Focal Distance of 176 ft. requiring a total of 585 individual images needed to create this image.. Photo Stacking was done using Helicon Focus Pro ver. 7.6.1 and stitching was done with Kolor Autopano Giga.

The original image is:

1.69 Gaga-pixels
23,896 x 70,766 pixels
79.7" x 235.9" 300 PPI