Normally, you mount a lens to a camera, but with a lens this big, you mount the camera to it. Learn about one of the rarest and largest lenses ever made, the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6L.
Coming to you from B&H Photo and Video, these fun videos take a look at the Canon EF 1200mm f/5.6L, a behemoth of a lens. It's rumored that only about 20 of these lenses exist and for good reason. They're highly specialized and cost a fortune: the last time one was on the used market, it was listed at $180,000. But then again, how many lenses let you read street signs two miles away? A made-to-order lens, Canon took more than a year to build each one due to the time it took to grow its fluorite crystals. Though the lens was first seen at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles as an FD version, the EF version did not hit the market until 1993.
The specs on the lens are almost comical in their extremeness: a minimum focusing distance of 46 ft., a physical length of 33 in., and a jaw-dropping weight of 36 lbs. Clearly, it's a highly specialized lens, and it's mostly media organizations (and possibly a few law enforcement agencies) that own the remaining copies. Of course, no matter how specialized, that doesn't mean I don't still want to shoot with one!
Years ago I was assigned to cover the Pope in Canada. Canon had the 1200mm lens set up for pros shooting with Canon. It gave us the opportunity to get tighter shots of the Pontiff. It's an impressive lens that requires and equally impressive tripod.
I don't have the EF mount version, but I do have three of the FL mount 1200mm f/11 lenses, one in it's original case. It is an interesting lens to use. I mount them on a Davis & Sanford "jaw-breaker" tripod (pressurized center coluum) with a Majestic head. I shot photos of the solar eclipse last summer, and the image of the sun nearly filled the frame.
The FL-mount 1200mm was part of a set of four "convertible" lenses, consisting of a "control unit" with the focusing and aperture, and a "head-end" in 400mm, 600mm, 800mm, or 1200mm. I have the entire set as part of my collection.