While I mostly use the excellent Canon RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM super-telephoto zoom lens for great shots of distant wildlife and sports photography, I also often use this lens on a Canon EOS R5 Mark II for photographing landscapes and city scenes.
Some beginners may be forgiven for thinking – why would you use a super-telephoto lens when you want to shoot landscapes? Surely you must use a wide-angle landscape lens for landscapes!
Rules are made to be broken. Long lenses are also great for landscapes. Because a super-telephoto lens allows you to zoom in and focus on more interesting scenes within a scene. More importantly, longer the focal length, the more you can compress the perspective. This means pulling elements within the scene closer together. Which equals fuller scenes, like this shot of this distant church spire amongst the Fall tree foliage.
This has made this image much more dense, full of colour, and more interesting. I shot this image at 270mm which has pulled the perspective together. If I’d shot the scene at something like 24mm or even 50mm, the church would appear a lot smaller in frame and there would be lots of unwanted gaps between all the nice colorful trees.
The RF 100-500mm’s comparatively narrow aperture range also becomes a benefit for landscape shots - f/4.5 at the short end, and stopping down to f/7.1 at the long end. I want to be shooting at around f/8 and narrower apertures for a better depth of field when using a long lens here.
For this photo, I shot at f/11, 1/160 sec and ISO160. The built-in Image Stabilizer helps to make sure I capture shake-free shots handheld at long focal lengths.
