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Buying a super telephoto lens on a budget

Oh, the super telephoto lens. Every wildlife photographer’s dream. It took me several years to move to the point where I felt that it would be worth it to spend several thousand dollars on a super telephoto lens, a tripod and tripod head that could support it, and a bag to carry it all in. But man was it worth it.

Super telephoto lenses are generally defined as lenses that are at least 300mm F/2.8 or faster and longer. Common examples include 300mm F/2.8, 400mm F/2.8, 400mm F/4.0, 500mm F/4.0 or F/4.5, 600mm F/4.0, and 800mm F/5.6. Super telephotos are large, awkward, heavy, phenomenally expensive, hard to take places and harder to carry once you get there. So why does anyone bother? The reason is quite simple: they allow you to take pictures that you simply cannot get any other way. If you want to get pictures of small and fast moving animals (read: birds) and get photos with ultrasharp subjects but completely blurred out backgrounds, there is no better tool than a super telephoto lens.

But super telephoto lenses are expensive. Typically these lenses cost several, or downright many, thousands of dollars. The “ultimate” bird photography lens, a 600mm F/4.0, costs about $8,000. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have $8,000 to spend, regardless of how many wonderful pictures I can take with it. In addition, you need to get a tripod and a tripod head (with accessories like quick-mount plates) that can support these monstrosities, which combined will run you somewhere between $500 and $1500. So when I realized that my photography was being seriously hampered by me not having a super telephoto lens, I was in a bit of a quagmire as to what to do. Luckily, as I eventually discovered, there are some alternatives to selling your car twice over so that you can afford getting into the super telephoto game.

The autofocus advantage, and disadvantage

Autofocus became a big hit in the 1990’s, and for good reason. Autofocus means that you can shoot moving objects, you don’t need perfect eyesight, and mechanically it is much easier to take pictures without having your left hand fiddling with the focus – especially if you are not using a tripod.

But let’s think about what you CAN do with manual focus. First of all, for super telephoto lenses you will be working with a tripod, which means that you are not restricted mechanically from focusing the lens yourself while taking pictures. Secondly, not having perfect eyesight is not necessarily such a hurdle anymore, because at least Canon camera bodies will flash a red dot on the autofocus point and beep when an object comes into focus at that autofocus point, even if you are using a manual focus lens. So you don’t need perfect eyesight. Lastly you need to consider how many times you shoot moving objects (I don’t particularly often). Birds tend to be hard to manually focus because they usually only sit still for a few seconds and move very fast when they do move, but mammals generally stop for long enough and move slow enough that you can manually focus them with relative ease. So unless you shoot a lot of birds or do a lot of photography of moving animals, manual focus should not be terribly constraining. That said, you will still lose precious seconds manually focusing, so you will lose a certain percentage of shots compared to an autofocus lens. Digital SLR camera bodies also tend to have darker (“worse”) viewfinders than film SLR’s, and this problem is exacerbated on cheaper lines of camera bodies, which might make them harder to use manual focus lenses with.

The big advantage of buying manual focus lenses is that they are much, much cheaper than autofocus lenses. If you are in a real crunch for money but want a super telephoto lens, consider going for a manual focus lens. Manual focus lenses are generally not in production anymore, meaning that 1) you may have compatibility issues with modern cameras (which can be rectified if you re-chip lenses), and 2) they tend to be cheaper in part because they are all used. This brings us to the next segment.

Buy used lenses

Used lenses tend to be noticeably cheaper than new lenses. How much cheaper they are varies, but they are always at least a little bit cheaper. Used lenses that are out of production tend to be much cheaper than equivalent new lenses, and cosmetically ugly lenses (even ones in perfect working condition) also tend to be much cheaper. Finding used equipment is not necessarily as difficult as you might think, as there are many reputable dealers that sell used equipment and online forums where people advertise that they are selling equipment. I list sources where used equipment is advertised or directly available for sale at the bottom of this page.

There are some risks with purchasing used equipment. First of all is that it’s difficult to know how much use and abuse a lens has received, since a lens that’s clean and without many superficial blemishes could still have been through 100,000 pictures. There is not much you can do about that, but it’s worth thinking about. Typically the worst people to buy from are pros, who use their equipment a whole lot, and photojournalists, who are notorious for abusing their equipment. There is probably less risk of equipment failure with prime lenses than either zoom lenses or camera bodies, however, since prime lenses have fewer moving parts.

The other major risk with purchasing a used lens is fraud. Super telephotos lenses are expensive, and you don’t want to get cheated out of your money. In terms of fraud, you are at highest risk from advertisements on online forums, at slightly lower risk from vendors such as EBay and third-party vendors through Amazon, and at very low risk from established vendors such as B&H, Amazon, Adorama, and Keh. If you buy from an advertisement online, make sure you do a background check on the person and find references from people who have bought from them; the best thing is to meet them in person and see the equipment. You could also use an escrow service – but make sure to use an established one like www.escrow.com since the seller could set up a fake service run by accomplices (it’s happened). If you go through Ebay or third party vendors at Amazon and the like, only pick those with a lot of good feedback, and if you decide to use someone with little feedback do the same things you would do if you were buying from someone with a posting online. It’s safest to assume the worst. Also make sure to only buy with a credit card since credit cards usually have fraud protection, and if the worst happens at least you’ll have a large corporation on your side. Whatever you do, never wire money or use a money transfer service like Western Union, since once your money is sent there is nothing you can do if your equipment never arrives.

If you want to avoid all this hassle just use an established store. They’ll probably charge a bit more than a person selling it directly, but you can find some good deals if you wait long enough and monitor them carefully (Keh in particular tends to have good deals). The other disadvantage of using stores is that neither you nor the store knows how the equipment was treated and if it has a history of breaking down; buy from the previous owner directly and you should be able to find out the lens’ history. Stores have a standardized rating system of equipment’s wear and tear, but again this only covers superficial cosmetic markings and not the inner workings of the lens.

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