The Canon Magazine 105
BUDGET TELEPHOTO ZOOMS
Boost your telephoto range without
decimating your bank balance. Here are
all the best options for your Canon camera
uy a Canon DSLR or mirrorless
camera with a standard zoom lens,
as featured in last month’s Super
Test, and you’ll enjoy everything
from a wide viewing angle, to short
telephoto reach. Unfortunately, the
emphasis is generally on the word ‘short’ and
you’ll often need a longer focal length to cover
the distance when shooting sport, wildlife, and
in any other scenario where you can’t get as
close to the subject as you might like.
It’s no surprise then that a budget telephoto
zoom is usually the first extra lens that most
buy. A favourite for full-frames is the
70-300mm zoom, but this also makes a great
choice for APS-C cameras, on which it gives a
mighty 112-480mm ‘effective’ zoom range,
thanks to the 1.6x crop factor. For full-frame
and APS-C formats, further bonuses of this
lens include a compact build, often combined
with fast autofocus (AF) performance and
impressive image quality. The only real
downside is that the widest available aperture
can shrink to f/5.6 at the long end of the zoom.
Other choices include telephoto zooms that
are specifically designed for APS-C format
mirrorless and SLR cameras, which tend to
be even lighter and more compact. Current
favourites are the Canon EF-M 55-200mm and
EF-S 55-250mm. At the other end of the scale,
Sigma and Tamron both offer 100-400mm
telephoto zooms, which are well-priced yet
stretch into super-tele territory, especially
when mounted on an APS-C camera.