Long lens recommendations?

[DirkR440]

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Hi,

during the last years I've tried a lot with long lenses. First I had the 135mm, it works super good but for me it was just not long enough. After that I discovered the Visoflex lenses. I startet with a 200mm and then even bought the 280mm. The 280mm is a monster, when you focus it feels like you repairing your sink with a water pipe tongs. 🙂 Somehow I still loved it and I made some pictures with it that I still like a lot today:

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Leica M Monochrom with Visoflex III and 280mm Telyt V by Dirk R., auf Flickr

Weltklasse Zürich by Dirk R., auf Flickr

Weltklasse Zürich by Dirk R., auf Flickr

Also it is a very cheap solution and you can also use it on a film Leica M.

But after a while I decided to go for the R solution and bought the 3.4/180 APO with the 2x APO Extender. Super sharp, but focusing is still a challenge. After taking some picture I was always hoping that I got the focus correct.

Nowadays I became a bit lazy and (please forgive me about this) I'm using now a Nikon Z7 with the FTZ adapter, the 300mm f4 lens and a 2x Teleconverter. It is just another world. Almost every picture is sharp and focused. With the the image stabilisator you can also go down to 1/30 shutter speed handheld.

Anyway, sometimes I still miss my MM1 with the 280mm Visoflex lens... it was just a super cool combination. 🙂

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[UliWer]

Before investing in long lenses (and perhaps even more important and more expensive: in good tripos) I‘d recommend to try cropping:

With a good 90 or 135mm there is no problem to achieve the field of view for 180 or 270mm. Of course the size of your cropped files will be much smaller which will limit the amount you can enlarge them for printing. Though on the other hand you gain a lot in stabilty, which decreases dramatically with longer focal lengthes, and you gain depth of focus which may makes it easier to focus correctly than with longer lenses 

Here are four examples: with the 1:3.4/180mm Apo-R, the 135mm Apo-Telyt-M both at f/3.4 and the 90mm Summicron-M Apo Asph. - the last one with f/2 and f/3.4. I mixed up the sequence of the four examples so if one likes one  may try to guess which example was shot with which lens: