Near, Far, Wherever You Are

I originally started the previous post to talk about my new camera lenses, but spent too much time going on about how I ended up with the Canon Rebel T6 over one of the dozens of other cameras out there so I split the post up to talk about the body and lenses separately. So here’s the post I meant to write to show off some photos from my telephoto lens (since my ultra wide-angle lens was already featured in my Acadia and Upper Peninsula posts).

When I got the T6, it came bundled with a kit lens – the EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II.¹ If you mostly want a DSLR for snapshots of everyday life and travel, the kit lens is great. If you’re using an entry level DSLR to dip your toe into photography, it’s still good, especially for a kit lens, but you’ll eventually want a lens upgrade. I ended up shooting with the 18-55mm only for three and a half years, but then bought not one, but two lenses within six months of each other.

One of the things that you actually often lose out on when you first get a DSLR is zoom. While point and shoot cameras and phones can use digital zoom and other tricks to increase focal length, there are physical limitations to whatever lens you have on a DSLR. I like the T6 kit lens, and it’s chosen as the kit lens because it covers a useful range of focal lengths similar to what the human eye sees, but it’s not the sharpest, and I wanted to take pictures of squirrels and other things and have them appear larger than my thumbnail on my computer screen.

Mallard duck [250 mm, f/8, 1/160 s, ISO-1600]

However, I first picked up an ultra wide-angle lens over a telephoto lens because I was about to head to Acadia with my family and I figured I’d rather get better image quality for landscapes on that trip. Based on quality and price, Canon’s EF-S 10-18mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM³ lens is more or less the lens of choice for landscape photographers (with my lens mount) looking for a new lens after the kit lens. Honestly, I don’t use the 10 mm end that often because the perspective distortion is pretty severe, but it’s sometimes useful for shooting indoors. I do like the lens, and similarly to the 18-55mm, the minimum focusing distance is only a few inches in front of the lens so you can get really close to your subjects.

Tree [121 mm, f/5.6, 1/250 s, ISO-100]

As the fall went on, both Canon and Nikon essentially announced that they were shifting all new development to their mirrorless cameras, and Canon at least has been discontinuing many of their DSLR lenses. I still wanted a telephoto zoom lens, so when I saw a used EF-S 55-250mm f/4.5-5.6 IS STM for a reasonable price with an extra 10% off for Black Friday, I bought it.⁴ This lens is basically the telephoto equivalent of the 10-18mm, and I’ve enjoyed it so far, though I haven’t taken it on any big trips yet. The main drawback of this lens is its minimum focusing distance of close to 3 feet. After almost four years of being able to crawl right up to my subject, I’m not used to having to stand back a little. It’s fine for picking out details in landscapes, but I keep forgetting when I’m using it to magnify flowers and other nearby objects.

Moon (cropped) [250 mm, f/5.6, 1/320 s, ISO-400]

The 55-250mm lens is by no means a heavy⁵ lens, but I will say that switching from it to either of my other lenses makes the camera feel extra light. With my three lenses, I now have continuous focal lengths from 10-250 mm (10-18, 18-55, 55-250), with perhaps a slight dip in quality from 18-55 mm. I like the ultra wide/telephoto combination for landscape/nature photography to get overview and detail shots, but the 18-55 mm focal lengths are super useful for general purpose walking-down-the-street photography and indoors (e.g. museums, conservatories). I’m debating whether it’s worth picking up the STM version of the 18-55mm lens for the boost in image quality because I’ve seen it for less than a hundred dollars used, and I’d probably like to try out a “fast” (large aperture) prime lens (likely the EF 50mm f/1.8 STM, or maybe the EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM) at some point to see what that’s about, but for now I’m happy with what I’ve got.

¹I’ve broken this down in another post, but the lens is made for a Canon crop sensor² camera (EF-S), its zoom range is 18-55 mm, the maximum aperture varies from f/3.5 to f/5.6 depending on the focal length, the lens has image stabilization (IS), and it’s the second version (II) of the lens.

²Camera sensors are a whole other rabbit hole that I’ve fallen down, and I might put together a different post on them.

³STM stands for the Stepper Motor used to autofocus the lens, and it’s a faster and quieter upgrade over the DC motor used in the kit lens that I have.

⁴Both the 10-18mm and 55-250mm lenses were $300 MSRP. I got the 10-18mm new for that price (+tax) and the 55-250mm used for around $170 total. The 55-250mm is officially discontinued, and the 10-18mm might not be, but it’s probably on the way out.

⁵For comparison, a super telephoto that someone might be reasonably walking around with (so not Canon’s EF 1200mm f/5.6 L USM lens that’s almost 3 feet long, weighs more than 36 pounds, and costs over $100,000) might weigh around 10 pounds.