Looking to take pictures of lions? Or perhaps neighbors half a mile away? Well, this 1200mm f/5.6L Canon prime should sort you out. And it’s only $100 per millimeter!
For telephoto enthusiasts — nature and sports photographers, birdwatchers, stalkers — this is the Canon holy grail. Unfortunately, like most holy grails of photography, it costs a mint due to being an extremely limited edition. “More than twelve, less than twenty” is the official count, as they were only made to order starting back in ‘93. For an idea of what 1200mm is, here is a good example from the B&H newsletter.
[Photos by Henry Posner]
That’s an uncropped (resized, obviously) photo of stuff probably almost 2 miles away. The lens is sharp, too (as it better be for a hundred grand); you can see more pictures in the newsletter. Bonus: if you have a cropped-FOV camera like a Rebel XSi, it becomes nearly 2000mm due to the 1.6x focal length modifier.
Anyhow, I doubt anybody reading this is going to lay out three years’ rent for a single lens, but it’s nice to know it’s out there.
[via OhGizmo]
3 years rent? Damn New Yorkers have it worse than us in CA. That is about $3000 a month in rent. I could buy a hell of a house now for that much in CA.
In much of the country its about 10 years of rent.
At what point do you start calling it a telescope?
3 years rent? whoa?
My rent is 550 per month. for 120k I could buy a pretty good house here and still have some leftover.
voyeuristic people would want to get this. hah.
And you know, the XSi is exactly the camera of choice when using a $120k Lens.
However I’m not quite sure I understand how it could be considered a bonus “because it becomes 1,920mm on a smaller sensor body”
Using a full-frame, you could “crop it” to even 10,000mm if you wanted.