Cherry Blossoms photographed with 70-300 telephoto lens (240mm, 1/800sec, f/5.6, ISO 100)
A few years ago, before the pandemic, I was out at a local park taking advantage of the cherry blossom bloom which if you don’t know, has a very short window. In my city, the peak bloom lasts maybe two weeks max. As a result of that short window, the park gets overwhelmed by hoards of people who go to see and photograph the blossoms before they disappear. Using a wider lens becomes a major challenge, especially if you want to avoid getting other people in your image. There were many compositions that I didn’t want to have any people in, so what did I do? I used a telephoto lens on my camera and focused on capturing more intimate, close up images of the cherry blossoms.
Can you use a telephoto lens for macro photography? You most definitely can. My trip to photograph the cherry blossoms is a great example of how it can be done. And that is whether you want to capture macro images or near-macro images.
Compared to using a macro lens, there are some differences that you need to be aware of when using a telephoto lens. There are some limitations, but also some advantages. Depending on what your subject is and how you decide to approach your composition, using a telephoto lens can be a perfect fit.
Detail
One disadvantage of telephoto lenses over macro lenses can be the loss of fine detail in your images. That loss of detail might be caused by camera shake, especially if you are photographing hand held. Ordinarily, using a tripod is a way of minimizing camera shake but depending on what your subject is, using a tripod may not be ideal. You’ll instead need to set your camera to a fast shutter speed to counter the effects of camera shake. Some people may also argue that macro lenses give sharper detail because they are specifically designed to focus on fine detail up close.
These challenges don’t mean that telephoto lenses are bad. It depends on what you are photographing and how close you need to get to the subject. For many photographers, using a telephoto lens works just fine, especially if you are photographing a living subject that can become scared from something being too close to it. More on that further below.
Telephoto lenses also tend to be limited to near-macro images, which don’t give the 1:1 magnification ratio that macro photography tends to be defined by. One option to get additional magnification from a telephoto lens is by using a camera body that has a smaller sensor. For example, using a crop sensor (APS-C) or Micro Four Thirds instead of a full frame. A smaller sensor when compared to a full frame sensor gives added magnification due to the crop factor of the sensor. If you have a lens with a 1:1 magnification factor on a full frame sensor, the magnification factor would become 2:1 on a Micro Four Thirds sensor, due to the 2x crop factor.
Aperture difference
Another contributor to detail differences between macro and telephoto lenses is aperture. You can usually find macro lenses that give a wider aperture than telephoto lens would give you, unless you are using pro-level, fast telephoto lenses. The wider aperture allows you to photograph your subject at a much faster shutter speed to give you a sharper image, but at the expense of a narrower depth of field. If you are using a tripod however, you don’t need to worry as much about the shutter speed. Unless of course, there is any movement in your subject.
On the other hand, a narrower aperture can give you a depth of field advantage. Being further away from the subject when using a telephoto lens will also help with depth of field since all things being equal, depth of field gets narrower the closer you get to your subject. If you are photographing hand held and need to maintain a high shutter speed to avoid camera shake, you may need to widen your aperture to get a proper exposure. If you don’t want to impact your depth of field too much, you can adjust your ISO setting instead, but that may introduce some noise into your image.
Proximity to subject
One benefit of a telephoto lens over macro lenses is that you can compose close to your subject by zooming in, rather than positioning yourself up close to the subject. This comes in handy particularly if you are photographing live animals which could get scared by you or your camera being up close to them.
You may also want to compose a subject that you may not be able to get physically close to. The subject could be up high or behind some kind of barrier. My cherry blossoms trip was a perfect example of this. The trees were quite large and the cherry blossoms were on branches that were too high to get close to with a macro lens. Zooming in on the branches gave me the close up perspective that I was looking for.
The minimum focusing distance of a telephoto lens is much longer than a macro lens, which means you have to be much further away from your subject with a telephoto lens in order to focus. When trying to photograph a living, easily scared animal, or a subject that you can’t get close to, minimum focusing distance on the lens isn’t as important. The minimum focusing distance however may limit you, if you want to get fine detail of smaller subjects up close. You’ll often need to be much closer to smaller subjects to get that fine detail, than what a telephoto lens will allow you to focus within.
Related Questions
How do I find out the minimum focusing distance of my telephoto lens?
Most lenses have the minimum focusing distance stated on a label on the barrel of the lens. The label isn’t really descriptive though, as they often only have measurements in feet and meters. These measurements represent the minimum focusing distance on the lens.
Another way to find it is to look at the distance scale window on the lens, which shows you a distance range in feet/meters up to infinity. When you turn the manual focus ring all the way away from infinity, the smallest number in the window will give you the minimum focusing distance of the lens. Alternatively, you can also find the information by looking at the technical specs for the lens on the lens manufacturer’s website.
Minimum focusing distance of 1.5m (4.9ft) with this telephoto lens.
Is there really that much difference in detail between a telephoto lens and a macro lens?
It depends on the subject that you are photographing. You won’t be able to get small detail when using a telephoto lens, because of the minimum focusing distance that these lenses have as mentioned above. If using a telephoto lens to get small detail, you’d likely be cropping your image. The lower resolution from the crop would contribute to a difference in detail, as compared to a macro lens.
Generally speaking though, detail tends to be better with a macro lens. When comparing subjects that are photographed with both a telephoto lens and a macro lens, keeping all other things equal (avoiding camera shake, equivalent depth of field, etc.), you’ll see that there is more detail in the image taken with the macro lens. The telephoto image was taken with the Nikon 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 lens, and the macro image was taken with the Olympus Micro Four Thirds 60mm f/2.8 macro lens (equivalent full frame focal length of 120mm).
Comparing Telephoto and Macro Lenses, equivalent depth of field, no sharpening applied.
Telephoto: 300mm, 1/320sec, f/8.0, ISO 100.
Macro: 60mm (120mm equivalent), 1/2000sec, f/4.0, ISO 200.