600mm f/11 or 800mm f/11 - which one would you buy?

John Sheehy wrote:

JustUs7 wrote:

SkySpades wrote:

Colin46 wrote:

Neither, too slow and lack of background separation at f11 renders these two useless for me.

just because modern cameras can go to high ISO’s doesn’t mean you want to.

Big lack of background separation in this thread full of f/11 images.

https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1649828/7

Yeah. Can’t do anything like that with an f/11.

Very helpful seeing actual images within the capability of the lenses in question vs chatter over a spec sheet. Thanks for the link.

It's not a matter of a spec sheet being wrong. It's about not knowing what the specs mean. As I said in another post, people tend to put too much importance on the "11" in "f/11", and forget to do the division "f divided by 11", which is where most visible object qualities in a photo derive.

The actual optical aperture is such an important thing, that it seems like blasphemy when someone refers to the "11" as the aperture.

Agreed.  I was trying to say that people tend to read the specs, but not actually apply it to real world cases.   The link was helpful in seeing what a long telephoto can produce at F/11.  I also find my DOF calculator helpful in knowing that at 100 ft; f/11; 800mm - I'm looking at a 3 ft DOF (in reference to the lack of background separation comment made previously).  I can take a picture of a bird in a tree across the street while sitting on my front porch and still have decent separation.

I also found a nice page on Lens Rentals website to be helpful for those of us with limited experience.  It shows what framing looks like for each focal length at various subject distances.  I was surprised to learn you can get a portrait of a person from the waist up shooting at 800 mm from 100 ft away.  One isn't at risk of filling up the frame with a bird.