70-200mm Lens - How I Love Thee
70 - 200mm Oh how do I love, thee let me count the ways
Sony 70-200 GM Lens
I want to talk about the 70-200mm 2.8 lens. This is one of those lenses with so many reasons to love it that it's just seems insane to me when I meet a photographer but doesn't actually own one. I love this lens so much I want to fly it to Vegas and have Elvis marry us. This lens has really become the secret sauce in our smash cake sessions and today I want to take you on a deep dive into why:
THE COMPRESSION
Those of you who use shorter focal lengths like the 50mm and a 35mm, you know that there are two things that affect how blurry the background is. The first thing of course is aperture and the second thing is distance. When working with a longer lens both of those things are still true but you do have one more weapon in your arsenal. That weapon of course is the compression caused by zooming in.
The more you zoom in with a long lens the more the background goes out of focus. This even holds true when using an aperture like 4.0, 5.6 or even 8.0. If you were shooting at an aperture of 8.0 with a 50 millimeter lens your background would be mostly in focus, which is not always the best look.
Canon 70-200 2.8 IS
To solve that problem with a 50mm lens you would have to use an aperture like 2.8, narrowing your depth of field. But when shooting a moving target like a one-year-old covered of cake, that's not always the best idea. Those of you who have actually tried to shoot a smash cake session at 2.8 with a fast-moving baby, you know that you end up throwing away a lot of out of focus images .
The lenses that we use specifically use are the 70-200mm 2.8 IS for Canon and the G Master 70-200mm 2.8 for Sony. These lenses give me the option of taking my 1st birthday images at an aperture like 4.0 or 5.6 and the compression from zooming in gives me a blurry background that looks like it was shot at 2.8. Not shooting at 2.8 gives me the benefit of a higher in focus rate.
Now I could sit here and bore you with spec all day but truly the proof is in the pudding. I'm going to post a couple of our images that have been taken with a 70-200mm and you guys can see what I'm talking about. I'm here to tell you that parents go completely nuts for that buttery out-of-focus cinematic look when I show them our smash cake images.
I don’t want to be all about the money but… Happy Parents = Bigger Sales = Happy Photographer, am I right? The 70-200mm is solely responsible for our unique look and for thousands of dollars worth of business at my studio every year.
I can already tell there are going to be a lot of you in the comments section going “Oh my God that lens is expensive!” and you're not wrong. I think the current price of a Canon 70-200mm 2.8 with image stabilization runs somewhere in the neighborhood of $2200 to $2,500. Starting out that's a huge chunk of change and is probably a little prohibitive. But I want you to think about the longevity of your business and I want you to understand that this lens is going to make you money.
I can honestly tell you it's going to make you thousands upon thousands of dollars. It also has the added benefit of being cost-prohibitive!? Now I know what you're going to ask... “How could that be an added benefit?”. Quite frankly, not every photographer on the block can afford that lens so your images are automatically going to stand out simply by using it.
A 70-200mm lens will save you time!
The zoom function on the lens allows you to change your composition without actually having to change your position. This means that you can get a far away shot, a mid-range shot and an extreme close-up all from the same position. That's three different images to sell that were created without moving the photographer. If you have an especially shy child sometimes the photographer can be a little intimidating and by moving you’re drawing attention to yourself. That's where this lens really shines. You can keep still and you can back away from the baby if you find that the baby is nervous around you or the camera. And still create amazing images along the way.
So whether you're saving time because you're not scaring the child, you're creating unique images faster, or more of your images are in focus, this lens really helps put more money in your pocket.
Canon 70-200 4.0 IS
For those of you who are a little cost-conscious you can pick up the 70-200 4.0 version with image stabilization for about $800 less. Even if you go the 4.0 route you still have the benefit of using the camera’s zoom function to compress and blur the background.
This is one of those lenses that really works with almost every genre of photography whether it's portraits, cake smash, headshots, weddings, you name it. If you're serious about starting a photography studio this needs to be one of your first purchases. I made the mistake of waiting years before I bought this lens and I can tell you the minute I did my bookings and sales average increased.
For those of you would like to see this lens in action and see the results were able to get with it head on over to our video page where we will teach you how to use the 70 to 200 millimeter lens for a cake smash session.
That's it for me you guys I'm Daniel with www.TheSmashCake.com . I'd like to thank you all for actually reading because in this day and age that's no small thing!
Have a good one guys.
- Daniel