As an amateur photographer, 200mm is one of my favourite focal lengths. Very versatile and gives me opportunity for interesting verticality in my photos (I live in a fairly vertical city). Is it optimal for anything? No. Optimal lenses are for professional photographers who bitch and moan about no-one wanting their boring-ass photos that might as well be AI-slop.
With the key distinction that it can go down to 70.
200mm is as short as my big bird lens goes, just for sake of example, and that’s already enough of a telephoto that I often physically cannot stand far away enough from people and people-scale subjects to get them into frame.
As an amateur photographer, 200mm is one of my favourite focal lengths. Very versatile and gives me opportunity for interesting verticality in my photos (I live in a fairly vertical city). Is it optimal for anything? No. Optimal lenses are for professional photographers who bitch and moan about no-one wanting their boring-ass photos that might as well be AI-slop.
The 70-200 (many choices available) is one of the best optics available.
With the key distinction that it can go down to 70.
200mm is as short as my big bird lens goes, just for sake of example, and that’s already enough of a telephoto that I often physically cannot stand far away enough from people and people-scale subjects to get them into frame.
There’s always the “Bigma” (the infamous Sigma 50-500). Also a pretty cool piece of glas, but it’s starting to get a bit heavy.