If you live in a big city the local zoo is often the most suitable place to test out a new telephoto lens. Thanks to a wide range of motifs and enclosures of different sizes it’s perfect for getting a clear picture of the new toy’s imaging performance at different focusing distances. As you can read on the forums, some lenses seem to perform quite differently in this regard. Some lenses for example are said to be a lot sharper at close range than they are when focused at something far away.
With small motifs it’s also interesting how short or rather long the minimum focus distance is. Sigma 100-400mm f/5-6.3 Contemporary’s MFD is 1.6m, which sounds like a lot, but is sufficient for frame-filling portraits of smaller animals, such as bearded dragons. Since I haven’t edited those photos yet, I will post them next time. Even though you can calculate a lot with the help of different tools on the internet (such as DOF Master) nothing beats a self-attempt. 🙂
Foto[GEN]ERELL 