Comic: Who Needs a Fancy Telephoto Lens, Anyway?

xkcd’s comic today pokes fun at the growing world of lens adapters and extenders. With so many ways to convert between camera systems and with so many ways to extend your reach, who needs a fancy shmancy telephoto lens… right?

What’s funny is that this comic is reminiscent of similar experiments that have been done in real life with stacking extenders. Back in 2010, BorrowLenses stacked five 2x Canon teleconverters onto a Canon 800mm lens to photograph the moon at 25600mm:

This is wild, but we have yet to see a stacked arrangement that uses a webcam and enough converters and extenders to require a second tripod for the lens.