This Guy Tried Using a 200-600mm Lens for Street Photography

Photographer and YouTuber Evan Ranft recently decided to try something unusual. He wanted to see what would happen if he tried to use a 200-600mm lens for… street photography. And while the idea might sound silly on the face of it, you may be surprised by some of the results.

The lens in question is Sony’s new FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS, and fortunately, the video goes beyond a simple BTS that shows Ranft struggling to capture street shots with the huge telephoto zoom. As he tries out a few different ideas and compositions, he talks you through some of the challenges he ran across while using this odd setup, and offers some practical tips on how to make the combo work in a city environment.

“While ridiculous,” admits Ranft, “the results were actually very surprising because of the extreme compression you get at 600mm.”

Here are a few of the images Ranft was able to capture with this setup:

“The ultimate goal of the video was to give the viewer a fun creative idea if they ever wanted to rent a crazy lens, get out of creative block, or just to try something new,” Ranft tells PetaPixel. To that end, we think he succeeded.

Check out the full video above, and be sure to Subscribe to Ranft’s YouTube channel if you want to see more of his work. He’s been publishing some great content lately, including this in-depth iPhone 11 Pro Night Mode test, and a great editorial on how it takes hundreds of bad photos to capture one good shot.


Image credits: Photos by Evan Ranft and used with permission.

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