BUDGET TELEPHOTO ZOOMS

If you're after serious telephoto reach on a tight budget, a classic 70-300mm zoom lens still has lots to offer

A constant-aperture 70-200mm f/2.8 ‘trinity’ zoom is often the go-to telephoto lens for enthusiast photographers but they tend to be big, heavy and expensive, and they certainly aren’t the only option. The 70-300mm zoom range is something of a classic, stretching back to the 35mm film era. They typically have a slower, variable aperture range of around f/4-5.6 but give more powerful reach on a full-frame camera, going further still on APS-C format bodies with an effective range of around 105450mm (112-480mm for Canon), stretching into super-telephoto territory.

Other advantages of 70-300mm zooms are that they’re relatively compact, lightweight and easy to live with, especially for travel, action, sport and wildlife photography. The slower aperture rating compared with f/2.8 zooms isn’t necessarily a drawback, considering that many current digital cameras maintain good image quality if you bump up the sensitivity setting a notch or two, and you can still get a tight depth of field, especially at longer zoom settings. Compared with faster 70-200mm lenses, they’re also much less expensive to buy.

Considering all the benefits, especially when many of us are on a tight budget, it’s surprising that 70-300mm zooms still represent a hole in the line-up of native lenses for most makes of mirrorless camera. Even so, the Canon and Nikon lenses in this test group work well with EOS R and Nikon Z system mirrorless bodies, in both full-frame and APS-C formats, via the respective mount adaptors, and still enable a compact and lightweight overall package.