zoom?

Alright I have not got a dslr yet but am after the first of the year, I have been wondering about something, What is the conversion of the say 75-300 lens to a x conversion like 4x zoom, what are all the lenses equavelant(sp?) to? whats the biggest zoom lens canon makes and how many times zoom is it?
later,
jon

well the biggest they make is a 1200mm. It's $80,000 and there are only i think somewhere between 6 and 10 in existance and Sports Illustrated owns 2 of them.

They also make
600mm
500mm
400mm
300mm and so on.

Not sure about the conversions though.

I could probably explain this better, but this is the best I can do at 1:30am. After my finals tommorow i'll come back and see if i can reword things if there is any confusion.

ALL primes have a "zoom multiplier" of 1x. the multiplier is just found by dividing the longest focal length by the shortest focal length on any given zoom lens. for example a 20-200mm lens would be a 10x zoom, and the 100-400 would be 4x. But given those examples you can see that the multiplier has no real value to it and it is completely dependant on the lens being used.

The 28-300 has the greatest zoom range (at just over 10x), but remember that this lens is far from having the most reach.

My suggestion would be to try and stop thinking in "X's" and just focus on the actually focal lengths.

I like to take ppics of elk and deer, the problem is they are always at least 100ards away,way out of reach for my g6 that is why I want a dslr, with a 200mm lens, how close would that put the elk or deer in the frame?
thanks all

Im hoping someone with more experiance with longer lenses will chime in here, but my guess would be that to fill the frame with a deer at 100+ yards you would need around 400mm.

DO NOT take this to heart since I'm really not sure, i'm just giving my best guess

The 4x on a zoom is a nonsense number, which doesn't really tell you anything. It's how much longer the long focal length is than the short one. The 75-300 is a 4x zoom (75x4=300). A 100-300 is a 3x zoom. But so is a 24-70. And they're quite different lenses (in coverage, leaving aside build quality).

For wildlife, you will absolutely require at least 400 mm. Working in a zoo or safaripark,you might get away with a 200, but outside controlled conditions, you really need length. This sticky has links for top ten member-recommended wildlife zooms and primes (single focal length lenses). You can get some ideas there about what a lot of members have found works.

If you are shooting animals in the wild a good starting point would be the 100-400...

I was in Yellowstone NP back in Sept. My 50-500mm tele gave me enough zoom for elk, bison, moose... big animals. I also carried a 1.4 teleconverter just in case i needed further reach but i hardly used it when i was there.

The biggest zoom lens Canon makes is 100-400mm @ 4 X zoom.

But you can get more "Xs" from the smaller zoom lenses like 28-200mm etc... a 7X zoom.

X's don't equal magnification or focal length.. Xs only = zoom range.

Sigma's 50-500mm is a 10X zoom,. it is also a longer focal length,. ie 500mm Vs. the Canon's 400mm.

It's this large "400mm" number that is your maximum focal length,. ie the closest you can bring your subject closer.

fyi.. NONE of the lenses "underoath" mentions are zoom lenses.. (so I guess he broke his oath? )

Lastly,. if you look at your G6's information.. it will have the focal length "equivelents" of the built in lens listed.. to give you a rough reference point. If the G6 is listed as having a 28-135mm equivelent lens.. (I;'m making that number up.. no idea what the actual range is) than you will have a starting point based on the 135mm as the longest focal length you have been working with. Do you need twiicw that length? three times? or Four?

I am in agreement with previous posts that a 400mm zoom would be ideal.

I believe the G6's is 35-140 @ 4x

(Thats my Robert Gross impersonation)

Just near the top of this page is a lens focal length calculator. Just remember that if you are buying a 1.6 crop DSLR,then these numbers need to be divided by 1.6 somewhere in the calculations!
http://www.photo.net/l​earn/making-photographs/lens

I tried a few examples and found that at 100 yards a 500mm lens on a 1.6 crop camera will give a framing of 14 feet high by 23 feet wide which would be somewhere near right for what you want. Possibly a 600mm lens would be better

A 300mm zoom would ,at it's longest, give a frame of 24x38 feet on a 1.6 crop camera. I'm not sure how big elk are but i presume even a big one wouldn,t fill much of the frame with a 300mm lens.
You can crop abit of course, but it's something one really tries to avoid with a cheap consumer lens .

I'm guessing from your mention of the canon 75-300 lens at the start of this thread that you can't consider the super expensive Pro lenses?
If so this needn't be a problem.There are several economy options in the 400/500/600 mm focal lengths that can give really quite good results

Okay; 2 examples from my first trip to yosemite; right b4 Thanksgiving:

This is a deer at 10 yards with my 70-200:

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