28.08.2020 Longer lens or digital enlargement?

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This deer was about 200 yards away out in the middle of a field. I captured it at 280mm [my maximum focal length] and then heavily cropped the original image for far more impact. [Right]

This had the very undesirable effect of digitally enlarging the image until it became almost a "painting" of the deer. Rather than a photograph, accurately recording the deer in every detail.

The true size of the deer in the original image frame is seen to the left. Reduced from 5184 x 3888 to 1000 x 750  pixels for posting. [LIke all three images here] Note the lack of impact of the distant animal. Which is looking rather lost in its surrounding picture frame.

A longer focal length would have provided a larger image of the deer by optical means. Thus avoiding the all too obvious distortion of digital enlargement. Holding down the Ctrl key and rolling the mouse wheel will have exactly the same effect. This is also digital enlargement. No free meals in digital enlargement!

Increasing my lens focal length from my present 280mm [200 x 1.4 TC] to 400mm [200 x 2 TC] would provide a 1.42 optical enlargement without digital distortion. The image right has been digitally enlarged [cropped by a factor of 1.4 around the deer.]

I did this to show how large the deer would have appeared with a 400mm lens. [Leica 100-400 or 200 x TC20] Hardly dramatic, due to the considerable distance to the deer. Though probably worthwhile if it allowed much less cropping for greater visual impact.

Note how the smaller field of view, of the longer lens, has already added considerable impact. This, alone, has fooled the eye into thinking the animal is much closer and therefore a more interesting picture.

Is it really worth the very considerable expense of investing in a longer lens or the 2x Lumix TC20 teleconverter? Perhaps not, with distant deer. Though it would certainly help to increase the size of smaller subjects, like birds, at much shorter distances.

Long lenses can save the photographer having to approach the subject. With the serious risk of disturbing it. So that it escapes or changes its natural behaviour. There is a definite survival risk with disturbance of any birds or animals. One could drive a bird off its nest or cause it to abandon its young at a crucial moment. It seems too obvious to state that you can't just go trotting off across a field in the hope that a deer will remain calmly in place. While you carefully frame it at much closer quarters. Nor can you [usually] take to a boat to capture water birds.

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