1700mm

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

With my somewhat recent aquisition of a Canon 30D, i’ve been getting back into photography. I currently have about 3 lenses in my collection: standard kit lens, a wide-angle, and a telephoto. But, I need more. My 70-200mm telephoto lens just doesn’t get me close enough to the action, and current professional telephoto lenses dont make the cut. Thankfully, Carl Zeiss has come to the rescue with this bad boy:

From Carl Zeiss:

Never before has the world of photography seen such a lens. Developed for long distance wildlife photography this supertele lens provides 21x magnification. In search of the highest imaginable image quality the client decided for 6x6 medium format and the Hasselblad 203 FE as the best camera he is aware of.

At 1700 mm focal length and a speed of f/4 this lens put requirements on optical glass, lens assembly and quality assurance methods, never before encountered in photo lens manufacture. This 256 kg behemoth also required Carl Zeiss to develop totally new ways of operating a telephoto lens, including servo controlled aiming and focusing.

Drawing from its expertise in satellite and space optics as well as semiconductor fabrication lenses Carl Zeiss was happy to accept the challenge.

Holy crap thats is huge. Carl Zeiss, I think you need to make this available to the public ASAP, because one day, I too will have several hundred thousand dollars (or perhaps millions?) to spend on a lens.

In related news, I would also like to acquire this:

What we have here is a Seitz 6x17 Digital, producing images at an astouding 160 million pixels (!!!). Perhaps Carl Zeiss should reconfigure their 1700mm lens for use on this camera.