Testing The World's Longest AF Lens - Canon EF 1200mm In London

MPB Photographic recently had the Canon 1200mm f/5.6 L USM on auction and just before it changes hands the guys from the store decided to do a quick but interesting test of the true power of this monster lens in the streets of London.

British store MPB Photographic had on its hands for a few weeks the longest AF prime lens ever produced. What do you do when you have such a gem on your hands? well, test it out of course. The guys took the lens to some of the more familiar sites in London including The Mall, Trafalgar Square the Big Ben and the Thames, got a lot of interest from people in the street and shot some sample images with a 1D-X. They also tested the results with a 1.4x, a 1.6x one and even a 2x. Finally they tried using it with the tiny EOS-M (and although with a 2x extender the lens produced a 35mm equivalent image of 3840mm- the result is not something we would pay around $160K for).

Image shot from 0.6 miles at the Admiralty Arch at the far end of The Mall from Buckingham Palace (credit: MPB Photographic)

You can check out more of the images shot on the streets of london on MPB Photographic blog.

This is as good opportunity as any to post the old (but still very much relevant) video of B&H about this lens for a bit more perspective (this lens is one of only a 100 which were produced in the early 1990’s):

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0E-nZOlY_k[/youtube]

Be sure to check out many more photography products on our product photography section here on LensVid.

VIA: petapixel.

Iddo Genuth

Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.