off topic: you have GOT to see this lens...

Tim

Tim

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zeiss 1700mm f4 (!) lens weighing 564 pounds... no mention on price but i am sure you could get a car or two for less. the incredible thing is that the lens is f4 which was never done before at that focal length. thanks to HW for pointing this one out.
complete article here http://www.dpreview.com/news/0610/06100 ... 1700f4.asp
additional photo from here http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=20285514

black box on left is a medium format camera...
image taken from aforementioned dpreview article
 
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Very cool. I'm a regular DPreview reader, so I'd seen a post on this before.. but not some of those other pictures you posted. And I especially didn't know that the little black thing on the end was a medium format camera!
What I think is funny, and just a bit ominous, is that they're not saying who the thing was made for, or why. No, I take it back, the article I found said that it was made for a private owner with an interest in long distance animal photography. But.. I dunno, that sounds like a weak cover story to me. I'm finding it difficult coming up with a malicious use for this, it's just too big and heavy to be used for any sort of evil intent that I can come up with. But the whole thing is just so absurd that I keep thinking there's some sort of ulterior motive at work. And with the emblem of the state of Qatar on it.. I'm guessing it's made for someone with so much oil money that he can afford to order a custom lens like this on a long distance animal photography whim.

Not that I'd pass up a lens like that.. well, I wouldn't want one weighing that much, but I'm currently longing for a good, high quality, long telephoto lens. Absolute minimum 400mm, preferably 500 or more. But those cost mucho dinero, and I'm just not able to spend that much money at the moment. But anway, that Zeiss monster makes the big Canon primes look small.
 
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the article said it was developed for "a customer with very high demands and a special interest in long distance wildlife photography". read into that what you want but when you are making a lens that probably costs somewhere near a million dollars for one person with high demands, that customer is a person who has way to much money on his hands. and yes, i would agree that would constitute special interest in wildlife photog.

ulterior motive? probably not but like anything it depends on who is using it. i wouldnt worry about it though, subtlety is not likey when someone is using a camera that looks like one of the engines from the starship enterprise...
 
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might be a little to large to take on attractions at disney and don't think it would fit in my camera bag so guess i'm not interested in getting this one ;D
 
Nikon had a 1200-1700mm f/5.6~8.0s P ED IF manual focus zoom. Like the Canon 1200mm, very few were made. I did see one on ebay once... starting price was $45,000.

For reference, the guy in the second picture has a 600mm on his other camera.

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