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For wildlife photography, the longer your lens, the closer you’ll be to the action. While a Canon 28-135mm lens might be long enough at the 135mm end to fill the frame with a bird a dozen feet away, it just doesn’t have the focal length to zoom in on a deer several hundred feet away. What separates a great wildlife photography shot from just a snapshot of an animal in the distance is the ability to fill the photograph with the subject.
While wide angle lenses which are perfect for capturing large herds of wild animals and flocks of birds have their place in every wildlife photographer’s gear bag, the most used lenses will be telephoto lenses which bring distant action close. Because fast shutter speeds are necessary for sharp photos of moving wildlife, a “fast” lens is a useful tool. If you’re new to photography, a fast lens refers to a lens with a large maximum aperture like f/1.4 or f/2.8 which allows lots of light to pass through the lens’s iris. Fast telephoto lenses require larger carefully manufactured glass elements which are more expensive to produce, and the cost is passed along to the consumer. Since many species of wildlife are most active during the early morning and late evening, a fast lens can be a necessity in these low light conditions.
In low light, photographers have a few options to ensure that their photographs are properly exposed. The first is to use a slower shutter speed, allowing light to reach the sensor for a longer period of time. If your subject is nearly completely still and you have a tripod to support your camera and lens, this method will work fine, especially if you take multiple shots in a row to improve your chances of getting a perfectly sharp image.
If your wildlife subject is in motion though – even at a slow pace, a slower shutter speed is unlikely to freeze the movement and you’d need to use a higher ISO speed which boosts the sensor’s signal gain, amplifying the light information. The downside to higher ISO speeds is increased levels of digital noise which is generally undesirable in photos of wildlife. Our third exposure variable and the final option is to use a lower f-stop, which increases the aperture of your lens, allowing in more light.
Wildlife photographers tend to shoot wide open most of the time, meaning they’re using their lens’s widest aperture, referred to as the maximum aperture, which somewhat confusingly refers to the lenses minimum f-stop setting. The faster the lens is with a large maximum aperture, the better low-light results you’ll be able to get. While a telephoto lens with a maximum aperture of f/8 might be fine for capturing action shots of a cheetah chasing a gazelle in bright sunlight, that same scene would be difficult to capture in the late evening. A faster telephoto lens with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 or f/4 would make it much easier to photograph the wildlife action.
The huge Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens has the power to fill a frame with even the most distant wildlife, but it comes at a steep price.Lenses like the Canon EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM Super Telephoto Lens or the Nikon 600mm f/4.0G ED VR II AF-S SWM Super Telephoto Lens have the optical power to fill your frame with even distant wildlife, but the price tags keep lenses like this out of all but a select few professional wildlife shooter’s bags. For the professionals who make a living traveling the world in search of rare wildlife, spending five figures on a lens is a reasonable business expense, but for the rest of the photographers who still enjoy wildlife photography there are plenty of more affordable options.
If wildlife photography is your passion, you won’t go wrong buying the longest and fastest lens you can afford. Unlike many cameras which can lose their value quickly when new versions are released, lenses often hold their value very well and there is a strong used market for good lenses, meaning that if you decide to upgrade to an even better one at some point, you’ll be able to recoup some of your investment. While prime lenses usually offer the sharpest image quality in telephoto lengths, zoom lenses are more convenient and inexpensive and high quality zooms produce results that look nearly as sharp. Remember, the shorter the focal length of your lens is, the closer to your subject you will need to be. Because most wildlife doesn’t like to be approached by humans, wildlife photographers usually use long lenses to fill the frame with the animals. With an APS-C DSLR camera like the the Canon T5i a focal length of 300mm is often a good starting length, but a full frame DSLR camera like the Nikon DF usually requires an even longer lens for photographing distant wild animals.
Image Stabilization
Even the most steady-handed photographer can’t help shaking their cameras while hand-holding them, especially with big, heavy telephoto lenses attached. Some wildlife photographers have steadier hands than others, allowing them to use very low shutter speeds when the light is low and their subject isn’t moving. For those of us who aren’t able to keep our hands perfectly still, a tripod or monopod can work wonders. But, what if there was a way for lenses to realize that our hands were wiggling around and correct for this camera shake? Fortunately, there is!
Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR) and Canon’s Image Stabilization (IS) lens technology does exactly this, reducing these small vibrations associated with hand-holding a camera in the lens itself. Many wildlife photographers shoot bursts of photos, even when the animal is stationary. While this might seem like a waste of memory, each shot will actually be different, with some sharper than the others. Especially when shooting at lower shutter speeds, a photographer who shoots 3-5 photos of a single thing will likely find one of them to be sharper than the others. With a long telephoto lens, even the tiniest movement of the lens while the photo is being taken can result in a blurry photo.
Vibration Reduction and Image Stabilization provide very impressive results when hand-holding wildlife photos. Even at higher shutter speeds over 1/500th you will notice a difference in sharpness when you’re shooting with long telephoto lenses. Image stabilization can allow the use of shutter speeds 2-4 stops slower than would otherwise be needed to get the same results. This technology is a big asset to photographers who are working in very low light, when wildlife is frequently the most active.
The list below shows Canon and Nikon’s lineup of longer prime and zoom telephoto lenses with image stabilization technology. Keep in mind that while these lenses can help you take sharper photos of stationary objects and animals, if you’re trying to photograph a running animal, a stabilized lens won’t help freeze the animal’s movement — you’ll need to use a faster shutter speed for that.
Canon IS Lenses
EF 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM
EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM
EF 200-400mm f/4L IS USM w/ Extender 1.4X
EF 400mm f/2.8L IS II USM

EF 400mm f/4 DO IS USM

EF 400mm f/5.6L USM

EF 500mm f/4L IS II USM
EF 600mm f/4L IS II USM

EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM
Nikon VR lenses
AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 55-200mm f/4-5.6G IF-ED
AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/4G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 70-200mm f/2.8G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 200mm f/2G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR
AF-S DX NIKKOR 55-300mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR
AF-S VR Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G IF-ED
AF-S NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G ED VR II
AF VR Zoom-Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D ED
AF-S NIKKOR 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 200-400mm f/4G ED VR II
AF-S NIKKOR 400mm f/2.8G ED VR
AF-S NIKKOR 800mm f/5.6E FL ED VR
Teleconverters
The Nikon TC-20E III 2x Teleconverter double the effective focal length of compatible lenses.In most wildlife photographer’s gear bags you’ll find a teleconverter (AKA: tele extender), which is a secondary lens that’s mounted between the lens and the camera. The teleconverter consists of a group of lenses which enlarge the central part of the image, extending the focal length of your lens. Most commonly these teleconverters can be found in 1.4x and 2x magnifications, with 1.7x and 3x also available for some camera and lens systems. With a Canon EF 1.4X III Extender, the focal length is extended by 40% and a Canon EF 70-200 f/2.8L lens becomes a 98-280mm f/4 lens.
Since 1.4x and 2x teleconverters are usually very similar in price, wildlife photographers might be tempted to opt for the 2x extenders for even more reach, but it’s important to consider that this additional magnification comes at a price that isn’t measured in money. With any extender, but especially with longer 2x and 3x ones, autofocus speeds are greatly reduced as is image quality. A reduction in image quality is acceptable if you are starting with a fast telephoto lens that has outstanding image quality already, but if your lens isn’t really the best and/or you’re using it on a cropped sensor camera, these extenders also magnify any of the lens’s flaws and can result in an image that isn’t very good. If your telephoto lens isn’t especially sharp normally, a 2x teleconverter is going to give you photos that are barely usable at full resolution.
The Canon EF 1.4X III Telephoto Extender extends the focal length of compatable lenses by 1.4xA teleconverter also reduces the amount of light which reaches your sensor — with a fast professional piece of glass like the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8L IS USM Telephoto Lens, a one stop reduction in light with the 1.4x extender (effectively making the lens an f/4 lens) and a 2 stop reduction in light with the 2x extender (making the lens an f/5.6 lens) isn’t a huge issue thanks to the lens’s very large maximum aperture, but for lenses with a maximum aperture of f/5.6 or f/8, a one or two stop reduction of light is a serious downside, meaning you’d need to use a slower shutter speed or a much higher ISO speed if you aren’t in bright sunlight. Generally, a 2x extender should only be used if you have one of the high end professional telephoto lenses — with anything less, you’re likely to experience unacceptable image quality.
Third Party Lenses
A favorite among many wildlife photographers, the Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3 lens delivers sharp results and is reasonably priced.While camera manufacturers like Nikon, Canon, Sony, and Pentax tend to produce the best lenses for use with their camera systems, there are many 3rd party manufacturers offering compatible lens options. While it’s natural that the proprietary lenses made by the camera manufacturers are almost always the best, they come with a steep price tag. Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, and others produce compatible lenses of varying quality. Some high end third party telephoto lenses rival the proprietary lenses in image quality. Lenses like the Sigma 50-500mm f/4.5-6.3, Sigma 150-500mm f/5-6.3, Tamron AF 200-500mm f/5.0-6.3, and the new Tamron SP 150-600mm f/5-6.3 offer impressive results at a price point well below what a comparable proprietary ultra telephoto zoom lens would cost.