I did know all this - and I am not trying to make out being a know-all as it is just common sense when you look at apertures, focal lengths and cropping etc, but it is great to point this out to people who may not realize it.
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I get the question all the time, but it's more like a chain of thought where someone had the long glass but it's on the slow side. The light gets dim or the background is too busy and they start thinking that maybe they should opt for the faster 200mm or 300mm 2.8 instead of the slower 600mm 6.3 since the 2.8 is so much faster.Good video but what would be more interesting is a 400f2.8 vs say a 600f4 and a 600f6.3. To me those are more often than not debated if a 400f2.8 with teles vs a 600 prime. Personally if I need a 600 I’ve never thought it’s getting dark so I better grab a 70-200.
I never really bought into that either…and DxO/Topaz/LrC have gotten so good at noise reduction that I don’t worry about it much. But then…I’m not a pixel peeper except while doing processing and most of the ‘better just a little at 2:1 in LrC” goes away when downsampled for screen or print. And the lens blur filter along with darkening the BG and cutting down on its contrast helps with that…not as much or as well as the expensive f4 teles do maybe…but then I also believe in better is the enemy of good enough…and for a non pro hobbyist good enough is well…good enough.I never knew WHY.....but I never bought into the "I need a 2.8 to shoot in low light" rationale. Mostly because those times of super low light were usually only a fraction of the time I spent shooting. For wildlife I've always used a mid-range zoom and an f4 500 or 600 prime. In low light I shoot wide open and work the shutter speed down as far as I can......ISO floats. In post processing if the ISO is so high it kills the image, I learn from it and then trash the image.
Thanks for explaining the WHY !!!!
FWIW, the subject distance in the comparisons never changed. The tripod was in the same spot for both shotsBut in the video the subject distance as well as focal length are also changing. In the dof formula subject distance and focal length are the only things that are squared, while aperture and circle of confusion are not squared. To me this means these two have mudh more of an impact than aperture or the change in the coc from cropping.
photons per duck.My goal was simply to point out that it's not strictly F/stop that makes a difference and that cropping the heck out of shot fast lens isn't the answer when there's a longer lens in the bag, even if it's slower