So if a 50mm F1.8 is the ultimate in "normal", what's the opposite? Well, in my case it's a lens which Canon came up with for the new mirrorless series, and it's an 800mm F11. And that's F11 as in, it's fixed there and doesn't change. Everything is at F11. Any aperture you like so long as it's F11. You get the idea. The result is that the lens is very affordable and very light (as 800mm lenses go) and can be hand-held without too much trouble, assuming there's plenty of light (the image stabilisation helps too).

I've never shot at 800 before; the nearest I ever got was 600 equivalent on Sony's RX10 mark 3 superzoom, but this is an entirely different beast. You have to re-calibrate your sense of distance when shooting this (the first picture is the Tokyo Sky Tree shot from Odaiba - a distance, according to Google, of around 15km, or around 9 miles).

I can say with confidence that I won't be keeping this lens for ever - it's simply too specialised for that - but that shooting with it brings up some very interesting perspectives. Hope you enjoy these!

If nothing else, it was certainly a different experience shooting with this lens.

More to come.

Thanks for looking!