Nigel Danson and James Popsys face off in a 100mm vs. 400mm landscape photography challenge

Photographers James Popsys and Nigel Danson are back with another new lens faceoff video. In January, they spent a day shooting only at 70mm. However, in an earlier video, they shot at different focal lengths, with one shooting at 24mm and other at 200mm. Channeling that asymmetric competitive spirit, Popsys and Danson are back with another lens challenge, going head-to-head at 100mm and 400mm. Popsys won a coin toss and elected for 400mm, leaving Danson to look for landscape scenes that worked well at 100mm.

Popsys and Danson headed out to the Peak District in the United Kingdom for some sunrise landscape photography. To shoot at 400mm, Popsys attached his Sony FE 70-200mm F2.8 GM OSS II lens with a 2x teleconverter, which turns the lens into a 140-400mm F5.6. Check out the video below to see how Popsys did in the lens challenge at 400mm.

Danson shoots with Nikon mirrorless equipment, so for 100mm, he shot with a Nikon Z7 and Nikon 24-120mm F4 S lens. While when Popsys won the coin toss, both he and Danson thought 400mm would be the better option for the challenge, it turns out that 100mm worked quite nicely as well.

What's especially interesting about the 100mm vs. 400mm landscape photography challenge is that neither focal length is traditionally considered a 'landscape' focal length. When people think about landscape photography, they often think about wide-angle lenses, like 14-24mm, 16-35mm or 24-70mm zooms. However, longer lenses, like a 70-200mm or even a 100-400mm, can be fantastic choices as they allow you to focus on smaller parts of a larger, grander scene. Sometimes the best image isn't the one that includes everything.

To see more videos and photographs from each photographer, check out the links below:

James Popsys: YouTube • website • Instagram 

Nigel Danson: YouTube • website • Instagram  

(Via James Popsys and Nigel Danson)