Member Discussion
High-Megapixel Telephoto Lenses?
I am on a search for high-megapixel (>5) long-range telephoto lenses (100mm or even 200mm+ if they're out there).
Anyone have any recommendations? I've hit all of the usual suspects, and have found very little.
Tamron has some fixed focal lengths up to 75mm, but they're classified as "suitable for sensors with a resolution of 720p or more." I'm not exactly sold on them being a solid choice for a 5MP or 4K camera.
Theia shows some 4K resolution and 4K "compatible" lenses up to 50mm, but nothing larger.
Fuji shows some zoom lenses up to 2000mm, but they only support a max of 2MP. They also have some 3MP options that go up to 80mm, so that's at least getting warm but still not what I'm looking for.
Am I missing some other major players that have high MP zoom lens offerings?
Thanks in advance!
Telephoto or long vari-focal?
You could consider a Canon EF or EF-S lens and the C-mount adapter (see our report on Testing EF Lenses On IP Camera for some more data).
This would open up a lot more options, and some of the alternate brands (Sigma, Tamron, etc.) can be good deals.
Just be careful to note the aperture of a given lens. You will pay dearly for a low F stop on a varifocal lens. However, a similarly rated aperture prime lens will surely be much cheaper.
EF 75-200mm f/2.8 $1250.00
EF 200mm f/2.8 $750.00
Here is an interesting 100mm tele from Kowa that won't break the bank ($150)
Its rated at 100 lp/mm, your Bosch 5MP sensor has a pixel pitch of ~4 microns which translates to roughly the same spatial resolution.
Unfortunately, the other sensor size/resolutions are increasingly more demanding because of their smaller size die and greater resolution.
Just curious, how far are you actually wanting to look and at what quality are you expecting with these lenses?

I do not see how this can work in this setting, and can only be partially workable if there is adequate lighting. If there is lighting, that would indicate to me that there is remote power, so wireless would be a possibility. By using a long-range tele lens and really high resolution camera, you would, number 1, have a camera with poor low light ability. Number 2, you would have to have a really small iris adjustment for any level of view depth, and a related high F-stop which would provide no correlation at night to a ppf calculation since low light performance would be innefective.
Viewing along a fenceline, however, with several thermals, from a single spot at the end, using A-B tripwire analytics, integrated with a low light 1080 PTZ with preset response settings would be better, but 5000 feet is still a long way, but the PTZ iris could be open quite a bit. Even better if you can correlate to a PTZ that is not along the fenceline but facing the fence from a distance with auto tour presets and smarttracking. A WDR lowlight 36x 1080 (200 mm 1/1.8") or two would be a best option. Design the solution for nighttime as a worst case. If money is the object, I still think you have better options with one or two of these at the end using multiple preset tours, maybe in conjunction with smarttracking and tripwire. With nothing known about the lighting or the environment, quite a few varables. You can customize the iris,shutter, exposure settings to optimize the view (and depth of view, since at a distant you will be looking, if a straight fence, at quite a deep area).
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