All these impressive lenses shown on previous web pages can do nothing constructive on their own, so it is obviously the photographer's abilities which determine the end results. Suffice to say that you have to learn to approach your surroundings with a keen eye as to which objects can benefit from speed treatment.

Getting the background isolated is frequently considered the forte of telephoto lenses. I admit this has been my traditional approach to do "optical cleaning" of a close-up motif, that is, until the first of my very large aperture lenses arrived. Now, just open up the aperture to its widest setting (if there is anything you can adjust on the lens, of course), frame your working composition and shoot happily away.

Because of the softness imparted by the large aperture, you can easily select a suitable background for your subject. Just a slight movement of the shooting direction and the background will change completely