Or a very very high zoom to get a similar effect.
No real reason for this question, just a random wonder I had. Basically the effect this would have on perspective might be interesting, and I wonder if any movie used this kind of shot for more than a couple of seconds.
Not a telescope, but Barry Lyndon was shot using lenses designed specifically for the Apollo program to capture the dark side of the moon.
The large aperture of these lenses allowed Kubrick to shoot scenes lit only by candlelight, and helped make every frame look like a painting.
That’s quite impressive. Is this it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQE73GDo4So
Yes, that’s a good example, though there are several other candlelit scenes in the film.
It might not be Kubrick’s most exciting film when it comes to plot, but it’s certainly remarkable and unique when it comes to its cinematography.
Definitely a must see (at least once) if you’re interested in cinema as a visual art.
Little gimmicky how much it’s used but the movie “Phone Booth” has tons of these shots. It’s like half the movie.
Poor Things has a bit of this, as well as a ton of other very interesting lenses.
I don’t have specific movie examples, but the narrow depth of field of a zoom lens would certainly require careful cinematographic considerations. It would be hard to compose a shot that has a typical foreground and background, without accepting that the background might be massively blurred. But I can sort-of see the appeal of having things chronically out-of-focus, as a way of hiding “obvious” details from the audience, until the focus changes and makes the big reveal.
Maybe such a film would be trying to artistically emulate human “tunnel vision”, where depth perception is severely reduced.
Not sure if this is exactly what you’re looking for, but the opening scene to The Conversation uses a high-zoom shot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlwdpNw1FW8
Eye in the Sky also prominently features long-distance/high magnification shots from the perspective of a drone/UAV.
This is precisely what I meant, thanks!
Rear Window has a lot shot though a telescope, or at least it’s intended to look like that. Not sure if AH did it for real.
I think you’d find the aberrations problematic for the speeds needed for live action. I think you’d need custom optics to get low enough f-stop and likely some very expensive custom achromatic lens stacks to correct most of the visible wavelengths.
Rear Window?
Cosmos?
