Ah, that's a good distinction to make. Focal length means different things to different formats. It's usually in the telephoto range (even if it's not a "true" telephoto lens) for 35mm, but in the short telephoto range for 6x#, and probably a normal lens (equivalent to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera) for 4"x5" large format. The important things to look at are field of view, and magnifying power, (but mostly field of view).Chip NoVaMac said:As to the 300mm focal length. You don't say whether you are talking about a true 300mm, which would be about a 450mm on the Nikon D50 lets say, or the equivalent to 300mm in 35mm field of view.
Side note, I just used my Minolta today, with the 200mm lens, and my father's 3x ( ) teleconverter. 1/8@f/11 (effective, the lens was set to f/3.5, i think I did the math right) on ISO 400 film. Thankfully I used a tripod and it has mirror lockup.