So how did we know that Sarah Jessica Parker sent that soft mole of hers into oblivion? That Katie Holmes really has purple man hands? That Lilly Allen had a third nipple? And what Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s new born twins look like? Through pictures! Really beautiful, invasive and very expensive pictures!

Just yesterday lawyers from the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie camp sent a cease and desist notice to magazines who had acquired pictures of the family taken by papparazi using “highly powerful telephoto lenses.” The pictures show the couple playing with their kids at their private chateau in Miraval, France.

At Guanabee we know that magazines, in order to satisfy the hungry eye of voyeurs everywhere, are willing to pay big bucks to be the first to get the juiciest, “most wanted” pics. To obtain these, paparazzi employ covert photography to “capture” their prey: they hire helicopters, hide in bushes and make use of the latest advances in technology. The most powerful weapon in their arsenal? The telephoto lens.

According to Wikipedia a telephoto lens “is best known for making distant objects appear magnified.” And focal lengths of lenses are measured in mm. To understand better let’s do an exercise: let’s say Guanabee is a papparazi hiding in the bushes across the seven eleven and wants of a picture of Madonna’s daughter, Lourdes’s eyeball. What telephoto lens in mm would we need? Here are a couple of shots using different lenses:

Above from left to right, we used telephoto lenses measuring: 28mm, 50mm, 70mm and 210mm. So a telephoto lens with a range of up to 210MM would get us our snapshot of her eyeball, yay! To give you just an idea of how far one can go with telephoto lenses, the most powerful telephoto lens ever developed measures a staggering 1700mm and can probably zoom in and take a pic of your cavities from a hundred yards away. We are guessing this is not the one used to capture the Pitt-Jolie family since its a couple million dollars, but some lenses that measure 600mm and in the range of $5,000 to $10,000 are some probable options:

Canon - EF 600 mm f/4L IS USM Super Telephoto - $9,199.99

Sigma - APO 300-800 F5.6 EX DG HSM - $8,800

Nikon - AF-S NIKKOR 600mm f/4G ED VR - $9,079.95

If we were stalking somebody we would go with the first one, but that’s just because we are Canon fans. Regardless even though celebrities have become savvier and have learned to go to remote areas and apply diversions to win their privacy and protect their investment (pictures of their kids) as long as there are consumers of celebrity culture there will be stronger more powerful lenses.

Telephoto Lens [Wikipedia]