Follow the Light / Photography Blog

The Travel or Walkaround Lens

6/15/2014

Nikon Lens

The travel or walkaround lens has become more of a subject lately in my photography circle of friends. I usually have at least four lenses with me at all times to cover all the focal ranges I may need. How many times do you frame a scene and then realize you need your 24 to 85mm and you have on your 16-35mm lens. It can be a challenge to change a lens in the field, especially if you are a landscape or outdoor shooter. It may be sitting in your bag and the location is not real convenient or the light is rapidly changing. You expose your camera sensor and other interior parts to all kinds of dust and environmental elements with the lens off outdoors. So wouldn't a all in one lens ( 28-300mm ) be a real convenient option?

Usually in photography when you go for a all in one solution your image quality (IQ) will suffer. The lenses I have are all well researched and the IQ is tack sharp if the operator (me) does his job correctly. Do I want to give up a bit of IQ for convenience? Well in some instances I'm beginning to think maybe so.

Being a Nikon shooter, the Nikon 28-300mm FX lens with VR seems to be a great lens and the IQ is quite good. Tamron also makes a similar lens with image stabilization for about half the price, but also seems to have decent IQ. The abundant reviews of these two lenses show many positives to consider. I have seen tons of images shot with these lenses and unless you are going to make a very large print, I'm not sure the difference will be noticeable to most viewers of your photographs.

So this is my recent thinking to possibily reduce the hassle and add the convenience of not changing lenses in certain situations. I don't think I will ever give up my current lineup, but add it to the arsenal. I can envision many times where this all in one lens will do the job nicely. It's also fun to buy a new lens. Any thoughts? Until next time...

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Which Photography Lens to choose and Why?

6/8/2014

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Nikon Trilogy Lenses

Which photographic lens is the right one you may wonder. Why choose one over the other? This is an important question, and to get the image you are looking for requires you to know the answer. With modern digital camera sensors becoming more and more sensitive and dynamic the quality of the lens is equally important to achieving excellent quality results. So let's take a look at the different classifications of lenses and their specific uses.

Lenses are divided into five categories based on focal length:

Ultra Wide-Angle
Ranging from 4mm to 20mm, these lenses have extremely large fields of view. Fisheye lenses fall into this category. Such a stretched perspective can often cause bending and distortion towards the edges of the frame. This type of lens will give you a very interesting close / far relationship to your images.
Wide-Angle
Anything between 21mm and 35mm is a standard wide angle lens, and are the most common focal lengths. They are versatile and allow pictures to be taken close up to a subject while minimizing distortion and still including the background.
Normal
50mm is known as a “normal” focal length because it sees with roughly the same perspective as the human eye. However, this category can include lenses ranging between 35mm and 60mm, which give a very realistic look.
Telephoto
At around 75mm we start to get into “long” lenses – ones that zoom quite far, enabling you to shoot your subject from a distance. They are better for isolating details of a scene, rather than fitting a lot into the frame. Anything up to 150mm is considered a standard telephoto lens.
Super Telephoto
Any lens over 150mm is a super telephoto – including extreme telephotos which exceed 400mm. These are used for isolating small details at a great distance; they are usually used for photographing wildlife, sporting events, but can also be utilized to make very unique landscape images. This type of lens is the largest and heaviest of all lens types.

Prime vs. Zoom Lenses

Regardless of focal length there are two catagories of lenses, prime and zoom. Zoom lenses have a variable focal length and can zoom in for closer and out for wider views.
Prime lenses have a fixed focal length and you must move to change your image perspective. They are a much simplier design and because of this they tend to be sharper and sometimes less expensive than zoom lenses. Many photographers tend to favor prime lenses for their added sharpness.

The proper lens choice and quality of that lens will have a much greater impact on your images than the camera body itself. It is far better to purchase high quality lenses as you can afford to rather than have a bunch of low quality lenses that were inexpensive to purchase. High quality lenses also retain much greater resale value and the" iconic" lenses are always in great demand on the used market. There are several great lens manufacturers, so do your research and go with a reputable company that stands behind their product. Nikon as an example will warranty their lenses for five years from the date of purchase. They are complicated instruments and that warranty is great piece of mind.

Choose your lenses wisely and you will be rewarded with high quality images that will make you proud of your work! Until next time may the best of light follow you...

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Author

I have always been interested in photography and worked in 35mm film medium as a start over 30 years ago. Since life has allowed me to have more time lately, my photography passion has taken on a new meaning in my life. I enjoy reading, studying, and practicing my craft as often as possible. I have been fortunate to have been on workshops with some of the best modern day landscape photographers. I love the digital world for it's many abilities to provide outstanding quality images. Did I say I love,love,love landscape photography. We have such a beautiful and amazing world, it is a joy to capture it in it's best presentations. I hope you enjoy the blog and post comments so that we can all learn together!

The Travel or Walkaround Lens

Which Photography Lens to choose and Why?

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