Which lens for traveling?

[student]

It depends on your style. Some like to shoot ultra wide such as fish eye and 20mm. Some like to shoot at 28, 35mm. All I can suggest is to carry a lens which you are most likely to use. You don't need a fast F2.8 lens for landscape cos you are shooting mostly F16, F22 anyway! Its more useful that you carry a light lens to reduce encumbrance and a zoom, cos when you are shooting on top of a mountain, its not easy to move forward or backward several hundred meters to get that crop or magnification you want. Its not like street photography where usually many, including myself will use a prime and fast lens. Don't forget, when doing landscape, you are already carrying loads of stuff, such as tripod and your hiking gear.

During my backpack trip to India and Scotland, I carried 17-35mm and 50mm F1.4 lens. It covered all my needs. I shoot mainly landscape and street photography.

How do you know which lens you'll like or use before even going for the trip? Treat Singapore like the place you are going to. Go around and shoot and see which lens you end up using most of the time to shoot the type of pictures you are likely to shoot when you are there. Don't end up carrying whole load of equipment which you find superfluous, but worse still, take away the joy of the trip! You are going there to have fun and soak in the sights, not to be a mule and cracking your brains trying to change from 1 lens to another.

Most sensible advice!

Get your priorities right.

What is this trip about? Professional needing to get the shot? Or enjoying the holiday?

For me, my 14-55 mm lens on the E1 takes care of 95% of my potential shots. I will just ignore those supermacro images and those far, far away images.

 

[hASHbrown_kopitiam]

Frm recent long trip,i've been using my 18-55mm 95% of the time. Then the 5% is using 55-200 to shoot the moon.

bring lesser if u wan to travel light n having long journeys.

 

[roadrunner_552]

For me, i only bring my sigma 18-50 f2.8 for oversea trips.

 

[fireframe]

Frm recent long trip,i've been using my 18-55mm 95% of the time. Then the 5% is using 55-200 to shoot the moon.

bring lesser if u wan to travel light n having long journeys.

You didn't mention your aperture range on those lenses. Perhaps an 18-200mm is available such that you didn't even have to switch lenses.

 

[fireframe]

For me, i only bring my sigma 18-50 f2.8 for oversea trips.

On a 1.6x cropped-sensor camera, that would give you roughly 28-80mm, which is your typical P&S range. Makes good sense.

 

[hASHbrown_kopitiam]

You didn't mention your aperture range on those lenses. Perhaps an 18-200mm is available such that you didn't even have to switch lenses.

Heh heh.... only F3.5 at 18mm.... if got $$, i will get a 18-200 along....

 

[fireframe]

Heh heh.... only F3.5 at 18mm.... if got $$, i will get a 18-200 along....

The Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 DC is not that expensive. It's a good one-piece travel lens.

 

[hASHbrown_kopitiam]

The Sigma 18-200mm f3.5-5.6 DC is not that expensive. It's a good one-piece travel lens.

Ya... cheap, but dunno y got a doubting feel bout it's quality. Will consider.... 18-200VR is wat i hv in mind...

 

[Blu-By-U]

Backpacking...as in really backpacking or just touring? A few thing to think about is security. Would you want to worry about the camera as well as your personnel belongings?

Also power/ juice for the camera. How many batteries will you need? Is there a place to charge the batteries? If it's cities, then not a problem. If it's the outback??

Then there is the problem of backing up the shots..ie how many memory cards are you going to bring along? A laptop is definitely out of the question. It adds weight if you are keeping that to the minimum. So a portable device, that still needs juice.

So it really depends on where you are going and what do you intend to shoot.

For me, if a real backpacking to the outskirts of civilization, then a simple P&S with AA batteries. If possible, weatherproof and fantastic zoom.

Memory cards, the most common ones, SD or MMC, forget the hassle of a backup device (be it Laptop or any portable HDD) don't need the extra weight.

If touring, then anything. Power/juice would not be a problem. Just remember to bring an adapter. I was in china a long time back and was stuck without a charger Had to use the hotel bathroom's shaver's 240V to charge my phone. but now a days, most of the hotel rooms have the standard 2 pins. Australia also have a different plug.

my 2 cts only.

 

[dan_1337]

looks like i'll be travelling with just two lenses (friend didn't end up buying the 16-35L).they'll just be the two i own right now - 24-70 f2.8L and the 30mm f1.4. i think that they're all i really need as i don't think that stopping and changing lenses is something i'd wanna do too often either.

these are the other things i thought about while buying my kit:

i "upgraded" my body from a 350D to 30D as it's just SO MUCH MORE comfortable holding onto for long periods with a 980 gram lens stuck to it. it also feels more solid and the 1/3 stop ISO increments gives more flexibility - especially in low light conditions when you don't want to blow the ISO out to 1600.

i think one of the biggest things to think about when travelling is storage space and power (like Blu-By-U said above). i only have a 1GB SanDisk Ultra III card and will be carrying another 50GB of storage in the form of two laptop hard drives to back up my pictures. also have 3 camera batteries and 8 rechargeable AA batteries for the flash (if it even gets used). the last thing you want is to be worrying about what pictures u have to delete to conserve space and like what was said in the post before, whether you'll have enough power to last for x amount of days without power points.

the bag i carry:
well, i firstly bought a backpack. then i took it back and swapped it for a messenger bag (crumpler one) with a bucket inside for my camera. i did this for one main reason with a few small and insignificant reasons which won't be listed:

1. the backpack was too slow and cumbersome to swing my camera into and take out of each time i want to use it or put it away

this was especially important to me as i didn't want to carry $4000 of camera in my hands 100% of the time, especially in unsafer areas and wanted to be able to quickly and conspicuously put it into a non-camera looking bag. with a backpack i think i would have had to slow down or stop to take my bag off, unzip and put my camera inside. takes too long - the ah beng will have more time to scope u out and will probably follow u until he can hit u on the head and take it away.

 

[westwest1]

It depends on your style. Some like to shoot ultra wide such as fish eye and 20mm. Some like to shoot at 28, 35mm. All I can suggest is to carry a lens which you are most likely to use. You don't need a fast F2.8 lens for landscape cos you are shooting mostly F16, F22 anyway! Its more useful that you carry a light lens to reduce encumbrance and a zoom, cos when you are shooting on top of a mountain, its not easy to move forward or backward several hundred meters to get that crop or magnification you want. Its not like street photography where usually many, including myself will use a prime and fast lens. Don't forget, when doing landscape, you are already carrying loads of stuff, such as tripod and your hiking gear.

During my backpack trip to India and Scotland, I carried 17-35mm and 50mm F1.4 lens. It covered all my needs. I shoot mainly landscape and street photography.

How do you know which lens you'll like or use before even going for the trip? Treat Singapore like the place you are going to. Go around and shoot and see which lens you end up using most of the time to shoot the type of pictures you are likely to shoot when you are there. Don't end up carrying whole load of equipment which you find superfluous, but worse still, take away the joy of the trip! You are going there to have fun and soak in the sights, not to be a mule and cracking your brains trying to change from 1 lens to another.

thats the thing...even we tell him what lens he can use...will he know how to use it???

 

[jeremyspk]

Using a sigma 12-24mm for my canon system. pretty satified with it, you can consider..
Here is any image taken by the nikon one which i also own.. its great as its a full frame lens.
note tt cos of crop factor, the image u see here is 18mm 35mm film equivalent. I used my canon mount piece on 5D and viola.. full frame 12mm

NICE!!!
Have been wanting to get a wide angle..but canon wide angle very EX ley

I'm going AUST, and should be bringing my 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 and 50mm F1.8
Still considering whether i should bring my kit lens 18-55mm along :think: