Travel photography lenses · Lenses in Travel photography
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Lenses in Travel photography
Lenses in Travel photography
For professional and prosumer cameras with interchangeable lenses, the choice of lenses to bring along becomes crucial. Many come with a standard kit lens that covers the range from wide-angle to short-telephoto. For a high-end digital SLR this might be in the range of 18-70mm; for a 35mm SLR 28-100mm would be equivalent. (The magnification strength of lenses on digital SLRs varies from that of 35mm film, and even from camera to camera.) However, due to their moving parts zooms are more prone to breaking, and a sturdy and fast 50mm prime lens is a popular (and compact) backup.
Often the kit lenses are designed more for low cost than high quality; in particular they are generally quite slow. Professionals tend to buy either "prime" fixed focal length lenses or much more expensive high-end zooms.
If you intend to photograph far-away objects ? typical examples include going on safari or birdwatching ? you will also need a strong telephoto lens. If space is at a premium, you may be tempted to ditch the kit lens and instead go for a superzoom lens that covers the full range from wide-angle to to 200 or even 300mm; however, picture quality on these will suffer noticeably and you'll be stuck using a physically big lens all the time. A smaller-range 75-200mm or a fixed-focal length telephoto will offer better quality.
At the other end of the scale, if you expect to take a fair amount of panoramic landscapes or want to be able to fit a busy city square into the frame in close quarters, supplementing a normal-to-tele zoom with a strong wide-angle lens (e.g. 24mm or less for 35mm film) might be useful.
People with several interchangeable lenses sometimes carry two or more bodies with different film, or even a digital and a film body. A camera body that uses film can be an advantage for wide-angle lenses, because the larger format widens the angle that lens captures. Put a lens from a film camera on most digital bodies and the angle of view decreases; a 24mm lens on a digital camera might have the limited angle of view of a 38mm lens on a film SLR. Why not load some film into another body and use the lens as real wide-angle optics? This may give pictures that your digital rig can't capture.
If you are going on a safari for two weeks, you might consider renting a lens. Lens rental can cost about 10% the cost of the lens for a 2 week rental, and you can always have the right lens for your style of trip.
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Travel photography Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.