…field of depth…

Since this is our first Behind the lens post, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss lenses, specifically what lenses I recommend for travel. For examples I will be using pictures from our last post on Korea. You can see the full gallery here. Sorry the post ended up so lengthy, but think of it as a primer to help you understand future Behind the lens posts. It’s just a beginners guide but buckle up, shift into first gear and lets roll.

In case you are one to just scroll to the bottom and get to the literal bottom line, what lens should I buy, don’t bother. That would be like me picking up a phone book and randomly dialing a number and on answering telling the person, “Hey, I know what the best car is for you. Let me give you the make and model.” There is no “best” car, only rides that fill different buyers needs. Some need trucks, some need 10 passenger vans. But… I can tell you what cars are good for different reasons. Since we are only talking travel lenses here, that makes things more manageable, but only slightly.

As you can see from this photo courtesy of nikonusa.com, choosing a lens is not easy. Let’s try to narrow the choices down.

1. A good traveling lens can’t be a one trickster. Unless you want to look like you’re on your way to the summit of K2 with a giant gear bag, more than just a couple lenses isn’t a good option.
2. For traveling, our lens must be light. No sense in having a bazooka sized lens if by the time you pull it from your bag the subject is gone or scared you are about to fire a projectile in their direction.
3. We are all on a budget, and since travel photos don’t usually pay the bills, I’m making this a requirement as well.

Focal Length: There are two major factors in understanding what a lens can do. The first is focal length, or how much zoom power (or widening power) you have. The lenses focal length determines what angle of view your camera will see. When it comes to focal lengths, the smaller the millimeter (mm) number, the wider the lens. If you had a lens that was 20mm, you would have what is considered an ultra-wide lens. If on the other hand you had a lens that was 200mm, you would have a decent zoom lens. The more of this range that your lens can cover, the easier it will be to get your shots. We’ll talk more on this later.

Aperture: The aperture determines the amount of light your camera can suck in (or block out). If your using a homemade pinhole camera for example, the size of your aperture is the size of the hole you poked in the Quaker oats container. If your still confused, think of your eyeball. In a dark room your iris opens up as wide as possible to let in all the available light. Step out side and it shrinks to the size of a BB. Make sense? The size of the opening in a lens is measured in “stops”, with the letter “f” preceding. Without getting too technical, the SMALLER the number, the LARGER the hole. (Opposite I know, but hey, if it was too easy what would photographers like me blog about.)

So why do we care so much about the aperture? Two reasons: First, if you are shooting the rose window inside the Notre Dame cathedral, its gonna be dark in there. If you have a lens with a small opening, unless you have the ability to freeze every muscle in your body (including your heart) as you hold down the shutter for 10 seconds, you are gonna get a jittery, blurry picture. Yes, even your heart pulse is gonna register with an exposure that long. The solution is to get a lens that can open up really wide and let in lots of light in a shorter period of time.

“Ahh… I get it.”, your saying. “You only need to think about the aperture for low light situations!” Wrong-O! Let’s say you’re touring Europe on a nice sunny day and you happen on to the finish line of the Tour ‘de France. You pull out your camera and snap a picture of the breakaway speeding across the finish line. Excited, you look at your picture only to find a blurry yellow streak across the frame. What the?? Yup, Aperture problem. You had the opening set too small, and in order to get enough light for a good picture, the shutter had to stay open for a longer time…maybe 1/4 a second. Doesn’t seem like a long time, but for a race it’s an eternity. Hence, the term professional photographers use, “fast glass”, was born. The glass itself isn’t faster, it’s just glass. It’s the…. that’s right, aperture. Having a fast lens (one with large aperture) lets you shoot in both low light conditions as well as conditions that require a fast shutter speed (bike race). Phew!

So taken everything we’ve learned, can you figure out what the ideal travel lens would be? Try a 20mm-200mm f1.4 lens. Nice! We’ve got the best of everything. Alas, if only that lens existed.

Ok, I promised some brass tacks & gritty details on actually choosing a lens so be patient. First, to quiet all those gear-heads that swear you need as many lenses as you do options at a chinese buffet, let me shock you. Every picture taken in my last travel entry on Korea was done with a single lens. Do I recommend that? No, not necessarily, but remember these were not paying gigs and I only brought the camera as a side to help myself remember what I saw. In addition, this is a beginners intro to travel photography, and if I were on assignment for travel magazine, this article would have very different recommendations.

So where did we leave off? We have established in an ideal world the best all round travel lens would be a 20-200mm f1.4 lens. It has great focal range, letting us back out wide for landscape and scenery shots, and zoom in close on interesting details and human subjects. Problem is, that lens does not exist. There isn’t a perfect, solve-every-problem lens, and even if there were, I’m sure it would be beyond most of our budgets. What we need to do is get as close to that one dreamy lens as possible in just a few lenses with out breaking the bank.

Bottom Line: In order to cover most situations, a good travel kit includes one multi-purpose standard zoom lens AND one fixed focal length prime lens with a large aperture. If you’d like to learn more on the subject, I recommend this article, but I’ll give you the drive through summary. A prime lens is a lens that doesn’t “zoom”, it’s got minimal glass elements in its design, and often a huge aperture. Because of this, the results just can’t be touched. If it were a pony, it would definitely be a one-trickster, but the trick would be a double backflip with a twist.

What do I mean by multi-purpose zoom? Going back to our original needs, this would be a lens that covers close to our desired range of 20-200mm. Currently a popular lens in this one size fits all category is the 18-200mm and it’s being made by the big players Nikon, Sigma or Tamron. This lens is a feat of engineering! You can go from super wide to a close up zoom with a quick twist of the wrist. There are some drawbacks that you need to be aware of however. First, in order to cram all that into a small package, they had to strip us of the ability to lock down the aperture where we want it. As you change focal lengths, the aperture shrinks or grows, a variable aperture. The camera is smart enough to know that when you set it to an aperture larger than it can handle, it will give you one as large as possible. But a variable aperture means low-light photography and high speed shutter shots aren’t going to be easy.

Enter the back-flipping pony. A prime lens also gets 5 stars on compactness. Many of them can literally slide into your front pocket. Sure you can’t go from shooting a wide interior of your hotel room, to a close-up of your nieces smile, but the ability to shoot extremely sharp photo’s in almost any situation makes up for where it lacks. If the “no twisty zoomy” action scares you, learn to move your feet around and position your body before taking the picture. Also, with this low light lens try turning off the flash and experiment with some natural lighting. This lens will do you good!

With out going into to much more, hopefully I’ve sold you on the benefits of carrying at least two lenses: a zoom lens, and a good prime lens. You essentially know enough to slap down that plastic at your local cracker store, or at least know enough now to ask the salesman some intelligent questions. But personally, I’m always left wanting when I read an article that stops just short of what the author actually recommends or uses and walks out of the room just before telling us where the hidden treasure is buried. So feel free to disagree with my personal picks but the rest of this article is for those who feel similarly.

I shoot Nikon, so I can only speak to what I’ve tested myself. Sorry Cannon fans. For Nikon DX format cameras, I love the 18-200mm VR lens. It’s the lens I mentioned above in which I used on all the photos featured in our Korean gallery. If you don’t plan on making poster sized prints, and can handle a touch of softness, this lens is great and when traveling you’ll need a good reason to take it off your camera body. If you prefer better images with less range, Nikons 16-85mm is a good choice. The pictures tend to be a little more crisp but without the ability to zoom in as far. Same story with the newer FX format. If you don’t mind the softness, the 24-120mm lens is a decent choice. If you prefer crisper images and can live without the extra reach, the 24-85mm would be the best choice.

For prime lenses, it’s hard to beat the 50mm 1.8 for only $99 bucks. Triple the price and you can get the 50mm 1.4 which lets in roughly double the amount of light. On full frame bodies, the focal length of these two lenses are not too wide and not too narrow, but just right. With the crop factor on DX cameras however you may find this lens’s angle of view a tad to narrow, especially if you tend to shoot more scenery and not the people around you. In this case I would go with either a 28mm or 35mm lens. Try and get one that opens up to at least a f/2.8. I’ve broken it down for you below. Good luck and happy travels. 

Nikon DX body:

• 18-200mm VR
• 35mm f/2.0D or the wider 28mm f/2.8D

Nikon FX body:

• 24-120mm VR
• 50mm f/1.8D or the wider 35mm f/2.0D

Ultimate compact 3 lens travel kit:

• 18-200mm VR (DX) or 24-120mm VR (FX)
• 28mm f/2.8D
• 85mm f/1.8D