I carry a canon 5D mk II. Not light but tough and takes awesome shots. As for glass. On a light trip i take my trusty canon 50mm f 1.4. An awesome lens. And I love the canon 85mm f1.8 I know thoses two are very close and I don’t have much range, but I live and shoot around tokyo, don’t really find I need much more. Not many they I think give you awesome choice around a city. (75% @50mm rest at 85mm guess I could live with out it but it is not that heavy)

If I am to go on a bit more of a dedicated photographic walk, I will haul around the canon 70-200f2.8 (weight a ton) and the 16-35mmf2.8L and the trusty 50mm with those 3 altogether I am lugging around half of the Sahara desert’s worth of sand in the amount of glass. But with that set up apart from birds 3km away you can shoot just about anything. And get very good clear shots. My next step will be to up grade my 50 and the 85 to the faster L versions. But that will cost several 1000′s of £ (well ¥ as I am living in Japan)

On another note. One of the biggest problems with getting high quality images (ignoring artist value) is camera shake! If you are hand holding a pro lens or tripod shooting a kit lens I would wager the tripod makes the biggest difference. Hence on a semi involved walk, a gorilla dslr pod is a great little item to have.

Any comment?

Sorry for typos posted from an iPhone on the train.

Gerry

The point of this article, as most of the readers have well understood, is how to settle on a small and light travel kit. A good friend has a D700, an anstonishing camera by any standards, but I wouldn’t take it on a hike through the mountains. The same applies to the 24-70mm lens he has on it. He’s a pro shooter and works mainly in a studio or on fixed locations. Different gear for different needs. That was the point.

Appreciate the support for the piece.
Kim

I for one would like to see an article about that.

Im a bag carrier and perfectly happy to carry 3-5 lenses with me but I also find I normally use only one or two on any given day because the subject I am shooting lends itself to those lenses. Im just not organized enough to know what those two are going to be most of the time!

Im also a fan of kit lenses because of their size, weight and range. Between the “standard” 18-55 and 50-200, you can safely assume you will be able to get a shot. And of course they are either inexpensive or “free” as part of the kit.

All that said, I have fallen in love with my Tamron SP AF 17-50mm XR f/2.8 Di II LD. Sharp, fast and not excessively heavy. Unlike my Pentax kit lens, it is sharp across the full zoom range and there is no fall off wide open. I would be hard pressed to find real differences between the two at 35mm and f/8 but then I might as well get an even smaller prime. It is good enough to relegate my Pentax FA50 f/1.4 to extreme low light and extreme low weight situations. I love my FA50 but below f/2 the sharpness falls off a cliff.

If weight and weather are a concern, I fall back on my two kit lenses. They are feather light and do the job dawn to dusk. If I know I am going to be indoors or in low light, I reach for my Tamron. My next non-prime is going to be the Tamron 28-70mm f/2.8. I think for “general” or “dont know what I will be shooting” times, those two will cover quite nicely. I love the Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 but I dont do enough at that range to justify the size and weight. I have thought about the Tamron 18-250mm but for now I am willing to give away 50mm for the weight of my DA 50-200mm.

I do not agree with the author about only pros needing fast lenses. My FA50 extended my “shooting day” and my Tamron has removed the “zoom penalty” from my thinking. Does fast glass give me better composition? No, of course not. But it lets me look at subjects I would have passed on and lets me shoot at lower ISO longer and in places where a tripod is not an option. Fast glass even gives more flexibility and options with flashes and supplemental lighting. That expands my creative options.

All things considered, “fast” lenses are pretty reasonable for most people who have already shelled out the money for a DSLR. Yup, starving students and people with unsympathetic spouses will disagree but in relative terms, fast zooms are a bargain right now. When I started with my K1000 in the 70s a zoom lens was out of the question for anyone not working for NatGeo and a fast zoom was in the price range of military hardware. Today a fast zoom cost about the same as a “just above low budget” body. If I could have gotten a fast zoom for $125, I would have jumped for joy.

The Nikon kit lens are benchmarks, and having been persuaded to use my 55-200 at 100mm for a portrait class found it was the one lens I like to use the most – its so sharp and the VR really makes low light stuff work, like night shots without tripods but maybe rested on a wall.

Since I still use a D40 I havethe non vr kit 18-55 and thats hard to beat too though not quite as nice as the other kit lens.

Then I have a Tokina 11-16 f2.8 wide angle – no problems manually focusing that on the D40 and stunning results.

These are my use all the time glass with the big Tokina left at home sometimes!

Somewhere in the house is a G 70-300, largely useless without tripod at 300mm – good job I bought it on ebay, i use the 55-200 vr instead.

I bought the new f1.8 35mm but yes its no sharper than the 18-55mm kit and has been back twice to Nikon with that complaint and they say is within manufacturing tolerance – it sure isn’t a sharp prime in my view. Fast and autofocus but if I had paid less for the VR 18-55 I’d have been happier! Mostly left at home though light.

A mate sold me his rarely sued 50mm f1.8, very sharp but manual focus on a D40 and hard/fiddly to focus manually (short turning cycle). Works well with extension tubes (Kenko) but autofocus would be useful or greater turning range. Light weight rarely sued though, 55-200 same range and use din its p[alce as it focuses fairly close in (flowers etc).

So I agree, for light weight and easier about anywhere use the D40 and its similar sized mates with a good lens covering 18-200 or in my case 2 (I hear from a fellow Nikon shooter that his Nikon 18-200VR not only burnt out when he was on holiday, Nikon were churlish about repair or replace as well as the fact it is not as sharp as the 2 kit lens are)! Like the writer I hanker after other lenses but don’t know why, I am happy with what I have, especially as Nikon insist on reserving focusing motors for their more expensive and heavier cameras, the D5000 lacks this even, and my Canon super zoom produces stunning results as a super zoom in all but the most difficult focusing situations or increases noise when the light dims. I seriously wonder whether i will up grade to a better DSLR if by the time I have worn out the D40′s (I have 2), Canon have released a superzoom with prism viewfinder and a larger sensor!

On the other hand maybe I’ll buy a Pentax K7 or successor as I found it small light and very portable and it does not seem to have limitations on focusing motors and VR or no VR! My experience with the new Nikon 35mm has been a negative and I am much less likely to be brand loyal as a result of this overpriced and poor quality prime! The modern marketing children should go back to school and learn what the rest of us know, if its not better don’t put it out there!