THE TRAVELING PHOTOGRAPHER: Part 3
decisions, decisions, decisions
Melo Reflections #6, a "shifted" panorama. Nikon D700 + 24mm PC-E
Lac de Melo, Corsica, France
For the photographer who travels, the bottom line, regardless of how or where you choose to travel, is what gear to take and what to leave behind. It will usually be a trade-off (unless you have a porter to lug it all), but with today’s high quality zoom lenses the compromises needed are getting less of a sacrifice than ever before. Lens choice is dependent upon, amongst other things, subject matter or what interests you, budget (unless you already own a lens for every occasion) and the physical size and weight you’re prepared to carry. These requirements can be both complimentary and somewhat contradictory to one another on occasions, especially size, weight and cost factors versus quality and fast apertures, but generally smaller and lighter is easier to live with for the quality and f-stop loss. If you’re into birds or wildlife you will likely have the long lenses and all the relevant gear, but if you are doing an African safari as a one-off experience you will want to consider long zooms on DX format and maybe include a wideangle for the landscape. I walk a great deal when travelling and consequently lean towards smaller and lighter equipment that is versatile (alright, maybe not so small and light but relative to image quality it is for me!). I have always taken a tripod when travelling and find it indispensable for many situations. A lightweight travel tripod can weighs as little as 1.8kg (4lbs) including a RRS panorama head and fold down to just 520mm (20.5”) with the ballhead attached and extend to 1.25m (49”) without the center column. This is pretty good for such a small, lightweight tripod but is of course, less stable than my larger and heavier regular tripod(s) - but I wouldn’t have wanted to carry one of them on a 5 day walk at altitudes of 3000m - 5000m+ (10 000ft - 16 400ft+) or even on a day walk for that matter. Because I do so much walking with my equipment, I have a compact and relatively lightweight kit which doesn’t pose any major problems at airport check-ins as hand luggage, but if you decide to take large and heavy gear this may become a concern for you. Find out the restrictions your chosen airline imposes (basically 550 x 350 x 230mm (22” x 14” x 9”) and 7kg (15.4lbs) at the time of writing) before arriving at the check-in counter unless you want to have valuable photographic equipment put in the main cargo hold.
Southern Caracara
Nikon D300 + Sigma 100-300mm @ 300mm + 1.4x TC
Southern Patagonia, Chile
I am not going to give an item by item list of recommended things to take as this is entirely a personal choice and dependent upon where you intend to go, and your chosen mode of travel. However, multipurpose equipment is more useful than a more specialized piece of kit. Depending on what you intend to do with your photographs on your return, you may be satisfied with a smaller sensor camera with fixed zoom range but personally, I can’t go without the versatlity of interchangeable lenses. For a dSLR a single wide range zoom such as a DX 18-200 may be all that some photographers need for most situations (unless architecture is of particular interest to you) while two or three zooms can cover a wider range, usually with better quality results but at the cost of greater weight and bulk. After changing from DX to FX format my choice of equipment changed too - due partly to the availability of a different range of lenses and their characteristics and partly to my changing attitudes to photography - and life. With DX I had settled on a kit comprising a dSLR with 10-20, 18-50 f2.8 and 50-150 f2.8 lenses that would cover most situations in a relatively compact and lightweight package (approx. 2.6kg/5.7lbs) - and has even included a 100-300 f4 + 1.4x TC on occasions (+1.7kg/3.8lbs!). On changing to FX the 14-24 f2.8, 24-70 2.8 and 70-200 f2.8 equivalent lenses with a DX body, are significantly larger and weigh in at a whopping 4.4kg/9.7lbs - and this is without tripod/ballhead, storage viewer and miscellaneous accessories. I don’t need to mention that trying to get the 300 f4 + 1.4x TC equivalent in FX for lightweight travel is an oxymoron.
Bowing Out. Nikon D300 + Sigma 10-20mm @ 10mm
Estancia San Grgorio, Chile
In parallel to my changing ideas and equipment I have arrived at an FX kit through a process of evaluation of a range of my images in the following way: firstly, by examining the EXIF data and noting focal lengths used for different subject matter I was able to determine what lenses and focal lengths I used the most and weight the results using successful images as a benchmark. Then by grouping these focal lengths (as FX equivalents) under standards (ie. 27-31mm would be grouped as 28mm, whereas 40-60mm would get broadly classified as 50mm “normal”) I could reduce the data to a handful of lens choices. I also noted the usage of extremes in zoom range, so with the 10-20 I would almost invariably have the lens set to 10mm, while with the 18-50 I would often be using 18mm (and would have possibly gone wider if I had changed to the 10-20) but also intermediate focal lengths around the 24-35 range, and with the 50-150 I would use a wide range of focal lengths over the entire range as precise cropping for details is important. By including sizes and weights of various possible lens combinations into my considerations I decided to try a kit comprising a compact FX body, 24 PC, 50 f1.8 (+ 12mm extension tube) and 70-300 lenses is perhaps even more versatile and still only tips the scales at 2.7kg/5.9lbs. Because I use ultrawide to wide angle lenses almost exclusively for landscape, a tilt/shift lens has several advantages; obviously it is of the highest quality with the ability to control depth of field and perspective. Manual focus is no disadvantage for landscape work and because you usually have plenty of time the lens can be used (with a tripod) to create stitched images just by shifting up/down or left/right to create a variety of wideangle formats with a large increase in megapixels. So the 24 PC lens can to some extent replace the 14-24mm with greatly increased resolution (from stitching), can control perspective and DOF, has a 77mm filter thread, weighs less than the zoom while the disadvantages only include manual focus, slightly smaller maximum aperture and being slower to set up and use - none of which are generally an issue with landscape photography. One other issue to consider when stitching, however, is the difficulty with moving subjects (including waterfalls, seascapes, fast moving clouds etc) but some of these can be minimized with practiced technique and I consider the pros to easily outweigh the cons. The 70-300 focal lengths cover most detail shots (and the occasional wildlife grab) with very good quality and includes VR for walk-around photography as well, while the very small addition of the 50 f1.8 helps with in-between focal length shots and for hand-held interior and low light usage, and along with an extension tube allows for some macro work. After using this combination for over a month in Corsica I was very satisfied with the results and only very occasionally wished for something I didn’t have, but I would still like to reduce the size and weight! So that’s one possible travel kit (excluding camera bag - see part 4) - what will your’s be?
Church by Lensbaby
Port Douglas, Queensland, Australia
Another alternative setup which I am considering for the ultimate in portability is a Micro Four Thirds system (the digital equivalent of a 35mm rangefinder system) which, with a kit comprising an ultrawide 7-14mm zoom, 20mm f1.7 pancake, 45mm macro and 45-200mm zoom, offers quality on par with an APS sensor, includes video capability and at a total weight under 1.5kg (3.3lbs) takes up a third to half the space of a dSLR! This wouldn’t be ideal for landscapes, but with FX focal length equivalents from 14mm to 400mm, for general travel photography the benefits seem to far outweigh any disavantages. Next trip maybe...