Lens Recommendation-landscape and fast

<p>I have a Eos5DMK11 - I want to purchase a fast lens in the wide angle zoom range. I'll be shooting out West and I want to travel with a maximum of 2 lenses. I'm curious to hear recommendations both low budget and higher priced based on user experiences. Thanks so much for your thoughts.<br>

Linda</p>

<p> </p>

<p>The EF 16-35/2.8 L II is the lens for you, Linda. It's the fastest wide angle zoom Canon makes.</p>

<p>The alternative is the equally good but slower 17-40/4 L. For shooting landscapes from a tripod, the slower zoom is perhaps even a little better, and it's much cheaper.</p>

<p>Sorry, double post.</p>

<p>does it really have to be fast? Most landscapes are shot at f/8-16 from a tripod, will f/2.8 really give you an advantage over f/4? You can decide that for yourself and here are your choices, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L or 17-40mm f/4L, the f/4 is about half the price. Also, 70-200mm f/4L IS or non. The f/4 versions of this lens are much lighter that the 2.8's and easier to carry around all day. Also, f/4 is fine for outdoors in most situations. I know you said 2 lenses, but since primes hardly take up any space, I'd get a 50mm prime to bridge the gap. The 24-70 or 24-105mm are great, but I'd want a superwide like the first two I mentioned to get those dramatic sweeping landscapes out west, and I'd also want a telephoto, so sorry 24-XX, but you'd get bumped out of my bag.</p>

<p>Mark snuck in while I was typing. But there you have it, 2 different responses with the same theory.</p>

<p>The EF 16-35mm f/2.8 is your fast, expensive option for the 5D.</p>

<p>There are cheaper options, but not exactly 'cheap' and not at f/2.8. These days with a Mark II, you should be able to get tolerable low light shots at high ISOs if you're willing to use them, even with f/4 lenses.</p>

<p>Thus the 17-40mm is an option too.</p>

<p>Although it's really another sort of fish (but NOT fisheye), the Sigma 12-24mm is another possibility for a 35mm sensor (review on Nikon APS-C at <a href="http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests/310-sigma-af-12-24mm-f45-56-ex-hsm-dg-lab-test-report--review">link</a>).</p>

<p>The no-longer-produced Sigma 15-30mm f/3.5-4.5 is a capable, but not perfect, solution and is still sold widely on eBay (review at <a href="http://www.bythom.com/1530lens.htm">link</a>). I paid about $300 for mine, which is as cheap as it gets, I think.</p>

<p>Why a fast lens for landscapes? Doesn't really compute.</p>

<p>I've got to ask a dumb question. When you say a fast lens what do you think that means?</p>

<p>Sigma 10-20mm great lens</p>

<p>Linda a great affordable two lens solution for travel with the 5d2 is a 17-40 and a 70-200 f4 non-is. About $1400 for both, great IQ, small, light, good focal range. (Add another $300 for top notch UV, polarizer, ND Grad)</p>

<p>Thanks to all of you for responding! I love photo.net's ability to share and reach out. I suppose it really doesn't have to be a fast lens for landscape; I'm looking for maximum flexibility and ability whenever I buy a lens that's why thought about fast. Fast doesn't always equate to "best" in a given situation though. <br>

I'm thinking that the 17-40, lighter & less expensive lens, might fit the bill for me. I want to travel as light as possible.<br>

Linda</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Think about bringing a single reasonably fast prime along for when you need faster than the f/4.0 lenses. I'm a fan of the (amazingly tiny) manual focus Voightlander 40/2.0. Mine is marginally sharper in the center at f/2.0 than my Canon 35/2.0. The 50/1.4 is funky wide open, but reasonably sharp at f/2.0.</p>

 

<p>I frequently go out with 17-40 F4 and the 70-200 F4. Great combination. If you want you can then add a light prime for the gap between the two.</p>

<p>At the low end, the 17-40 & 70-200/4 +tripod</p>

<p>High end, 14/2.8 and 24-105 +tripod</p>

<p>If hiking is involved: 24-105, carbon tripod, or leave tripod behind.</p>

<p>I'm assuming that you need the ultra wide angle large aperture zoom for things other than landscape? Generally, most folks are going to work from a tripod (thus using slower shutter speeds rather than larger apertures), look for best resolution (thus avoiding the larger apertures when possible), and recognize that narrow DOF isn't easy to achieve from an ultra wide.</p>

<p>If you just need a lens for landscape in this focal length range, there is virtually no advantage to getting the 16-35mm f/2.8 II L. Not only does it cost more, but it is also larger and heavier. In addition, it uses a larger and non-standard 82mm filter thread - many of the other L zooms that you might complement it with use a 77mm filter diameter. At the smaller apertures it will not perform any better than the 17-40.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if you need large aperture for other purposes (perhaps doing hand held low light interior photography?) then the 16-35 is a fine lens and can be worth the extra cost, etc. for its abilities in that non-landscape mode.</p>

<p>As to another lens, there are a lot of options - but selecting among them requires you to think a bit about how you shoot and your own preferences. For my part, when I shoot landscape with a full frame body and only two lenses (for example, when I backpack) I often pair the 17-40 with the 24-105mm f/4 L IS. If you really don't need longer focal lengths at all, and especially if you will work from the tripod (as is typical for landscape) you could consider the 24-70mm f/2.8 L. I won't get into the reasons for choosing one over the other, except to say that the major decision factor is not image quality.</p>

<p>If you want longer focal lengths, and they can be tremendously useful for certain types of landscape shooting, one of the 70-200mm lenses can be very useful. I get a lot of use out of my non-IS f/4 70-200mm L, which is an excellent lens optically and is a bit smaller, lighter, and less expensive than the f/2.8 variants. If you go this route and are concerned about the gap between 40mm (or 35mm) and 70mm, one option is to fill it with a 50mm prime.</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>Have a read at The Digital Picture.</p>

<p>another vote for the 17-40 and 70-200. And tripod. Maybe you mis-read Linda, it's the f64 group, not the f6.4 :) If west and places like ocean, mountains, grand canyon, think pan stitching (tripod)</p>

<p>A stray thought: When you're doing landscape work, you're probably doing a lot of hiking. Of course that's great exercise, and your exercise effort can only be improved by lugging around a heavier lens. That's something that would make your physician happy. However, I'm old, my knees are bad, and I realize I would rarely, if ever, shoot a landscape at f/2.8. Therefore I carry around an f/4 zoom.</p>

<p>The 17-40/4 is a lot of bang for the buck.</p>

<p>Thanks again to everyone who responded. I'm going to mull over all the responses before I decide. For now, I'm thinking lighter zooms are my best bet! Happy shooting everyone.<br>

Linda</p>

<p>okay, so people are asking "why a fast lens for landscape?", so I'll ask, "why a zoom lens for landscape?". The only advantage of zoom lenses is that you don't have to change lenses in fast past dynamic situations. Otherwise, they are inferior optically, they are riduculously big, the are ridiculously heavy, they are slow (2.8 is the fastest), they are usually auto focus (certainly not required for landscape) so they aren't built as well as a manual focus lens, and the fastest of the zooms are very expensive, and they promote bad technique (standing and zooming in and out as opposed to thinking about your composition and dof and all that goes with changing the focal length in relation to you and the subject).</p>

<p>Sarah, you said it with more humor than I managed to muster, but I'm with you on choosing the f/4 zooms over the f/2.8 zooms for my own landscape work. I'm all too often (or not often enough, depending on how you look at it) carrying the lenses and camera(s) and tripod on my person, and unless there is a clear benefit to carrying something heavier I'm not going to do it.</p>

<p>My basic kit for landscape-on-foot starts with a 5D2 and the 24-105. I often add, even when backpacking, one additional lens - it is most often the 17-40 f/4. If I carry three lenses, the f/4 70-200 typically joins the other two. I virtually never carry more than that on backpack trips.</p>

<p>On day-hiking shoots I'll carry more stuff, but still only rarely the full kit. (The "full kit" includes two full frame bodies, four zooms, four primes, a very large tripod, various filters and other stuff. It weighs, almost literally or so it seems, a ton.)</p>

<p>Regarding the f/2.8 zooms... They are fine lenses, without a doubt, and they have their place. If you are shooting subjects other than landscape and similar (or if you shoot landscape in an unusual matter) then they can be more versatile. If you are really young and strong and take pain without complaining, they can even be OK on back-country walks. If you work from a car all the time, then why not carry that f/2.8 zoom and those honkin' big tele primes?</p>

<p>Dan</p>

<p>Ty,<br>

zooms are good for landscapes for many reasons. Yes, with landscapes you have more time to change lenses and get better quality, but more primes costs more than one zoom. 20mm +28mm +35mm = more than the 17-40mm in price. This also brings me to my next point; the widest affordable prime is 20mm, the 14mm is not affordable for most people, so to get wider than 20mm a zoom is mandatory.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>okay, so people are asking "why a fast lens for landscape?", so I'll ask, "why a zoom lens for landscape?". </p>

</blockquote>

<p>I'll go you one better, Ty. Why would anyone shoot landscapes without movements? If I had to climb <em>El Capitan</em> I might be content with a 17-40 f/4 as a weight-saving alternative. But given that Canon has amazing, flexible, superbly well-built lenses available like the 17 mm TS-E and the 24 mm TS-E II - hopefully, they'll update the 45 to a II version soon - there's a very real advantage to eschewing the AF/zoom culture, at least at the wide end.</p>

<p>Galen Rowell wrote that he did some of his best work with with a 70-200, so it's not that you CAN'T take good landscape photos with zoom lenses (plenty of people do). Rather, movements offer an exciting creative alternative.</p>

<p>That said, for the OP, I think that the 17-40 f/4 is the right solution. She is VERY wisely thinking about trimming weight and bulk from her camera bag - most people pack too much and live to regret it. The objective to travel lightly should trump most arguments about the philosophy of lens construction.</p>

 

I'm fully with GDM on this one. 5D2 + 17-40L + 24-105L is my "standard" kit. I often throw in my nifty fifty (50 f/1.8) which likely weighs less than my flash :)

<blockquote>

<p>okay, so people are asking "why a fast lens for landscape?", so I'll ask, "why a zoom lens for landscape?". The only advantage of zoom lenses is that you don't have to change lenses in fast past dynamic situations.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>ONLY advantage?</p>

<p>OK, let's say you're hiking along a mountain trail, and there's something off in the distance you want to photograph. Your 28mm lens is too wide, and your 50 is too long. You're kicking yourself that you didn't bring something inbetween, but your bag of a half dozen lenses is already pretty heavy. However, it's no problem. You just take off your jacket so you can spread your wings, and you take flight. Unfortunately I don't have wings, so I have to use a zoom.</p>

<p>Or let's say you see a bear on your hike. Wildlife photography sometimes goes hand-in-hand with landscape photography. So to frame up the bear, you do "sneaker zooming." Unfortunately this is a bit more conspicuous than zooming with a zoom lens. The bear feels threatened and eats you for an early evening appetizer, murmering with a smile, "Golden hour, indeed!" As he wipes your blood from his lips with your microfiber cloth, he contemplates the perfection of his meal being delivered with napkins included. He spends the next day burning ants with all of your fast primes, thinking "What great Happy Meal toys!"</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Otherwise, they are inferior optically, they are riduculously big, the are ridiculously heavy, they are slow (2.8 is the fastest), they are usually auto focus (certainly not required for landscape) so they aren't built as well as a manual focus lens, and the fastest of the zooms are very expensive, and they promote bad technique (standing and zooming in and out as opposed to thinking about your composition and dof and all that goes with changing the focal length in relation to you and the subject).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Big, heavy, expensive, and slow? Yes. I'll grant you that. Gee, you might wonder why so many people buy them. It must be a laziness thing -- perhaps inability to sneaker-zoom due to morbid obesity. I wonder whether zooms are more commonly used in parts of the world where obesity is more commonplace.</p>

<p>Inferior build? Why would you say that? You're not talking about the optics here. You're talking about all the mechanicals. So do the folks from Canon and Nikon factories say, "Better loosen up on the machining tolerances of that mounting ring, Yoshiko! Remember, it's a zoom, not a prime! You wouldn't want those fat American zoomers to get all uppity about the build of their lenses, now, would you?"</p>

<p>And finally, you say they're bad for composition?! Really?! All this time I thought that was the biggest benefit of a zoom over a prime! I mean, when trying to frame up an image to have a very specific relationship between foreground and background size. Maybe 50 is too short and 85 is too long. Let's say you need a 67mm focal length to bring that background into the precise compositional relationship you desire. Do you have a 67mm lens? I do.</p>

<p>And is it all just laziness, either mentally or physically? No. When I'm doing my zoomyzoom stuff, there's a lot of sneaker involvement too. It's a geometric thing. There's sneaker zooming to the right vantage, lens zooming to frame, fine tuning of sneaker zooming, fine tuning of lens zooming, etc. With a prime, I'd simply sneaker-zoom to the best location to frame up the subject and learn to be content with the background however it is. You can claim that's a higher intellectual sort of thing, but I think you've simply sacrificed a couple of variables for added sharpness that you won't even see if you're not using a tripod (and probably not even then).</p>

<p>Only a narrow or uninformed photographer would say that a zoom is always better than a prime or a prime better than a zoom. They both have their places, and the better photographers usually own and use both.</p>