Switzerland--Gears to take

We will be visiting Switzerland for 9 days starting April 1st. This is a once in a lifetime trip and we are looking forward to take some good pictures ( only reason to visit actually)

I need help with gear selection .

I am mainly interested in a) Landscape b) Environmental portraits c) Old castles and buildings d) sunrise and sunset

 

I may have access to the following gears :

 

Bodies: Canon 1DxMKII/1Dx/5DIV/5DsR/7DMKII

Lenses: Canon : 11-24/ 16-35/24-70/70-200/100-400 /200-400/24/35/85/200

Zeiss Otus: 28/55/85. Also 35/135

 

I want to take not more than 5 lenses and 2-3 bodies, preferably 2

Please give me your choices and advice- those will be invaluable to me.

 

Thanks a lot in advance

If you're planning to take that much gear, you'll probably miss the enjoyment of taking the time to actually see the country around you and participate in enjoying its food, activities and culture. But since you asked - I'd suggest the 11-24, as the landscapes in certain regions of Switzerland really call for capturing dramatic heights, as well as some of the medieval parts of some cities. I'd also suggest something in the mid-range, like the24-70 or 70-200. IMHO that's all you need. Most of all, have a good time...it's a lovely country

SCL,

Thanks for your reply. I know what you said but it seems the best I enjoy is when I am behind the OVF

Will take the 11-24 even though its filter system is large and clumsy.

I will enjoy it- going with my wife and children.

Thanks again

I am not familiar with Canon or Sony. The body I'd surely leave at home is the old 1Dx. - 5DIV behind your wide and 5DsR behind long lens sound like a plan for walking around. But still: Your choices sound extremely heavy to me. - I am pondering the 5DIV with 70-200 f2.8 for myself and am still wondering if I'll end taking it out at all or 'll feel too lazy and stick to a tiny 90mm f4 for my Leica instead.

 

For me the essential focal lengths range is 20-200mm. - I own a 15mm and enjoy the occasional selfie taken with it but I guess 16-35mm should make you happy enough, based on focal lengths; I haven't researched the quality of Canon's wide zooms. - So far I own a 12-24mm for my 1.5x crop Pentax SLRs and am content with it and your 16mm is even wider.

 

70-200 sounds like an ideal match on the other body. - Your lens lists make you look like a "Sod 50mm; it 's 35 & 85mm for me!"-guy, so maybe these 2 will work for you. - Considering that you are travelling with family and that the 16-35mm apparently doesn't offer IS I would pack the 24-70mm (f2.8L IS II?) too and change to it in low light or for sharpness' sake.

 

I wouldn't know why to bring the 1DX Mk. II. - I am no Canon guy. - Will it be more likely to nail focus for a spontaneous portrait? - Buffer and FPS don't seem that important for a traveler.

 

The long zooms: 100-400mm should pair well with 24-70 in broad daylight. - IDK which 70-200 you have; an f2.8? What will you need? How bad is AF with which lens? Will your family loiter spots with great view on various details long enough for you to need a 400mm end? Are you hoping to encounter alpine marmots? - I don't see a high priority to pack super-tele zooms.

 

Primes: I admit I like mine to some extent. - OTOH: I am much happier with 4 moderate sized ones on 2 or 3 rather compact bodies than with monster lenses like my Sigma 14mm f3.5 or 24mm f1.8 or your Otuses. I also noticed: I'm framing sloppier with primes than with zooms, so any resolution advantage will get eaten by cropping in post? - To make good use of primes during travel you have to be on your own or fit enough to run while the rest of your group or family is just walking. - Example: During a mountain hike last year I was surely not the fittest in the group and kept a 50mm mounted, occasionally taking pictures since I simply couldn't make the time needed to change lenses.

 

If you really want to shoot the A7RII maybe take it with 28 & 85mm? - I am reluctant to vote for that combo. - Can you adapt your Canon zooms to it? - Or is that too unreliable? - I shot my co-travelers sore with the eternity I needed to manually focus the Leica. - I doubt the A7 to be much faster with Otus so I 'd rather stick to the (hopefully) fast focusing SLRs. I'm also not sure what to think of the Canon primes. From my own struggles without something like IS I learned: If you are shooting handheld, IS is very nice to have. You don't really want shallow DOF on a travel picture.

 

Backup: 16-35 & 24-70 have a lot of overlap so they count as backed up. What to do if your 70-200 breaks? - I backed mine up with a 135mm f2.8 during film days.

On your list the 100-400 looks like the best candidate, maybe combined with the 85mm?

 

My own 1.5x crop SLRs travel bag holds 12-24mm f4, 18-55mm kit zoom, 50mm f1.4 135mm f2.8 & 2 IBIS bodies. - The Pentax AF is so sluggish that it doesn't seem worth to invest into a long zoom for that system. The alternative Rangefinder kit is Zeiss 21mm f2.8, Konica 35mm f2, 90mm f4 + a Monochrom. I can add M8, 50mm f2 135mm f4 and 15mm f4.5 or even switch to 90mm f2 for low light but that one usually it isn't worth it's bulk since I have to stop down to be more likely to nail focus with a 90mm headshot.

I am also able to do tourism with a mix of Rangefinders for the more special shots and Fujis with a pair of stabilized consumer zooms for my ordinary happy snapping.

 

If you are somewhat familiar with your gear you probably know it's strengths and what works how well for you.

1 body + 2 or 3 lenses. If you really want to, carry a back up body.

Depending on your age and physical condition, your back will thank you. 9 days of carrying a heavy bag wears you down a lot more than just a few hours at home.

 

11-24 (when your back is literally against the wall, so you cannot back up any further, you want as wide as you can get)

24-70 (for a full frame camera, this should be fine as your normal lens)

70-200 or 200 (consider the bulk and weight of these lenses, I would carry the lighter of the 2 lenses).

 

In the old film days, and when I was younger and could carry the heavy bag, my travel kit was: one body + 3 lenses (24, 43-86, 80-200) + shoe flash. The 80-200 was the smaller lighter f/4.5 lens, not the big heavy f2.8 lens. The 43-86 was used 90% of the time, then the 24, with the 80-200 used the least.

I would take two bodies, probably the 5Div and 5Ds. This gives you two relatively small cameras, as a primary and backup. The 5Dvi, at 24 MP, is ample for most applications. The 50 MP 5Ds will do the same, but have extra resolution for landscapes, provided you carry a substantial tripod too. Without image stabilization, hand-held shots will provide basically 12 MP quality due to camera shake.

 

Looking back on years of travel, most of the landscapes i've taken were with lenses between 35 mm and 90 mm. At least half were with a "normal" 50 mm. For street photos, most were done between 24 mm and 50 mm, with 35 mm for about half. Only a tiny fraction were done with a 200 mm. In other words, save the extreme lenses for special effects, maybe on subsequent trips. A clue would be, what do you use closer to home?

 

Wide angle lenses are best used for landscapes which exaggerate nearby objects. You may get an entire mountain range in one shot at 11 mm, but the mountains would look like anthills on the horizon. If I want to emphasize the massiveness of mountains, I go long. 90 mm works well, but 200 mm would make a hill loom over man made structures.

 

With this in mind, my recommendation would be the 16-35, 24-70 and 70-200 for flexibility. With two or three mid-range primes for the best quality with the 5Ds - 24/35/85. This kit will fit into a medium sized backpack, with accessories about 30-35 lbs total. That's a load, but a backpack is easy to handle in crowds, climbing stairs, and riding public transportation. Rollers are too heavy and useable only on paved (or very smooth unpaved) roads, definitely not stairs, cobblestone or coarse gravel. I've climbed in castles, hiked on trails and meandered through cities with a 25 lb shoulder bag, and staggered on to buses. I won't ever do it again!

 

A tripod is easy to carry and deploy, using a shoulder strap attached to the top of two legs. That keeps the head up and not slipping the straps and crashing to the ground. It also frees your hands. You will also need some means to back up, review and store images on the road. The simplest means is with a laptop computer. As an alternative, you could buy a bunch of memory cards, twice as many as you think you'll need. They're cheaper than a laptop and weigh less too (and less than the 200 rolls of film I carried to Europe in 2001).

I'd be going a lot lighter. Two FF bodies - one in the bag you're using daily, the other in your luggage/hotel for if anything goes wrong . Three zooms - on the assumption the 70-200 is the F4 version, I'd take that plus the 24-70 and 16-35. Those plus a polariser/rings and maybe a neutral density filter, and a soft edge grad set if you use them ( I do, even in the mountains) and that will all fit in a medium shoulder bag or small backpack. That's all I'd want to be carrying on a short trip to a very visual country where you'll be on and off trains, boats , buses etc- mountain Switzerland is one of the few countries where a rental car won't do you a lot of good. I favour shoulder bags because I like the opportunism of getting a photograph/applying a filter/changing a lens without putting the bag down. I think speed of operation is especially important when you are sharing the trip with others who are probably less interested in photography than you are, and might well get bored , impatient or even upset if you habitually take ten minutes mulling over lens/body choices, assembling your gear and faffing about with a tripod every time you want to take a shot.

 

I'd take a tripod on every trip, albeit I don't carry it all the time except where I know I'll need it. Mostly that's for low light or long exposure shots, or trips out before breakfast or at or after sunset. Otherwise during the day I prefer to photograph relatively unencumbered and quickly so I get to see a lot of things each day. So I rely on 400ISO and IS to get me sufficient sharpness and detail, and it seems to work OK since a lot of my work is vetted by stock agencies that insist on a good 50MB file. What I'm describing here is the way I photograph for about 70-90 days a year whilst travelling. My bag weighs about 14lbs, not including back-up body and tripod.

Split grad filters are hardly necessary when you can combine bracketed exposures into HDR images. The effects can be mild to wild, and do not affect the originals. At the "mild" end, you can get details in a cloudy sky without looking overcooked. You can do several versions and pick the one you like.

 

The idea of one bag for all the gear and a smaller one to carry seems attractive. The problem is that even a small bag takes a lot of space in luggage, even when empty. It works best of a member of your family claims it as their "carry-on". Even in their f/4 versions, three zoom lenses, covering 16 to 200, require a fairly large bag. If the zooms have IS, all the better, even if primes give cleaner images. I've used IS to shoot bracketed exposures for HDR, or for stitched panoramas without a tripod.

You need the equivalent of a 24-105mm zoom (for the size sensor you have). That, and one body will see you through pretty much everything and your spine will still be usable when you come back. :)