bernie_. Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 I'm in the market for a exclusively landscape lens. I think 21mm, 24/25mm or 28mm are the best choices, but I want to hear some opinions. I only hace the classic 50mm and 35mm lenses for my Leica. Thank you in advance! Best regards Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
charles_stobbs3 Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 As a guess, I think the lenses you have may be best for avoiding distractions like telephone wires, poles etc which are present from many viewpoints. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lutz Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Hi, can you point us to any landscape photo on the net that you would like to potentially emulate? IMHO, these may vary from 21mm to 200mm, depending on taste and subject... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
george_b1 Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Lutz has a valid point. In Arizona and New Zealand, a 35mm usually got what I wanted; however, if I needed to shoot distant landscapes, a 90 was necessary. Focal length depends on where you are able to stand and what you want to include in the photo. I use a 24, 35 or a 90, depending on the location and the subject. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark f Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 When I shoot landscape, I mostly use other cameras with more film real estate. That said, the 35mm equilivilent is 50mm (60%), 80-90mm (30%) and 28mm (10%). I personally don't like the obvious distortion of perspective that an extreme wide angle gives. Others find it really interesting. YMMV Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
godfrey Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 I did this morning's landscape shooting entirely with the Olympus ZD 50-200 fitted to a Panasonic L1 (Digilux 3). Godfrey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thidglance Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 I have 28/50/90 on my M - The new 28mm ASPH F2.8 is tiny and fantastic, it's also the widest lens that you can really use on the M without external finders etc (which kinda kills the easy / compact nature a bit for me) - It seems to depend where I am though which lens gets the most use. The last big trip I did saw heaps of 28mm with just a bit of 50 and 90 thrown in. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lutz Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Bernie, if you want to complement the 50 you already own and have a wider second lens, go for a 28. It doubles as a versatile landscape and street photo lens, not only in "landscape" but also in "portrait" orientation. Have a look at <a href="http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=687392">these</a> to understand what I'm talking about. <p> <center><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/5490759-lg.jpg"></center><p> For landscape you don't need fast, so a 2.8 lens is perfect. But again, if you want versatile get the CV 28/1.9 Ultron and never look back.<p> If you are into horizons you might as well consider a panoramic second body, like the Hassy XPan with its standard 45mm lens which covers the 24mm equivalent, horizontally. <p> <center><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/2219881-md.jpg"></center><p> Or go directly for a Noblex with its 130?+ of coverage. <p> <center><img src="http://d6d2h4gfvy8t8.cloudfront.net/1139753-lg.jpg"></center><p> Cheers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Any lens is a 'landscape' lens. Even a Macro. Just needs you to visualise how you wish to present a landscape and then pick a lens to match. Phenomenal landscapes have been made with long telephotos, ultrawides, macros and everything between. "...may be best for avoiding distractions like telephone wires, poles etc" If they are present then they are in and of the landscape. They are no more distracting then any other component of a landscape. Almost all landscapes are man-made. (Even those so called 'wildernesses'.) If a photograph of (for example) the Yorkshire Dales with ancient dry stone walls also include a couple of telephone poles then to my mind they are both man-made artifacts as much as the old stone cottage, the crops within the walls and the farming equipment that made be present. Telegraph wires/poles, as a feature, go back well over 150 years, and electricity pylons almost a century, so are hardly a 'modern' eyesore. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 However, I also like contrails so take what I say about telephone poles with a pinch of salt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob F. Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Yes, unwanted elements like telephone poles get to be an issue with the ultrawides, even in the mountains. I know a spot in the San Juan mountains where I can't use a 21mm without including a weather station! I do find more use for a 24mm than a 21. There is less risk of "unwanted flying objects" in the picture, and the perspective is less extreme. The 28mm is safer still, and is easy to use on the M6, with the built-in 28mm framelines. There's more difference between a 35mm and a 28mm than the 7mm difference between the numbers might suggest. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wayne_crider4 Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 Since you already have the 50 and 35, I think that the 24mm length would be the complement. If you didn't have a 35mm I would say buy a 28mm. The general rule of thumb is to double the focal length between lenses, but each to their own. Now, having tried again and again to quantify a 35mm system for (real) landscape photography in my endeavors, especially when cropping, it seems to be getting harder and harder for me. In landscapes there's just no substitute for film real estate. It's one thing to shoot closeups in a city and fill the frame with 35mm but once you get out in nature those landscape details get very small and reproductions to any normal size print just can't stand up to the tones you can get in a larger format. For what you spend on another lens maybe consider a second camera and a slightly wide lens and carry both. Just a thought about what I find when shooting landscapes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
john_r._fulton_jr. Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 <br><center><img src="http://www.photo.net/bboard/uploaded-file? bboard_upload_id=31741284"></center><br><P>This photograph of the Golden Gate Bridge isn't exactly a landscape but it's taken with an M6 and a 21mm f2.8 Elmarit. The 21mm lens is interesting for landscapes because of what it can do to the foreground. The 15mm f8.0 Hologon became quite popular in the 1970's for landscapes. Many of the NatGeoMag photographers (in the 70's & 80's) carried a Hologon camera with them for landscapes. On the other hand, I recently photographed some landscapes in Alaska with a 400mm lens. <br>It's a matter of how you "see" the landscape as to what lens you choose. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wai_leong_lee Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 There is no such thing as a "best" focal length for anything, much less landscapes. Even for head and shoulders portraits where the subject size doesn't vary that much from person to person, one can use anything from 75 mm to 135 mm-- who is to say that 85 mm is BEST, or 90 mm, or 100 m, or 105 mm? Landscapes can vary a lot more than heads and shoulders in size, expanse and characteristics. Some landscapes have lovely foregrounds (eg fields of flowers with mountains in the distance) where a wide angle lens would prove useful. Other (eg distant waterfalls, Himalayan mountain ranges with clouds surrounding the peak) would call for a telephoto lens. But even with such guidelines, who is to say that 15 mm is better than 21 mm or if 24 mm is the BEST? Who is to say 90 mm is better than 135 mm for the latter? How can there be a BEST landscape lens? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
walter_tisdale Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 I was pleasantly surprised how many "landscape" images I took with my 4/90 Macro lens. That was in combination with the 2/35mm asph. The compression & reach of the 90mm was definitely an advantage. These were the only lenses I own, by the way, until I bought a used 4/135mm for a song. I decided to go up to the 135mm, instead of down to a 24mm. Huge price difference, I admit, but again I like the reach of the 135mm. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mohir_ali Posted February 9, 2008 Share Posted February 9, 2008 when one uses a 'long' tele atmospheric (haze, pollution...) elements come into play to degrade the image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_amos Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 People often believe that a very wide angle lens is best for landscape because as they survey a scene, the human eye takes in so much, so they want to capture all of it as part of their experience being there, but this good idea is naive if it is not accompanied by very careful compositional planning. The fact is that experiencing a place involves many human senses that can't be captured on film, so the task is to artfully distill that experience without distorting it. As stated by others, any focal length can achieve this because there are many windows that can capture something beautiful and relevant, and ultimately, we can only capture experience photographically in windows anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike-images Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 I don't see lenses as "landscape lenses" or "portrait lenses". I see them as a set of tools that give me a set of freedoms. FWIW the set of lenses that work for me on the M are 21, 35, 50 and 90. The 21 Elmarit Asph is a lens which renders beautifully; it's worth making either the 35 or the 50 a fast lens - in my case an old 50 'lux; it's worth one of the lenses being very compact - in may case the 35 'cron (and also the 90 TE). I can do anything with that set of lenses. 28 doesn't give me a big enough "gap" at the bottom end and so it was toss up between 21 and 24 and the 21 won. Last week I took a landscape with the 90 and a portrait with the 21. Horses for courses. Think of them as a set of complementary tools. What set of tools suits you? Regards Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
robert_haller Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Landscapes ? My clear bet would be the 24asph - you can hardly beat this lens. Happy shooting from Bavaria Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Mohir Ali, Feb 09, 2008; 09:13 p.m. "when one uses a 'long' tele atmospheric (haze, pollution...) elements come into play to degrade the image." Or enhance an image. Mohir's observation about haze and an earler comment about the desire/need to remove 'distracting' elements (telephone poles, powerlines etc) seem to point to a widely held view that a 'landscape' should be pristine and flawless, natural and devoid of modern/manmade artifacts, 'pretty' even. Some of the best landscapes I have seen contain such elements as oil refineries, pylons, caravan parks, nuclear power plants, combine harvesters, roads and other such paraphenalia. I enjoy seeing the history of human impact and effect upon the scenery. Most scenery IS a history lesson and most landscapes are 'political'. Here in the UK an 'untouched' wilderness of beautiful moorland will also speak of the enforced clearance of thousands of small hill farmers, centuries ago, that enabled vast estates to bring in sheep farming or grouse shooting to replace them, consigning hundreds of thousands of lives to starvation or emigration or a new and alien life in the emerging industrial towns. A spectacular ruined Abbey in a landscape of beautiful stone built villages will speak eloquently of a bloodsoaked religious reformation that dissolved the Abbey and enabled the locals to strip all the stone to build their dwellings. An expansive fenland landscape criss-crossed by canals and dotted with windmills speaks of centuries of land drainage and displacement of a complete way of life in favour of high intensity agriculture using the cutting edge technologies of the day hundreds of years ago. This all looks quaint and pretty and traditional and divorced from modern realities and lends great appeal to the landscape photographer's best efforts. But the windmills were the 17th century's power stations, the ruined watermill was the factory, the mediaeval castle a place of total horrific supression and imprisonment and torture and the ancient drovers road a highway. The moors and the mountainous wildernesses only majestically desolate because of three century old 'ethnic cleansing'. Most landscapes are political constructs and tweaking out a pylon or a bit of haze or an aircraft is questionable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 <p>I took this whilst standing on the spot where the 80 year-old Abbot Richard Whyting of nearby Glastonbury Abbey was hung, drawn and quartered in public along with two other monks in AD 1539....</p> <a href=" title="St. Michael's tower. Glastonbury Tor by Trevor Hare, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/20/73457135_c79bd2db28_o.jpg" width="560" height="847" alt="St. Michael's tower. Glastonbury Tor" /></a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 <p>Should I photoshop out things like railway signal gantries?</p> <a href=" title="Railway signal gantry by Trevor Hare, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/208/493784747_5757fb9a15_o.jpg" width="550" height="794" alt="Railway signal gantry" /></a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 <p>A roadsign, a telephone pole and that haze!</p> <a href=" title="Priddy, Somerset by Trevor Hare, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/171/486676681_7858ec0d64_o.jpg" width="900" height="585" alt="Priddy, Somerset" /></a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
terry_rory Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 <p>A formidable castle dominates the beach whilst on the skyline sinister antennae lurk...</p> <a href=" title="Perranporth by Trevor Hare, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/162/352612763_ad57a4eb8f_o.jpg" width="550" height="815" alt="Perranporth" /></a> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mohir_ali Posted February 10, 2008 Share Posted February 10, 2008 Well said and fine examples posted. i meant unwanted largely manmade elements affect the photo because of the distance of air shot through. why would George III destroy the abbeys, but leave the facades? a painful rememberance or warning of sorts? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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