Lens and filter considerations for landscape

[ksporry]

<p>Guys,<br>

Am looking for some advice on choice of equipment.<br>

I'm going to Guilin, taking pics of the river in the Karst mountain landscape there, as well as rice paddies.<br>

I don't have a proper wide angle lens for landscape and currently my options would be the Nikon (I use a D810) 20/1.8G, or the 14-24/2.8G lenses.<br>

First of all, the 20mm/1.8 is small, and pretty good from what I heard, but is less flexible (its a prime). Is it a good generic focal length for landscapes and cityscapes though?<br>

I'll be getting a filter set for the relevant lens as well, which will be a Lee (resin) or Benro (glass) set. The 14-24 is one of the best wide angle zooms out there and I have yet to hear from any zoom (or prime) that is better for Nikon (I heard of the samyang 16/2.8, but that has weird distortions that cannot be corrected in PS). However, with the huge front element, the filter set would be a 150mm wide filter set, which is a bit more expensive than 100mm systems (especially CPL), and huge to carry around. The 20/1.8 would allow me to use a more manageable 100mm filter set, but is optically not as good as the 14-24, and is not as flexible.<br>

Any suggetsions?</p>

[Ed_Ingold]

<p>Wide angle lenses are not necessarily the best choice for landscapes, particularly where mountains are involved. Besides being wide, they also take in a lot more sky and dirt (water) than ideal for depicting the geography. I have used a medium telephoto (e.g., 90 mm) for mountains much more than even a modest wide angle (e.g., 35mm). A lot depends on where you will be standing, but a wide angle flattens distant objects while emphasizing the foreground.</p>

<p>That said, a good wide zoom lens like the 14-24/2.8 has image quality equal to or better than the prime lenses it replaces, and is ultimately more portable and simpler than changing a bunch of lenses. If you have a 24-70/2.8, I suspect you would want to have that along too, perhaps even a 70-200.</p>

<p>What kind of filters to you intend to use? Certainly contrast filters are useful if you're shooting black and white, but with an 810 you can do that more easily in post when converting to monochrome. You can't easily emulate a polarizing filter, but they don't work well on wide angle lenses anyway, since natural polarization occurs in a rather narrow angular band relative to the sun or angle of incidence. Polarizers are much more effective penetrating haze than a so-called haze filter. Nothing helped much in the more urban areas of China, however. I've not been to Guilin, however.</p>

<p>Stitching multiple shots into a panorama is very useful for landscapes that are wider than tall. You can turn also the camera vertically for a 50% increase in angular coverage. In any even, a tripod will be more useful to you than a fussy set of filters, and will not only make your image sharper, but give you more flexibility to handle light. It is faster and more effective to shoot a bracketed HDR than to fiddle with a split density filter, either of which require a tripod.</p>

[ksporry]

<p>was gonna use a polariser, ND Grad, and possibly a little stopper or big stopper (as Lee calls them), so I can use long exposure times to erase people and make water silky smooth.<br>

I'm located in Shanghai so I'll also be using it for cityscapes and architecture work. For that reason I'm not keen on the Samyang 14/2.8, because that one, although razor sharp, has weird distortions (plus probably sample variations). I will definitely bring a medium zoom and telezoom with me.</p>

[ellis_vener_photography]

I would go with the AF-S 16-35mm f4G Nikkor for travel photography out of a backpack or camera bag instead of the 14-

24mm f/2.8. I haven't shot with the 16-35mn on the D810 but used it on the D800 and the results were excellent. The

20mm f/1.8G is indeed excellent on the D810, and you can use the same size filters on both.

 

I agree with Edward's advice about shooting stitched panoramas.

 

As to filters:

A polarizer and two B+W ND screw-in filters, a 0.9ND (3 stop) and a 3.0ND (10-stop) These are solid filters, not grads.

There are so many ways to deal with extremely wide luminance ranges beyond what the already very latitude built into

the D810 sensor abd processor combination that I really don't have much use for graduated ND filters these days.

[Mary Doo]

<p>A circular polarizer and a 2-stop graduated neutral density filter would be nice to have when needed. And I believe there will be such occasions. Your wide-angle zoom is good. If you have a 24-70, you'd probably use that lens the most. As mentioned above, you can also emulate the effects at post-processing. The 16-35 would be good too.</p>

<p>I have been to Guilin and Shanghai twice. It you shoot the karst mountains early in the morning - with alpenglow, reflections, and the fishermen, it may be better not to use a filter because the boats and fishermen move, and you will need a higher shutter speed to avoid motion blur. You may also cruise along the Li River on a boat. All the more for fast shutter speed.</p>

<p>In Shanghai, you may want to capture the people doing Tai-Chi in colorful costumes at the Bund - in the early morning. Again, a filter would not be necessary as you capture the motion.</p>

<p>But then this is really a judgement call. With D810, you can probably crank up the ISO to compensate for the 2-stop light loss.</p>

[ksporry]

<p>thanks for the advice. I ended up going for an 18-35/3.5-4.5G lens, which is supposed to be superb. Tried it out briefly and does look to be amazingly sharp corner to corner :)<br>

its true that digital has more latitud ethese days, especially the D810, but always better to fix things in camera as much as possible, to get the best out of it :)</p>

<p>By the way, the filters are not only for this trip. I plan to use them with more landscape stuff. :)</p>

[Mary Doo]

<p>The 18-35 is on the wide side, but should be OK. The D810 with the 36MP sensor provides a lot of latitude, which means if you have to include more area than desired due to focal-length limitation, the image-size should still be decent after cropping for the effect you want. They say the best lens is the one you have. However, generally speaking for the future, you may want to acquire a lens with some midrange for closer crop.</p>

<p>Personally, I like to carry a wide angle, a midrange, and a telephoto to cover most possibilities. I try to compose as best as practical with the camera, so there would be less work to deal with in post-processing. For wildlife, I would reserve a bit extra on all sides (if I remember to do so) because the wildlife may move unexpectedly as the shutter clicks. It won't take much to crop an image in Lightroom to desired effect.</p>

[Mary Doo]

<blockquote>

<p>I ended up going for an 18-35/3.5-4.5G lens</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Kryn, since you were asking for credible advice, the more I think about this, the more I am worried because I am not sure if you have a lens with mid-range focal lengths. Although China is huge, more likely than not, most of the places you photograph would have a lot of distractions beside the subject you would like to focus upon. Yes, you may crop, but in many cases you may want to restrict your view to a certain area, the end result would be better than a substantial crop of a large surface.</p>

<p>If indeed you do not have a mid-range lens, it would makes sense to replace your newly acquired 18-35mm with the 16-85mm or something equivalent. I feel better for having said this because you did not mention if you have lenses other than wide-angles. Good luck! :)</p>

[david_henderson]

<p>I can't answer your question directly( don't use Nikon), but like Mary I've photographed round Guilin and maybe I should drop in the following.</p>

<p>In the daytime the Li River represents a disappointing landscape photography opportunity. There are a huge number of boats that leave every half hour to make the journey from (near) Guilin to Yangshuo. I mean on average a boat per minute. What that means is that the river is churned up by boat traffic all day, isn't a nice colour and there are no reflections. You won't in my view get rid of these boats using long exposures unless they are extremely long and there's lots of slam boat traffic too. To get the flat river/reflections of Karst mountains/fishermen/cormorants type of shot, you won't be at Guilin or Yangshao but at one of the villages between and you'll probably have arranged local accommodation and a guide. </p>

<p>If you have not fixed this, then the best way to get a good "karst" photograph IMO is to take one of the several dawn balloon trips from Yangshao, or to be at the top of a riverside peak (Fubo Hill at Guilin is one) before dawn for city in a karst context shots. After sunrise is getting too late, though if you're lucky the early sun will glow red.</p>

<p>I'm with the others who warn against too wide for landscapes. No point getting a lot of these karst hills in your picture if the lens makes than look insignificant and unimpressive. Better to get a few hills and make the most of the pink/grey recessions behind and between them. My "karst" shots covered 17mm-200mm. A single wide prime is not the way to go IMO</p>

<p>Its best to have a grad or too if you're planning to use a tripod. We found a lot of bright/milky skies just about everywhere we went in China and its really easy to underexpose foreground by trying to accommodate a very bright sky. Careful with NDs early or late in the day. You may need to avoid subject movement, and further they will tend to kill any reflections you're lucky enough to get. Polarisers have a limited effect in bright glare but no direct sun.</p>

 

[dcstep]

<p>I'm in favor of ultra-wide for landscape, but only when there's a reason. For a big-sky shot, with a mixture of nice foreground and interesting clouds, I pull out my 15mm f/2.5 diagonal fisheye. I'll most often de-fish the image and, perhaps, apply a 2:1 crop. When the sky has little interest, then I might move in real close to a foreground object, like a tree, and let the background show through. <br /><br /><br>

The following example was de-fished, but I used a "normal" aspect ratio:</p>

<p><a title="Fall Color - Explored by David Stephens, on Flickr" href=" src="https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5503/10338024396_d943795e46_c.jpg" alt="Fall Color - Explored" width="800" height="534" /></a><br>

With wide-angles, particularly zooms, you'll want to use some sort of Digital Lens Optimization to correct for geometric errors, CA, vignetting, etc. to bring your images up to close to what a top-shelf prime can do. DxO does this, as does LR and some other Raw converters.</p>

<p>My travel kit is a full-frame body with the 15mm, a 24-105mm, a 70-200mm, a 1.4x TC and a 2.0x TC. I've got a polarizing filter for the 24-105mm, but hardly ever find it needed. I deal with dynamic range issues with multi-shot HDR (natural), but typically find enough dynamic range in Raw conversion by adjusting shadows and highlights, along with contrast.</p>

[ksporry]

<p>Thanks for the advice guys!<br>

Actually, I don't only have wide angle. I brought a 70-200 as well. I don't have a mid range zoom at the moment, though I do have a 50mm prime obviously (who doesn't?). I wanted to get the 24-105 Sigma, but that's stopped production. It's better than the Nikon 24-120.</p>

<p>I got some nice pics on my trip. Didn't only go to yangshuo, but also one of the rice paddy areas. There was no water in the paddies, nor was there lush green rice, but it gave me a good opportunity to play around with my filter set and the 18-35. I actually liked the 18-35 for many of the situations. </p>

<p>Was a bit annoyed when I set up a panoramic shot that one of the locals just barged into my shot and set up his tripod right in front of me, as if the mountain belonged to him alone. That's China though: Me first and F$%k everyone else.<br>

Haven't finished processing them yet, but once I do I'll share a link here (It will be on flickr), so you can comment to your heart's desire :)</p>

<p>PS nice shot David</p>