Digital Envisions

A buddy asked me lately for some photo tips about lens choices for a digital camera — what to bring along on her trip to the Far East. She was concerned about not only weight but having to do too much changing of lenses while photographing.

Airline restrictions have made the job of culling your carry-on gear into advanced science. It used to be that if you had the strength, you could carry the kitchen sink along if you could manage to lift it. No longer. While in the US, the TSA will permit photographers a camera bag/pack in Addition to a purse/computer bag and a standard carry-on, many airlines pretend not to have heard this.

After you venture onto an overseas flight, it’s still the Wild West — some airlines have liberal carry-on allowances, but others are significantly more suppressive. Thus it pays a photographer, whether newbie or professional, to carry the minimum amount of hardware important to get the task finished.

A common error photographers make is to carry too many zoom lenses of overlapping focal lengths: for instance, an 18-55, 70-300, and a 28-80. Ideally, you want as little overlap as feasible so you are not always delving into the pack for a new lens & thus miss the photo. I utilise a Canon 24-105 lens as my main ‘walking ‘ lens, shooting on either my Canon 5D MKII or 7D (the 7D has a sensor size similar to the Canon Rebel). My other wide angle zoom is a 16-35. If you need a telephoto to photograph wildlife, for example, simply add a 100-400mm or similar-sized lens.

The point is to have a lens that covers 90% of the eventualities you’ll encounter so you do not have to think about changing lenses or carry two cameras. That having been said, with less lenses, you may learn efficiently the best way to pre-visualize a shot with less options. It just means you have to be more clever at repositioning yourself prior to the shot!

Though having a digital camera with a non-interchangeable lens like the Nikon Coolpix can be an advantage size, weight and unobtrusive-wise, these smaller cameras lack the degree of control over the ‘standard SLRs’. One thing that you have got to keep a look out for is shutter lag, where there is a delay (even of a few tenths of a second) between clicking the shutter and the photograph taken. This will kill any ‘capture the moment ‘ type photographs.

Most smaller camera do not have through the lens viewing or even any viewfinder at all, but rather depend on employing an LCD screen to compose & shoot. This kills any chance of accurate composition or capturing subtle movements or expressions, as you simply can’t see the details clearly enough. If you’re in bright sunlight, this is particularly true.

An SLR gives you an undistracted, clear view of the scene. It also, correctly operated, allows for much more sophisticated control of where you focus in the scene — vital for ‘street ‘ photography of people (& wildlife, for what it’s worth).

As you can see, I am a fan of the SLR as a digital camera for significant photo work, though come to think of it, I have had plenty of fun with my iPhone camera recently! Talk about traveling light!

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