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Lesson Info

Making a Choice: Nikon Landscape Lenses

Landscape lenses we got a wide variety of choices here when it comes to what's the best slims for capturing the landscape, so considerations that you want to think about if this is something that's important to you is number one like in most situations is choosing the angle of view as faras. What am I trying to capture in this particular shot? After that, you want to be thinking probably about depth of field? How much depth of field do I want in this particular type of shot? Very high on the list of characteristics that important is the sharpness of the lands because any lens that does not have really good sharpness is not something we're particularly interested in. I would rather shoot with a slightly shot soft lens for portrait photography, then I would for landscape photography, something that we generally like is very high sharpness here filter ability, being able to filter the lands I think is very important because polarizer sze split neutral density, neutral density filters all ...

ends is that we talked about in the previous section are all very valuable tools and there's a few lenses out there like the fourteen to twenty four that are very challenging to filter, and you gotta have all the right gear and sometimes it's very expensive and that just it's kind of a downside on that particular lens, in my opinion size and weight, of course, because landscape photographers are typically doing a lot of moving about whether it's driving, walking or hiking and then, of course, price on top of that that's always a consideration, so we're actually going to be looking at two different categories of lenses. One is wide angle lenses for our grand landscapes, and then we're also going to be looking at tele photos for covering details in smaller subjects, and so we kind of need to different varieties of lenses for landscape photography. So fourteen millimetres is fun to work with its super super wide. And when you have a really big environment or a big object in front of you, it's fun to work with a fourteen millimeter lens because there's a lot of fun things you can do with the natural stretching effects that you get with a wide angle lens it's a bit more than most people need, but it can be used very, very effectively. I think sixteen millimeters is a pretty sweet spot to be. Its is wide, as most people need to get. So if you have a crop frame sensor, the ten to twenty four, the twelve to twenty four are going to be really good lenses for that nice, very wide angle view. Generally this is white is you're going to get and still be able to use filters on your lens with any sort of ease there's some aftermarket fifteens that we talked about from cameron for instance and then they go down to fourteen very challenging to use filters on that filters could be very important I believe they were used in both of these samples to help darken the sky which was overly bright compared to the land in front of it my favorite really is twenty four twenty four is wide as I generally need to go it's it's a little bit more challenging to work with those sixteen and fourteen and so twenty four is very achievable in a lot of different types of lenses and is just it matches up with my eyes very very easily it works very very well sometimes you don't want to push the background quite so far away and the thirty five millimeter lens is nice it's very normal but just slightly wide angle lens and so sometimes the thirty five is just the right choice and so what I just said about pushing the background far away sometimes you have the choice of shooting with a sixteen millimeter lands or a twenty four millimeter lands and you've got a subject in the foreground that you want there to be important and there's something in the background as well? Well the instinct for a lot of photographers is I should use the widest lens I can because that's the coolest lens that I have, but in reality sixteen puts these pinnacles back here and makes them smaller in the frame, and so I think this looks better at twenty four, where it fills up the frame a little bit more now, I didn't have the opportunity, but I might have been able to shoot this at thirty five and make them fill the frame up even more so you want to be thinking about the background size and the foreground size because I can adjust the foreground size by moving closer and further away, but the background here I'm going to adjust with focal length and so it's a mixture of moving forward and backwards and then choosing the right lens for what's, right for the foreground and the background in that case, and so in some cases, you get too wide, and the problem with wide angle lenses is it pushes everything far away. And so sometimes you don't want that to far away. You wanted to be closer up, so the other category is telephoto lenses for capturing details, smaller portions of the scene and so these could be very valuable and usually these they're going to be in that seventy two, two hundred range, so a hundred millimeters that's also where our macro lenses were located, if you recall once again, these are just little glimpses slices of nature, and these could be shot at a wide variety of focal legs, depending on your location, four hundred is generally as long as you're going to need a fact, I really need more than two hundred four hundred's the exception to the rule, but having something a little bit further away that you don't have access to getting closer can be very handy having that longer four hundred millimeter length, but most of the time for weight savings, I just go with the two hundred. So for wide angle, end of landscapes, the professional siri's, the fourteen to twenty four is a favorite because it has all those white angle focal lengths that they most likely like. But it is big it's, heavy it's, hard to filter, and so I think the sixteen to thirty five is going to be an ideal choice for a lot of people for a shooting landscapes the seventeen to thirty five is still out there. It's probably a distant choice as far as my first picks on here the fourteen if you we need the really wide lands. But most people who want the fourteen have gone with the fourteen to twenty four because of the versatility of being able to zoom up there. But this does do fourteen in a smaller package if you knew you needed just that one item and then of course, the tilt shift lenses that we talked about in the previous section that would be one of my favorite choices and so the fourteen to twenty for the twenty four and the sixteen to thirty five would all be my favorite choices is far as a serious professional ends in that manner. If we were to step down to a mid level lens, I think that eighteen to thirty five is going to be a very versatile lands for a reasonable amount of money very lightweight lens the twenty millimeter if you're just looking for a fixed lens that gets you into a nice ultra white territory, twenty four is kind of right they're closely related to it and for those who are using the crop frame dxe censor the twelve to twenty four is kind of my preferred lens in there like that f four constant aperture on there, but you were typically going to be closing it down to probably f eight, eleven and sixteen for our landscape shots ten to twenty four closely related it's a little bit on the pricey side for the basic lens but that gets you into the wide angle territory and any of the other lenses are going to do a reasonable job I would really prefer to get down to that sixteen I really like to get down to that sixty because that's twenty four and that's going to give you a reasonably good white angle, everything less than that kind is going to leave you wanting for more wide angle. Now what I don't have up here on the recommended list and you're gonna have to go back to the other sections to look at it is in the third party lenses because I think there's some really nice options, especially for the basic level user in the tokyo brands. They have some really nice wide angle choices in there, but there's a wide right of choices, and I could I'd be happy to shoot with any one of these for a wide variety of reasons. If I knew more about exactly where it wasn't, what the shot was, I'd pick one individual leads, but hand me any one of these, happy as a clam, going out landscapes, all right, let's, switch over and talk about tele photos for landscape photographers. One of the things that you will notice about this collection when we get it all upon screen is that there is going to be a few to none primes we don't need prime lenses here because we generally don't need that really fast aperture. For isolating our subject from the background cause we're generally getting more depth of field here so the seventy two, two hundred it's just a standard for the professional but you know what? I would probably rather hiking around with the seventy two, two hundred for lighter way it's just a sharp a lot smaller in size we have the old eighty two, two hundred and then if you do want to reach out further the eighty two, four hundred if you really like that ability to reach out you think you would on the eighty two, four hundred be using it on a tripod a bit more then the other seventy two hundreds because of the slower aperture next up our mid level lens is actually just a couple of them here I'm going bring over the seventy two, two hundred again because I think it's such a nice lands at this general range the seventy two, three hundred there are two, seventy two, three hundred this's the nicer of the two this has their f s motor in it I think it's going to be perfectly acceptable. I don't think it's a sharp is the seventy two, two hundred but I think for landscape photography you're often stopping it down to eight and eleven so that sharpness is that started this difference won't be apparent there'd be more apparent if you shooting it at four five, six for basic levels, you could pretty much choose any of the basic zoom lenses, and they're going to work just fine for landscape photography because you're not really pushing the autofocus systems, you're not shooting him wide open in many cases if you're using the right techniques like I teach in my nature and landscape photography class, but I think you could use any one of these and get some very nice results. They're not made with as good a weather resistance and construction as the higher in lenses, but as far as pure image quality for landscaped type work, I think you could get really good image quality. So landscape photography is one of the lesser, expensive types of photography that you could get into because you could get into a really top notch professional lens for a little over a thousand dollars no primes don't need the primes here, and you'll find that when you're out in nature, you're on a trail. You can't back up because there's a hillside right behind you, you can't get forward because there's a cliff and that zoom is a major advantage. You would think that just being out in the wild open, you'd have the ability to walk forward and backwards. Well, it's true, if you go to the desert maybe, but in most other locations trees and rocks and cliffs and hillsides, they just get in the way, and the zoom lens has become very, very practical and stopping them down a couple of stops. Their sharpness is fantastic. It's what all the professionals we're using for the most part. All right, just in case I didn't cover your type of photography, let me throw in all of them here on one slide. So architectural and rio real estate everything from fourteen to eighty five. Rarely will you need anything longer than that? Nature and landscape sixteen to two hundred you can always use something outside the realm of these numbers. These air just this is where the core of most of this photography is done. Now this is the biggest one travel event street candid wedding this is kind of everything for photography and it's, the range that I've talked about since the beginning of this class twenty four to two hundred that is a really nice tool range tohave for your lenses if you're gonna work in the studio portrait photography somewhere in that fifty to two hundred millimeter range it's really all you need, you don't need white angles in a studio, for the most part sports photography basketball on the near court eighty five football out in the big field maybe six hundred there's a few exceptions where you could mount wide angle lenses behind the backboard and so forth, but this is kind of the main core of shooting and then for wildlife you definitely need the long lenses there's always exceptions to all these rules and if you could ever get a chance to to use something other than these recommended lenses, by all means do it. But this is where most of the stuff is covered, so if somebody said I want to do this type of photography, what sort of lens do I need? This is my answer, okay, maybe now I will take a quick check in and see how we're doing on lenz specific recommendations I was just going to ask you just personally when you travel, you know, there's it's quite a you know, getting all your lenses there, do you kind of keep it down to three or to have you ever traveled with one and challenged yourself that way? I have never traveled with one I don't want to challenge myself that much, huh? I've traveled with three a wide angle, zoom, a telephoto zoom and fifty I've done that a number of times and it is a real challenge I'm actually packing for my next trip now and I have seven lenses that I want to take but put him in the bag and I was like, wow, this is really heavy and so I've got it's the compromise and you really gotta look at what do I want to try to accomplish on this trip? What am I willing to give up? I remember there was participant on one of my tours and we had sent out kind of questions about what sort of equipment you have any questions and they had said that they were going to bring their macro lens and I thought about where we're going and I'm like well I'll be honest with you I don't know that I would recommend bringing a macro lens to this location because we're going to win a lot of city photography and landscape photography but I don't think there's a lot of things to focus on close up but she had just purchased her macro lens and she was really excited about taking it out and using it and remember during the trip I said what do you doing she's like I'm shooting a picture of this weed what why you should get a picture of a weed well, I brought the lens and I wanted to justify bringing it and so you do have to take a look and think ok, what am I likely to encounter what's most important to me and cover your bases cover your main basis and you know maybe bring one bonus lens now, if you're traveling professionally, which I'm also looking at there's kind of a different category of this is my business. I have to get the shot. What do I need to do to get the shot and that's kind of a different level than I'm just traveling, trying to enjoy myself? And so that that goes into the equation as well.