Lens advise from all who shoot landscape...

[CRman]

Just curious and I know there are know one solution deals to this but this has fastly become my interest is basic lanscape and waterfalls. Again, open to opinions but if you had 4-5 (maybe less or more) lenses to own and shoot these subsjects with what rage would the be in? Both prime and tele.. I have some good ones in my arsenal but looking to play with more variety. You can se what I have in my sig (i'll double check to update) but what might I be missing or could give me new perspectives? Any advice is greatly appreciated in advance.

Marc

 

[potownrob]

I'm no pro (by any means ), but I've shot landscapes and waterfalls before and didn't feel limited by my kit 18-55 lens (other than not always having my circular polarizer on me). I think you have an amazing collection of lenses there:

"...17-35 sigma
24-60 sigma
50-135 f/2.8 tokina..."

I think these cover just about any landcaping or waterfall situation, unless I'm missing something here. You could probably even go with the 17-35 and 50-135 and not miss the 24-60 too much. The constant f/2.8 isn't just good for low-light and sports; it is indicative of there being superior optics in those lenses, which should at least mitigate the need or desire for a fixed lens. And if the 17-135 range isn't enough, you also already have an ultra wide for standing closer to a waterfall or shooting a wider landscape, and you also have a decent longer zoom for shooting far-away waterfalls, lighthouses you see in the middle of a landscape, that bird in the sky, etc. :thumbup:

EDIT: Someone's got a major case of the NAS :mrgreen:

 

[blash]

Sell one of those bodies (probably D80) and pick up a film body (I got my F100 used for $280), some Velvia 50 film (very vivid colors), and a 24mm f/2.8. Slight distortion is good I think to lend attention to the subject.

You should not be shooting landscapes with digital. You can, of course, but it's not ideal.

 

[Overread]

CRman you have way too many zooms
I think your problem is that with all those zooms (and their differing qualities) covering such similar ranges you are losing yourself with options - you have too much choice and thus find it hard to make a definate choice on which one to use for a scene.

My advice is this - Get yourself some good prime lenses - their quality will knock socks off your zooms and they will help make things a bit easier for you when choosing a lens to use.
Firstly I would look through the market and see what primes are avalible for your camera; then go through you photos and see what focal length(s) you typically shoot at (check the exif data for this info) - then see what the closest prime is to your typical shooting focal range(s).

Then (before you get the prime) spend some time limiting yourself to just that focal range when shooting - get an idea what its like to shoot with a prime of that range just to make sure it won't limit you

 

[table1349]

CRman you have way too many zooms
I think your problem is that with all those zooms (and their differing qualities) covering such similar ranges you are losing yourself with options - you have too much choice and thus find it hard to make a definate choice on which one to use for a scene.

My advice is this - Get yourself some good prime lenses - their quality will knock socks off your zooms and they will help make things a bit easier for you when choosing a lens to use.
Firstly I would look through the market and see what primes are avalible for your camera; then go through you photos and see what focal length(s) you typically shoot at (check the exif data for this info) - then see what the closest prime is to your typical shooting focal range(s).

Then (before you get the prime) spend some time limiting yourself to just that focal range when shooting - get an idea what its like to shoot with a prime of that range just to make sure it won't limit you

:thumbup: If you look at my gear link you will see that I only own 4 zooms. They cover from 10 -200mm with very little overlap and all are top quality. Everything else are primes. I've shot landscapes at 10mm and at 400mm, it all depends on the shot. One thing that can make a landscape pop is good quality optics. They usually cost more, but there are some dandy lenses out there at a good price range. Especially in primes.



EDIT: Ok, had to correct myself. I own 5 zooms, but the Tamron is a backup/rough duty lens that is one of those cost effective but excellent lenses I was talking about. It goes on a body when I don't want to risk an L lens and if it gets crushed then I'm not out as much.

 

[CRman]

I do agree, I have way to many teles. I feel I am misssing out in the prime range. I have seen nikkors little 35mm DX and am wondering if it would serve as a good lens or drop down to a 20mm as well. I did just order a tokina 100mm f/2.8 prime macro. As of now I could afford to pick up 3-4 more primes right now. Oh and as for getting rid of the D80, no way. One, it was a gift and two, for some od reason I love it. I'd sell the 90 first if it came to it. I do have the nifty fifty and like it but being in the DX its about a 75mm. The tokina 12-24 has served well in tight quarters where I was able to get close but still get the entire fall. the 17-35 was another gift, didnt have the heart to tell the person I already had that focal length covered. I just smiled and accepted. It is a nice little lens though.
That said, give me a few options on primes being it nikkor, sig, tokina, or tameron. Thanks a bunch and the critique is well taken. I dont aim to be the photographer with the most glass in his bag but the one with the best shots in his camera.

Marc

 

[prodigy2k7]

I like my 18-55, i dont have much to choose from...
I am Canon

BTW, I believe the forum rules prohibit lengthy gear lists in signature...

 

[CraniumDesigns]

You should not be shooting landscapes with digital. You can, of course, but it's not ideal.

someone's a purist. with digital and a good photo edition program like photoshop, you can create just as good of shots as film, if not better. film is expensive and time consuming. i think the advantages of digital far outweigh the disadvantates.

 

[Honu]

Sell one of those bodies (probably D80) and pick up a film body (I got my F100 used for $280), some Velvia 50 film (very vivid colors), and a 24mm f/2.8. Slight distortion is good I think to lend attention to the subject.

You should not be shooting landscapes with digital. You can, of course, but it's not ideal.

Why not?

 

[blash]

The tokina 12-24 has served well in tight quarters where I was able to get close but still get the entire fall.

Which is in part why you need film, aka a full-frame body for cheap.

someone's a purist. with digital and a good photo edition program like photoshop, you can create just as good of shots as film, if not better. film is expensive and time consuming. i think the advantages of digital far outweigh the disadvantates.

Why not?

1) As mentioned above, film is full-frame bodies for cheap. Full-frame does not multiply the effective focal length of a lens by 1.6 like a DX digital body does, so on film that 12mm focal length would actually be 12mm, not ~20mm.
2) Detail and colors. 35mm film (namely, Velvia) has an equivalent detail of 87 megapixels - double that when you include the additional colors and tonal range that film can reproduce and digital can't. For landscape photography, this isn't about how large you can print, but rather the level of detail captured. And oh by the way, large format film is equivalent to over a gigapixel.
3) Film is actually cheaper. Run the numbers of a good DX body (read: $1,000 and up) and then run the numbers of a good film body ($300 + maybe $5/roll of film, less when bought in bulk, and that's after you've developed it yourself) and you can see for yourself.
4) All the advantages of digital - after you develop the film, you can scan it in, get better images than $8,000 D3X's, and then do all the Photoshopmajic crap you want.
5) Better images. You're a little more careful of what you take when each picture actually costs you money, so when you get home you not only have more keepers, you don't have to sift through 700 photos per memory card to find them.
6) With a light table, I can arrange tens of photos around and quickly sort, organize, and examine them. On a computer, I need to load up each photo, zoom in, and pan around because even 30" monitors can't show me all the detail in a certain image nor can it really show me more than few images at a time with any detail.
7) You actually focus on shooting when you can't look down and see the results right after a specific shots, aka it helps you keep your eyes open and get more and better shots.
8) Forced obsolescence. So long as they keep making film (and trust me, they will) - even film bodies from the early 80's will never go obsolete. Digital bodies need to be replaced every few years because the new standard in digital will have come out (try shooting with a D1 or D100 today.... yeahhhhhh).

And those are just the ones off the top of my head. Professional landscape photographers still shoot large-format film, even for magazines and the like, because of the detail involved. Read more here: Why We Love Film

Of course digital makes more sense for most professionals, since time for them is money. But for the amateur, film is better for 90% of anything you might ever do.

In regards to the 35mm DX lens comment - that's not a wide-angle for cropped bodies. The point of that lens was to give a new generation of DSLR users what the nifty-fifty was for film - what the eye saw, with absolutely no distortion whatsoever. My 24mm cost me $240 and it actually does wide-angle (so wide-angle in fact, that it begins to noticeably distort and is the beginning of the focal range for super-wides), prop it on a digital body though and it gets brought down to an effective focal length of 38mm - which isn't wide-angle anymore, but a short normal lens. Good luck finding a wide-angle prime for your crop body - best one I see is Nikon's 20mm f/2.8D, which on eBay you'll be lucky to get for under $350.

 

[Montana]

I have to agree with Blash. If I wanted to shoot only landscapes, I'd use film. Perhaps even medium format film. Film has a quality that is very hard for a digital camera to capture. All the purist finger pointers can say what they will, but in my opinion, landscape and film go hand in hand.

 

[AlexColeman]

I understand the pure quality of film, but it is eventually expensive, and can never match the convenience of digital.

 

[CraniumDesigns]

who needs 87 megapixels? i get 10 megapixels out of my rebel xs and that's plenty for anything under a 18x24 print. i would only need more if i wanted to print a poster or something, and a better digital could accomplish that. there is a certain initial investment to digital, but the convenience of seeing ur shot immediately on screen without wasting film is awesome. especially when i only really like maybe 10-20% of my shots.

 

[fred0000]

I shoot digital and workin on Film I havent used it much but I have a question for bash (very very sorry to thread jack) but i can not for the life of me find a PM button, I have a D90 and a F65 are the lenses interchangable? i noticed in your sig you have your body then seperate lenses for both, i ask caus ei kinda dont want to find out the ahrd way. after reading this thread i really want to talk my film camera out more often, and if i could use the lenses for my D90 that would be great!. thanks again, and sorry to the OP for jacking this. Any one with the answer can if they would, just to get this out of the way and back on track.

 

[blash]

who needs 87 megapixels? i get 10 megapixels out of my rebel xs and that's plenty for anything under a 18x24 print. i would only need more if i wanted to print a poster or something, and a better digital could accomplish that. there is a certain initial investment to digital, but the convenience of seeing ur shot immediately on screen without wasting film is awesome. especially when i only really like maybe 10-20% of my shots.

Megapixels isn't just about blowing up images to historically-sized posters, it's also about detail. It's not just about seeing the sunset over a field of grass, it's about being able to see and pick out 50 times the number of individual blades of grass as well as the ladybugs walking across (admittedly a slight exaggeration, but still). And that's only the 87 MP figure - that figure doubles when you consider the fact that film has many more and truer colors than digital because a chemical process can store information much, much better individual pixels, which have a definite size (as small as they may be). As such, nothing beats optical printing either - but for that, you actually do need a darkroom, so I digress.

I shoot digital and workin on Film I havent used it much but I have a question for bash (very very sorry to thread jack) but i can not for the life of me find a PM button, I have a D90 and a F65 are the lenses interchangable? i noticed in your sig you have your body then seperate lenses for both, i ask caus ei kinda dont want to find out the ahrd way. after reading this thread i really want to talk my film camera out more often, and if i could use the lenses for my D90 that would be great!. thanks again, and sorry to the OP for jacking this. Any one with the answer can if they would, just to get this out of the way and back on track.

There's a reason why thread hijacking can be prevented - it's called creating a new thread in the appropriate forum (one of these beginner forums or the film forum) and then asking the question in the new thread. Just so you know for the next time.

To answer your question though without getting into too many details (since we are hijacking this thread afterall, however temporarily), any auto-focusing (AF) lens that you buy for your film SLR, the F65, WILL 100% work on your Nikon D90 digital SLR (DSLR). However, Nikon makes some lenses that are only for DSLR's, as noted by the "DX" in their name (and, as such, are known as "DX lenses" or "crop lenses"). Technically speaking, these lenses will work on your film camera (as I have done with mine), but the lenses will cause unfixable, indelible moderate to severe vignetting (when the corners of the photo are darkened).

Short version - everything's good except DX lenses will only work on your D90. Hope that helps.

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Aside from that, there is a reason why I hold onto my D80: digital has its uses. Like I said above, it's digital is required for professionals who, before, would have devoted 10 hours to doing what they can now do in 10 minutes. I keep it around for portraiture and telephoto, where a) detail isn't nearly as needed and b) the crop factor is useful, respectively. Also kept around as an extra light meter and test-shot body.