Quiet Dog Images

So it has been a long week and I have been doing a lot of driving. This has given me time to think. I have been considering what lenses to carry with me when I travel to give me the most versatility with the least amount of equipment.

I keep three lenses in my small pack. These are the lenses I picked when I first switched over from shooting film with my Pentex to digital equipment. I wanted to pick lenses that would fit a wide range of shooting situations and I also wanted lenses that would be fast and function best in low light conditions.

On the short side I use the Canon EF 24 – 70mm f/2.8L USM. I find this to be a great lens for many situations. As a super wide angle at 24mm this lens is excellent for shooting land and city-scapes and at the longer 70mm short telephoto end great for portrait applications. An added benefit is the close focusing distance of 1.25 feet making this great as a pseudo macro. Overall this lens provides dramatic images, is fast enough for low light conditions, and provides versatility for many different shooting situations.

Anyone who has looked at my website can see that I like to shoot close up images of flowers and other subject in nature. For this reason I keep the Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM in may bag. I have to say this is probably my most favorite lens. The longer length of this macro gives a good working distance from the subject and the depth of field is not so shallow that I have to stop way down and decrease shutter speeds making hand holding near impossible to achieve the selective focus I desire. This lens also works well for portrait work and short telephoto, serving the dual purpose I am looking for in gear reduction.

As my final lens choice the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM most of my needs for a telephoto, especially combined with the Canon EF 2x II extender. This lens is a have to have in my opinion. I can use this for portrait work as the shallow depth of field make throwing the background out of focus easy. While as a telephoto I can get close to get great shots of wildlife in their natural surroundings and adding the 2x extender allows one to get great shots of those subjects that are a little more skittish. The lens gives sharp images at all focal lengths and in my opinion the versatility is unmatched in a telephoto zoom. I do not consider the extender a separate lens, but I always keep this in my travel bag.

These lens choices are perfect to cover most shooting situations and I think are good choices to consider if one is looking to start shooting a full frame DSLR like the EOS 5D and work well with smaller image sensors as well. Even though each has some bad points, most appreciably the weight, short of carrying a bunch of prime lenses, which increases equipment and defeats the point of this article, I believe these are a great choice in lenses for a bag to carry all the time.

Best,

Mark