What are the best lens for traveling or everyday use |BENGINNER CAMERA CAMP
If you are asking me which lens should I buy when I first get into photography? I would say, depending on what your style is. Many people don't understand their style or what they will shoot the most when they first get into photography, maybe portrait, landscape, animal, or astrophotography. Here are some of my favorite also the lens I still use the most nowadays.
Side note, all the lenses I mention here are for the full-frame. You can find a similar focal length on the apse/ crop body :)
First, Zoom Lens
16-35mm f4 or f2.8
70-200mm f4 or f2.8
First, of the best, let's get into the lens I used the most, 16-35mm f4. I have been using this lens for far too long, but all I can say is, if I only have one glass to bring on a trip, this is the one. This lens is good at the scenery and the portrait, a wild angle of 16mm, and a portrait mode of 35mm. Most of the landscape can be capture in 16mm and a pretty good looking 35mm. F4 is right in the middle aperture to use, can't compare the look on f2.8 or f1.4, but still suitable for day time portraits, a bit challenging in low light situations.
Bixby Creck Bridge, Big Sur. 16-35mm f4 | 16mm f11 1/200sec ISO100
70-200mm f4, a classic telephoto lens on every camera brand. People probably thought about shooting wildlife on this lens, that is a correct answer, but this lens also can bring you that kind of artist look for your photo. Because the background compresses much forward than usual, so the building or mountain this kind of faraway objects look bigger and closer while shooting, it really can give you a different look than using the wide-angle lens for scenery. This lens can bring you a clean, focused, and artistic eye for your photos.
Only using the longer focal length can make the building look like what you have seen in real life, which is mean more significant.
70-200mm f/4 | 70mm f11 1/125sec ISO100
The colossal mountain effect.
70-200mm f/4 | 92mm f11 1/125sec ISO100
Second, Prime Lens
35mm f1.4 or f1.8
24mm f1.4
35mm f1.4 and f1.8, another classic focal length for portrait photography. I don't have either the 35mm f1.4 and f1.8, but I do experience the 35mm on my 16-35mm f4. I can say I understand why people enjoy shooting on 35mm for portrait because 35mm is not too wide for getting too much information in a picture. The backgrounds are tide enough for letting the objects pop out while shooting the close up. It's not also tided to make the background disappear, especially if you still want to let people know where you are shooting this photo. If I have the bigger aperture of this lens, I believe my portrait would look more stunning than my f4 version.
16-35mm f4 | 35mm f4 1/1250sec ISO100
16-35mm f4 | 35mm f4 1/1250sec ISO100
24mm f1.4, this lens is a fascinating focal length. It's in the category of both a wide-angle lens and a standard lens. I do believe this lens was definitely created for traveling, especially for low light situations! When Sony launches this lens, they focus so much on astrophotography. This lens has a massive aperture, and 24mm is also a wide-angle lens, so when you were shooting the Milky Way, you really can capture the whole Milky Way! For a bigger aperture, you can make the shutter speed faster to shoot the stars more clearly. Lower the ISO without making the image look too dark and still have a high-quality photo. For portrait photography, this lens is a king for close up! It gets so clean and detailed while shooting the portrait but wide enough to get so much background inside the image, a super exciting way to shoot pictures. I love this lens so much, and I definitely would make another review blog post for this lens-specific!
My first Milky Way experience. 24mm f1.4 | 24mm f1.4 20sec ISO2000
Why the same focal length as the zoom lens?
The zoom lens has a smaller aperture typically (starting from f4, or f2.8 but super expensive, big, and bulky)
The sharpness is better than the zoom lens
The prime lens has typically a bigger aperture (usually in f1.4 and f1.8)
That extra aperture is more amazing than f 2.8 in a zoom lens, usually zoom lens doesn't have the aperture bigger than f2.8 because the lens would be unbelievable huge.
Because the lens is already super expensive, we want to have a lens that can be shooting for multiple purposes. Once you have a discussion, you won't be thinking about the other lens. You need to buy a lens that makes you enjoying and convince you to use it! Once you learn more and find your niches, you can finally move on to a different lens for different use. After you are a better photographer, you would still enjoy using the first lens you have.
Overall, suppose you have a tight budget and don't want to bring too much camera gears with you while traveling. In that case, the best lens I can recommend you is the 16-35mm f4, or if you really want that extra aperture, upgrade to f2.8, then the low light situation can finally be solved.
I always said to people that it's not because of the gear you have, it's because of the brain behind the camera. If you can't shoot a good photo of the gears you have, you are not a good photographer. I was using only one lens (16-35mm f4, and why I recommend it, lol) for two years before I bought another lens, and I still can create lots of great content, so do you! Please make the most of it, cheers!
