Apparently there’s a special place in every person’s heart for the Big Apple: no matter whom I tell about my vacation plan of spending a week in NY then exploring the surroundings, everyone strongly resonates, either based on experience, or the desire to get there. And I have to admit, it makes me quite excited too, to the extent that I’m actually thinking hard about what photographic equipment to bring along, to take the most out of the experience.
My Panasonic GX9 would have been an obvious choice, but I’m concerned that the 28-280 equivalent lens would be somewhat limiting. Although I don’t like wide angle that much, I’m quite confident I’ll need it for this occasion to command those dramatic buildings into my frames (say hello to architectural photography, in which I’m as noob as its gets). The 7-14mm Panasonic costs a whopping 450 EUR second hand. The other end – 280mm equiv. – sounds passable, but as much as I’m not a wide angle guy, I am a telephoto guy, so I’d definitely be happy with the reach of my 300mm APS-C Nikon lens, which is 450mm equivalent. Yet-another 450 EUR for the 100-300 equiv? With 200mm equiv as minimum when it’s on-camera? Thanks, but no thanks… Also, I want to have plenty of room for all the crap I’m planning to buy in the US, so I’m unwilling to take a bag full of lenses, despite the compact form of m4/3.
That leaves me with my most-used camera yet, the Nikon D3300. I have a Nikon 10-20mm wide angle, which I hate for its softness, plus the brillant, yet light 70-300mm. Add to it the slightly overrated 18-140mm which I use extensively, and we might have a winner… Or have we? I really don’t want to fiddle around with so many lenses to be frank. I’m okay with that on a hike, or when exploring an already familiar area, but I just don’t want to miss moments when visiting another continent. There’s a lens which I’ve been looking at for quite a while now. I know I shouldn’t buy it, because no serious optical performance can be expected from a travel zoom, but I can’t resist of having one single lens for all but super wide angle: enter Tamron’s 18-400mm Di VC II HLD lens. I read plenty of reviews, have seen lots of sample images – even downloaded RAW and played with them in lightroom – and this lens seems quite adequate for travel photography to be honest. Add to that the 400 EUR second hand price, weather sealing and a compact size for its class, and it somehow becomes a reasonable buy.
I also seriously considered an Olympus 12-200mm as 400mm equiv. would be perfectly acceptable on the long end, but that costs an additional 200 EUR and I still don’t have superwide coverage, which I’m keen having with me and learning to use properly – more on that in a subsequent post.
So the most likely configuration is
- Nikon D3300
- Nikon 35mm f/1.8 for portraits and low light
- Nikon 10-20mm for architectural photography
- Tamron 18-400mm f/3.5-6.3 for everything else
The body + travelzoom config weighs in at 1.1kg. This is the first time I’ll be taking a 1+ kg setup for all-day settings, but my shoulder camera holder should alleviate the issue. An added bonus of this setup is that the 35 + 10-20 fits in a single lens bag, and the body + travelzoom pair can come along in my neck – no extra space taken from my luggage.