Lens

[Rowdy]

Hello everyone,

What lens is best for landscape photography.

Rowdy

[JR1]

What is the best car for driving on the road !!!!!

[Manfred M]

There is no "best lens" and it really depends on your camera (sensor size) and the type of landscape photography that you do.

At a high level, I would suggest that most people would look at a mid-range zoom (not super wide angle and not super long) as their first choice. That being said, I have used anything from an ultra-wide angle lens to a longer telephoto, depending on what I was after. It all depends on the situation and the composition.

Most landscapes are going to be done at a fairly small aperture (say f/8 - f/11), so you won't need super fast glass. If I were to look at my own work, I probably shoot 70% of my shots with a 24-70mm lens, another 25% with the 70-200mm and the final 5% with the 14-24mm (using a full-frame camera). My wife does 100% of her landscapes with the 18-200mm lens, on a crop-frame body. I have a 24mm perspective correction lens on order (hopefully arriving tomorrow) and suspect I will be using it for a fair bit of landscape work.

[Black Pearl]

The one you have with you at the time because if you have taken the time to learn how the lens produces images your eye should be looking around you and seeing pictures with it in mind.

If I have a wide lens on I tend to spot scenes that will work well with a wide angle, if I have a 50mm wide aperture on I tend to see/spot shots that I know will work well with a limited depth of field....and so on and so on....

[Mike Buckley]

I've seen wonderful landscape images made with focal lengths ranging from 12mm to 600mm.

[dje]

Hi Rowdy

I think the others have made the point rather well that there is no simple answer to this. Personally I use my 17 - 70mm lens on my 1.6x crop camera about 90% of the time, and my 10 - 20mm for the other 10%.

Dave

[rpcrowe]

I probably use my 12-24mm lens the least because I consider a WA or UWA lens as a specialty tool in landscape photography. I probably use my 17-55mm and 70-200mm (on a crop body) just about equally.

When I was working with a 24-70mm f/2.8L lens (prior to my 17-55mm) I also used that lens for about half of my images...

BTW: Using a tripod and shooting at f/8 or f/11 is a great equalizer between consumer and top-line lenses...

[Geoff F]

Hello everyone,

What lens is best for landscape photography.

Rowdy

Hasselblad

http://www.hasselbladuk.info/webstore/front-banner.jpg

You didn't mention your budget!

Alternatively, what camera do you use? What sort of landscape do you wish to photograph?

Some people will prefer a wide lens, such as 16 mm for example; but most of my landscape work is more like 50 to 70 mm because I tend to zoom in on specific parts of a scene.

[William W]

. . .What lens is best for landscape photography.

The points which are being made are:

1. there is no one “best lens”
2. Landscape Photography does NOT mean “I MUST use a Wide Angle Lens.”

In general a ZOOM Lens, will give you more options.

A few questions:

1. WHAT CAMERA do you have?
2. What TYPE of landscape images do you want to make?
3. ‘Gymea’ as in 2227?

WW

[chauncey]

I use but two lenses on my FF sensor camera...a 300mm f/2.8 or a 180mm macro.
Then photomerge if I want/need more field of view.

Surely you didn't ass-ume that you would get a consensus of opinion.

[ajohnw]

I recollect one professional on here saying that their favourite landscape lens is a 28-200mm on full frame.

I would suspect the bulk of his work wont be using the extremes and probably runs from 40 plus to 150 minus. Wide angle landscapes can be tricky. Longer lengths relate to what is there but this range tends to avoid extreme perspective problems and leave things looking natural. 200mm is pushing that a bit but not too far.

I've just bought a lens for this and more general use and after some thought settled on an 18-105mm. That gives me 28 to 157 on a Nikon crop sensor. Could go longer but distortion and resolution seems to suffer and I feel it could crop to longer focal lengths views anyway.

John
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