The Perfect Landscape Lens
When I got my first DSLR, I knew I wanted to invest in prime lenses. In fact, the Pentax primes were one of the big reasons (in small packages!) that I bought the brand. The camera came with the kit lens, but I immediately sold that and got the FA 43/1.9. I loved and love this lens, but with an impending trip to Spain and Morocco, I figured I needed a wide-angle lens for landscapes and a longer lens for portraits, so I bought into the conventional thinking and purchased the DA 21/3.2 for the wide shots and the longer DA 70/2.4 for the portraits.
I took only those three lenses with me on my three-week trip and took a couple thousand shots. I quickly discovered two things: first, that if I want to go wide, I want to go ultra-wide, and second, that there is no one lens that’s better for landscapes than another. The reason…and I know this is ground-breaking…but the reason is that every landscape is different. You might be relatively close to some scenes you want to shoot. Others might be miles away. Some might have interesting foreground elements. Others might just have piles of dirt in front of you. You can’t just automatically assume when you’re standing on the apex of a mountain that the most interesting view is one that takes in all that space. Chances are you might be better off with a 400mm lens in that case (although I wouldn’t want to carry that all the way up the mountain!). Likewise, when you’re taking a photo of that mountain, you might be tempted to take in all that grandeur with a super-wide, but often the majesty would be better served with something like 135mm (case in point: this incredible photo from the inimitable Terry Alford).
When you decide to be a primarily-prime shooter, you really have to make tough decisions before you leave the house, and unfortunately you never really know what landscapes you’re going to run across and what you’ll need. Luckily it seems like you can get good landscape shots with almost any focal length if you give yourself time to find a shot that works with the lens. Conversely, when it just doesn’t work, you have to just move on and try to live with no regrets. Or you could just buy a superzoom.
Here’s a collection of some landscapes I’ve done with varying focal lengths, from widest-to-longest:
@ 12mm with the DA 12-24/4
@ 16mm (with the DA* 16-50/2.8):
@ 21mm (with the DA 21/3.2):
@ 31mm (with the FA 31/1.8):
@ 43mm (with the FA 43/1.9):
@ 70mm (with the DA 70/2.4):
@ 77mm (with the FA 77/1.8):
@ 100m (with the D-FA 100mm Macro – yes, a macro lens):
November 13th, 200911:52 am at
What a great post once again, Keitha! I have to say that personally I’ve been seriously wanting a DA 15 mm ltd lately, mostly for landscapes. While the DA 21 mm is nice and compact, the focal length does doesn’t seem to be short enough. Not that I’d have one of those yet, either, but one can naturally use the FL with the kit zoom.
Have you considered the 15 mm or are zooms enough at that range?
November 13th, 20093:07 pm at
Right when I got my camera I was madly crazy about the wide-angle lenses. So much that I went overboard and got myself the fisheye.
It is great fun to play with the crazy distortions that it produces, but now I am not so amused anymore. I think I’d be better off with a “serious” wide-angle that would replace my kit + fisheye combo.
I’ve seen that you have the fisheye yourself. What good use (situations) have you found for it? When does the light go on in your brain saying “ah! time to dust off the good old fisheye” ???
November 15th, 20097:15 am at
Are all those lenses at your disposal? If so, you are very lucky but I think a good photographer makes due with what they have in any situation and taking three prime lenses on a trip anywhere is a good number. I was just in Tokyo and I took a Takumar 28mm, 35mm, 55mm and a Jupiter-9 85mm with a K1D and a flash…just in case. All weekend I only used the 28mm during the day and the 55 f/1.8 at night.