The management and transport of camera lenses in the field can be a challenge. I like to suggest looking into your camera bag
and find out what lens you actually use the most before heading out the door on any shooting assignment or even one of our workshops.
You’ll soon realize that you seldom use all of your lenses. Newcomers seem to select an expensive lens for everything, from telephoto to macro, for fear that they will miss that important shot because they don’t have a particular lens.
I find this odd, considering it’s always good to have a pre-vision of what you’re seeking to photograph before you step out the door. Many approach landscape photography as a spray and pray, catch-all, and sort later operation. It’s a good idea also to explore images captured in a particular natural area beforehand. This will provide you with a good reference on what lenses to have in your bag.
Once you found your particular style or the types of images you’re interested in, this will go along way to thinning out your camera bag and seeking that perfect lens to capture your pre-vision.
One way to find out what lenses really suit your style is to load some of your photos into Lightroom or Photoshop Bridge. Once done, explore the metadata and see what range of view you’re actually shooting in the most. This makes that purchase of the expensive lens simple and more justified. This new lens will be the one most likely in your camera most of the time. Now, you’ve just lightened your gear bag up quite a bit. You’re not likely to miss a shot, because you’ve explored the angles you enjoy the most, and now you have that lens that fits the bill.
This is actually a good exercise for many people who are new to photography and they purchase a camera with a kit assortment of basic beginner lenses, from telephoto to wide-angle.
These lenses, for the most part, get the job done. These are variable aperture lenses and are great for the beginner that has not reached the critical hair splitting curse that plagues many photographers on the quest for sharper, cleaner images not afforded with inexpensive basic camera kits.
What they do is provide the newcomer to photography the ability to experiment and find what camera angles they particularly enjoy, without much expense.
All the best,
Mark Jansen
