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Going to Alaska=wildlife+landscape WHAT LENS OR LENSES NEEDED?

matisrand
Apprentice

i have a 100-400mm L lens on canon t2i. next week i will be going to alaska. does anyone know what kind of lens or lenses i should purchase for, lets say, wildlife or landscape/mountains scenery ?     

18 REPLIES 18

MikeSowsun
Authority
Authority

You should have a zoom lens that starts at about 18mm for wide angle shots to get in large scenes and landscapes. My personal favourite would be the EF-S 18-135mm STM. It has great Image Quality and great STM Auto Focus.

Mike Sowsun


@MikeSowsun wrote:

You should have a zoom lens that starts at about 18mm for wide angle shots to get in large scenes and landscapes. My personal favourite would be the EF-S 18-135mm STM. It has great Image Quality and great STM Auto Focus.


18mm isn't very wide on a T2i. Maybe add the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8. And Canon makes a 10-22 or something similar, as I recall. It isn't a constant-aperture lens, but that shouldn't matter much outdoors.

Bob
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania USA

There are quite a few 3rd party options in the 10-20mm focal length range. 18mm is certainly wide... but 10mm is ultra-wide.

The f-stops aren't so important in these lenses for a couple of reasons. (1) you're likely to be outdoors taking photos in daylight and if it's night, you're likely on a tripod. (2) while it's interesting to have a sharp subject and deliberately blurred background... ultra-wide lenses don't do this well almost regardless of the f-stop (I have a 14mm f/2.8 and I can focus that lens to about 3' and the entire world is mostly in-focus... even at f/2.8). When shooting landscapes, you typically want the whole field to be focused.

If, in addition to your 100-400mm lens... you could only choose to bring ONE lens... then I'd probably favor the 18-135 over a 10-20mm range (Canon's is a 10-22).

In addition to an ultra-wide lens giving you a wider angle, it's going to stretch the depth and distance on the scene. Objects that are really just a little far away will seem a LOT farther away (and smaller). When using these lenses, it's often a good idea to find a subject which is VERY close to you and feature that foreground object against the background. Landscapes are often shot from a low height above ground to get some foreground interest (rocks, grasses, etc. especially if you can find an interesting object) .... otherwise the shot just looks like a panorama of very distant and very tiny objects -- none of which are large enough to inspect with very much detail.

If you read the reviews on the lenses in the 10-20mm range, Canon's tends to get the more favorable reviews.
Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

What do you think about a T7i with a Tamron 18-270 and the L100-400 for shooting Alaska from both land and the cruise ship?

Big overlap in focal lengths.

Yes, the 18-270 is for carry around much lighter than the 18-270 and the L100-400 with 1.4 converter for long shots.

If you have them both and weight is not a concern bring both. Otherwise, just bring the Tamron. 

John Hoffman
Conway, NH

1D X Mark III, M200, Many lenses, Pixma PRO-100, Pixma TR8620a, Lr Classic

I'll bring both

I hope some of this might help. I am not providing advice, but an example of what I did so you may improve upon it. The panoramas were created with hugin free software from TIFF files exported from Canon DPP. Canon DPP, graphicsmagick, and exiftool were used on most of the other photos. gimp was used on a few.

I was in Alaska in 2019. These photos are on individual web pages where I have included some of the exif data such as lens type, focus distance, and shutter speed. Most were made on a 6 hour cruise out of Whittier, or a train ride to Denali, or a bus ride in Denali National Park. Making photographs from moving transportation is challenging.

https://www.rsok.com/~jrm/2019_Alaska/index.html

 

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