The focal length of your camera lens dictates the final results of the picture you are going to take, but there are other factors as well. Learn here how to use focal lengths to your advantage during traveling.
Introduction:
Travel photography is all a mix of portrait, street, and landscape photography, and it entirely depends on you which one you are to do during your travel plans. Although the final results of the picture you will show to your friends will depend highly on many different factors, the most fundamental and transformative is the camera lens focal length of your camera.
If you are a novice to these things, it is worth mentioning for you that the focal length (measured in mm) is the distance measured between the center of a lens and the camera sensor placed inside the camera. This distance helps the camera to channel the light at the right spot and determines a lens’s angle of view and its magnification on the sensor.
Just to give you an idea, the focal lengths of lower numbers like 16mm and 24mm give more angle of view on the sensor, and focal lengths like 75mm and 120mm magnify an object by narrowing down the view of the camera.
The narrowing and widening of this view are not the only factors determining the field of view here; in fact, the sensor size also plays its role. For example, a cropped sensor like the APS-C sensor will get less field of view as compared to full-frame cameras. Now, put theory out of the way and link the practicality of camera lens focal length to your travel plans:
1. Perspective > Focal lengths!
If you noticed above, we mentioned that the focal lengths influence the field of view, but we didn’t say that the final result of your picture is influenced by focal lengths. It is quite a myth, actually, that focal length is a decisive factor in taking good pictures during traveling. In fact, it comes down to the perspective of each and every photo you intend to take.
And this perspective is the relative size and position of objects in a photo and is directly influenced by the position relative to the subject you want to capture, not by the camera lens focal length. For example, taking pictures of the same object at the same distance but with different focal lengths gives a consistent perspective of the photo being taken. But the difference only in pictures is due to the cropping happening on the sensor. In short, you can take a lot of pictures with the same focal length just by changing positions.
2. Whole story or a zoomed-in?
Standing in front of a mountain with two different lenses will give you completely different pictures (unless you are using a zoom lens; in that case, you won't have to swap lenses). Using a wide-angle lens will capture a complete and majestic picture of this mountain, while lenses with higher focal numbers will lose field of view but will focus only on one part of that mountain.
To capture both of the worlds, many people carry lenses of higher and lower focal lengths but find themselves in the inconvenience of swapping lenses all the time. To pick the proper lens kit for your next travel plan, you can keep a full-frame lens with a range between 18-24mm and 105-120mm.
For the folks rocking cropped sensors, you can pack 14-18mm to 70-80mm; all of these lengths can help you capture most of the scenarios, but again, it's not all about focal lengths but perspective as well.
Also, packing two lenses for both wide-view and zoomed-in use cases is great. Did we forget to mention how inconvenient it can be to drag the lenses along with your camera body when hiking on a mountain? No, we didn’t; we are just mentioning again to point out how troubling it is to carry a heavy bag full of camera gear during traveling plans; no one likes it!
To avoid that, there is quite an established fact in this niche that replacing a set of two lenses with a single and capable 35mm lens can do the job and is actually loved by many photographers, as such lenses are easy to carry and their focal length strikes a balance between capturing expansive landscapes and producing flattering portraits.
We recommend opting for the S35 variant of the SIRUI Night Walker T1.2 lens series with 35mm focal length, the sweet spot of travel photography. This lens can be a great all-rounder for your traveling thanks to its compact and lightweight design. You also get a solid performance in both wide-angle landscapes and tight portraits while maintaining sharp images thanks to its extra-low dispersion and high refractive index glass elements.
3. Night and Low-Light Photography
A camera lens has to perform during nighttime when you are sitting near a bonfire telling your friends back home about all the adventures you had during your trip. To get proper, presentable photos at nighttime, you need a camera (mounted on a tripod) that has an aperture between f/1.2 and f/2.8 and can let in a lot of light to capture crisp night photos with grains.
Again, the SIRUI Night Walker T1.2 is recommended here, as it is designed to perform in such low-light conditions without any need to up the ISO numbers. Being compact in size, these lenses are great for travel photography and deliver a professional-grade shallow depth of field even in low-light conditions.
