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I’m more or less settled in my mind on what I’m going to pack for our trip to Iceland. I’ve got a strategy of outerwear and innerwear, we’ve researched the weather, I’ve thought about what pieces of luggage we’ll use. I’ve made two more zippered pouches to replace the ones I lost in the fire that we used for Kyrgyzstan. And Dude found our travel power adapters, so that’s great.
Except.
I have no fucking idea what photographic equipment I’m taking.
I mean, we’re bringing a little point-and-shoot camera, and our phones. of course. But.
I’ve got a Nikon D7100, and so I’m bringing that. It’s fairly large and heavy. I own a number of lenses and am not going to bring them all.
(cut for excessive photo nerdery. yeah, i’ve worked in a camera store for twelve years now.)
I’ll bring the 17-50 f/2.8, with image stabilization, that’s a good low-light lens for middling-distance stuff– portraits, interiors, some scenery. But it’s not that wide, really. You want wide for landscapes and sky scenery. I’m really hoping for aurora borealis. A 17 isn’t going to cut it for that.
I have either a 10-20 or a 10.5mm fisheye. I brought the fisheye to Kyrgyzstan, that’s what I used for the night sky shots, like this one [https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/46359309452/in/album-72157676895177208/]
but as I was going through to print out stuff for gift photos, I felt like most of the daytime shots with it were too distorted, too gimmicky. (Like this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/45497621095/in/album-72157676895177208/)
Oh huh, of course I took the D7100 to Iceland in 2015. I had nearly the same exact stable of lenses then as I do now. I should look at what I used.
This one was taken with the 10-20, it turns out. (Flickr gives you exif data if you scroll down, tells you a lot about the photo actually!) [https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/44542013360/in/album-72157703274846451/]
Looks like I had the 18-270 and the 10-20 with me that time. I know I brought a lot of lenses because we went to Norway too, I’ll have to look through those albums to see if any of those were with others. I think i brought at least one prime lens for portraits at the wedding we were attending. As I’m not going anywhere where I know anyone I don’t think I need to worry about good portrait lenses. The 17-50 will do.
Honestly, since I got the D7100, I rarely use the primes. I used to really need the extra bit of aperture– they go to 1.8 or even 1.4, but I don’t know that I’ve ever even put the 1.4 onto the D7100, because the sensor’s just that much better. I guess I’m glad I learned photography when I did; the D300 era was the last time sensors were weak enough that you still had to know what you were doing. After that upgrade, and boy that was a while ago– used to be you’d get three years out of a camera, but they literally have not done fucking shit since the D7100′s generation and its low-light and video breakthroughs. Now everything’s mirrorless and miniaturized and seamless for video, but the technology’s not really any better. But the difference in the images I took with the D300 and the D7100 was so startling… and that’s just not the case now. I haven’t been wowed by anything I’ve used since.
I guess I see my coworker’s point– he wants to switch to the Fuji X mount, for weight and size savings, and here I am trying to pare down my seven or eight go-to lenses to figure out how to just bring two or three, but– I’m going to trade all of these in and for what? They only make like five lenses for the X, so. No thanks. I’ll keep hauling my shit around a while longer. Wow me better, new tech.
I’m more or less settled in my mind on what I’m going to pack for our trip to Iceland. I’ve got a strategy of outerwear and innerwear, we’ve researched the weather, I’ve thought about what pieces of luggage we’ll use. I’ve made two more zippered pouches to replace the ones I lost in the fire that we used for Kyrgyzstan. And Dude found our travel power adapters, so that’s great.
Except.
I have no fucking idea what photographic equipment I’m taking.
I mean, we’re bringing a little point-and-shoot camera, and our phones. of course. But.
I’ve got a Nikon D7100, and so I’m bringing that. It’s fairly large and heavy. I own a number of lenses and am not going to bring them all.
(cut for excessive photo nerdery. yeah, i’ve worked in a camera store for twelve years now.)
I’ll bring the 17-50 f/2.8, with image stabilization, that’s a good low-light lens for middling-distance stuff– portraits, interiors, some scenery. But it’s not that wide, really. You want wide for landscapes and sky scenery. I’m really hoping for aurora borealis. A 17 isn’t going to cut it for that.
I have either a 10-20 or a 10.5mm fisheye. I brought the fisheye to Kyrgyzstan, that’s what I used for the night sky shots, like this one [https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/46359309452/in/album-72157676895177208/]
but as I was going through to print out stuff for gift photos, I felt like most of the daytime shots with it were too distorted, too gimmicky. (Like this one: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/45497621095/in/album-72157676895177208/)
Oh huh, of course I took the D7100 to Iceland in 2015. I had nearly the same exact stable of lenses then as I do now. I should look at what I used.
This one was taken with the 10-20, it turns out. (Flickr gives you exif data if you scroll down, tells you a lot about the photo actually!) [https://www.flickr.com/photos/dragonlady7/44542013360/in/album-72157703274846451/]
Looks like I had the 18-270 and the 10-20 with me that time. I know I brought a lot of lenses because we went to Norway too, I’ll have to look through those albums to see if any of those were with others. I think i brought at least one prime lens for portraits at the wedding we were attending. As I’m not going anywhere where I know anyone I don’t think I need to worry about good portrait lenses. The 17-50 will do.
Honestly, since I got the D7100, I rarely use the primes. I used to really need the extra bit of aperture– they go to 1.8 or even 1.4, but I don’t know that I’ve ever even put the 1.4 onto the D7100, because the sensor’s just that much better. I guess I’m glad I learned photography when I did; the D300 era was the last time sensors were weak enough that you still had to know what you were doing. After that upgrade, and boy that was a while ago– used to be you’d get three years out of a camera, but they literally have not done fucking shit since the D7100′s generation and its low-light and video breakthroughs. Now everything’s mirrorless and miniaturized and seamless for video, but the technology’s not really any better. But the difference in the images I took with the D300 and the D7100 was so startling… and that’s just not the case now. I haven’t been wowed by anything I’ve used since.
I guess I see my coworker’s point– he wants to switch to the Fuji X mount, for weight and size savings, and here I am trying to pare down my seven or eight go-to lenses to figure out how to just bring two or three, but– I’m going to trade all of these in and for what? They only make like five lenses for the X, so. No thanks. I’ll keep hauling my shit around a while longer. Wow me better, new tech.
