Which 3 camera lenses?

Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 | Guns, Photos |

If you’re to be stranded on a desert island, which three camera lenses would you want to have? Thom Hogan gives his answers and his readers’ answers.

It’s interesting to see the range of choices and how they reflect different photography styles. Some people are more interested in telephoto, some wide angle, and some macro. Some are content with mostly consumer grade 3.5-5.6 apertures, while some demand 2.8 or faster apertures. Some people like zooms and others want their primes. A few people are very keen on a quality lens in the 85mm to 105mm range for portraits.

Me, I’m still working up my kit. I’d definitely want my 70-300mm telephoto for wildlife and portraits. Beyond that my choices are a lot less certain.

I take most of my pictures with the 18-55mm kit lens that came with my camera because that focal range is so useful. With good light it works fine, but in poor light the exposure times go long and with no anti-shake technology like VR or IS the pictures get dark and/or blurry. I’m looking for a replacement or supplement that offers more range or a faster aperture.

I have the new Nikon 35mm 1.8 AF-S on order to take care of low light and shallow depth of field applications. I’m curious to see how much of my photography I can do with a prime. I’m a bit skeptical.

I have no experience with macro or ultrawide angle. Macro appeals to my inner natureboy, but it sounds time-consuming, what with the tripods and the rails and the bellows and the flavin! I’m leaning towards buying a close-up filter for the 70-300mm and going semi-macro for now. I’ll take up real macro when I have more time, like when my pre-school kids learn to feed themselves, cook for themselves, buy their own groceries, and drive themselves to the grocery store with the money they earned from the good jobs they got after graduating college. So that might be a while.

Wide angle looks interesting, but a little pricey on the zoom side. I’m knocking around the idea of renting a Nikon 10-24 or 12-24 for our next vacation to make sure I like it, but I reckon I will.

P.S. Added a “guns and cameras” tag. The desert island hypothetical reminds me of the gun board scenarios like “which three guns” and “what if you could only have one handgun and one long gun?” I especially liked Kim du Toit’s Crossing America scenario.

Tags: guns and cameras

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