Junior wrote:
I will spend a day at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon in March. I have read several older posts on the subject and received good advice on filters: circular polarizing and neutral density. A post recommended a wide angle lens, but did not mention a specific lens. I have a Nikon D750 and I will take my Nikon 50mm 1.8G, Tamron 24-70mm 2.8 and Nikon 70-200mm 2.8 VR. My question is would the 24 -70mm be wide enough? If not, any suggestions. Any other advice or suggestions would be appreciated. Thank you.
I will spend a day at the South Rim of the Grand C... (
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I believe you'll find that 24mm is more than wide enough. If you want to include
everything -- but no detail -- in a single shot, take two or three snaps and stitch them effortlessly in post.
I think you'll find that even at 24mm, you'll often end up cropping later. You'll want a few shots showing the broad horizon, but your most dramatic shots will offer some detail and will probably be best at a short telephoto length. Consider my avatar. That's a small portion of Bryce Canyon, not a 180-degree panorama (I believe I shot that at 35mm, but I'm not going to dig out the image to check the exif).
If you do shoot with a wide, or especially an ultrawide, the biggest benefit is the ability to include some good foreground interest and perhaps an object for scale. Especially at a place such as the Grand Canyon, a photo really needs something for perspective.
I wish I had bookmarked the article, but I did not. Around a year ago, I read an article by a landscape photographer who went through his most popular images and surveyed the focal length he used. To his surprise, he said he used portrait or short telephoto length most.
While looking through my bookmarks for the article, I did find another which talks about landscape focal lengths. I'll paste a link here, as I believe it's worth a look.
[My post was rejected by UHH, saying that it will not allow any links to the site containing the article I linked, and that any user promoting that site will be suspended from UHH. Wow. Afraid of a little competition?]
Having said all this arguing for a longer lens, I'll now risk seeming hypocritical by admitting while recently making several photo treks looking for fall color, the two lenses I used most were a 24-105mm for mid-long range and a 12mm fisheye for other. I should note the fisheye is a full-frame Samyang that uses unique stereoscopic projection to eliminate typical fisheye distortion, making an image with no more distortion (correctable) than its 14mm ultrawide counterpart. With extremely close focusing and very long DoF, it was a joy to use for dramatic foreground in a landscape. Still, at least half my keepers were with longer focal lengths.