London and day trips

[paul]

H all,

 

Headed ro London next week for a business trip. Will have one day of walking around and prob a couple of day trips out of the city.

 

Will be shooting the xt1

 

Option 1: 27, 14, 56

Option 2: 18-135, 35/1.4

 

Thoughts suggestions

Edited June 1, 2016 by paul

[Mike G]

Option 2 is the more versatile in my mind!

[paul]

Kinda leaning that way too. I can alway toss in the pancake for my walk around the city for a bit of street shooting.

[johant]

I had an afternoon in London, and went with the X-Pro1 and 28mm.

 

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

[milandro]

The one focal length lens approach can be refreshing but a tad constrictive.

 

If one has never been to a place and wants to shoot as many as possible images without feeling that the lens choice constricts one performance one needs to broaden that and the best way to do it is to have a zoom.

 

The 18-135, although being a very large and heavy lens, would certainly be my choice.

 

Personally, unless I have a more than good reason to take a lens such as the 35mm 1.4 ( what is that you are going for sure do that would require you to use this lens? Theater? Concert?) I wouldn’t bother and keep it limited to the 18-135.

[paul]

I am thinking the 35 for inside shot in castles, churches, perhaps an off chance i will shoot at night. Also can double as a wider portrait lens of my wife on location.

[milandro]

The wider portrait lens with the 35mm I get completely but I don’t understand it in the other functions and the 1.4 is not an aperture that it has many uses “ at night”.

 

This is where mirrorless photography deeply differs from reflex one.

 

With a reflex camera you view the picture, as projected from the lens onto the prism for composition purposes at the highest aperture ( so the 1.4 is very useful) but then shoot at the value that you need for depth of field, but with a mirroless camera the image is an amplified one (in terms of luminosity), it is the same as shooting with a videocamera, if you shoot at a completely dark scene, at some point, you will get an amplified, noisy image even at the maximum aperture ( which will have limited depth of field).

 

I rely on the superb ability of Fuji mirrorless to shoot with ISO values which were simply to be dreaming about in the film era.

 

Have a nice trip.

[quincy]

I've been to London lately. If you want to take all the usual tourist shots around the Thames (City, Tower, Southwark, Lambeth and Westminster), I'd recommend to take at least the widest wide-angle lens you have.
 
I took my Samyang 12/2, the XF 27/2.8 and the XF55-200. The 12mm was definitely my most used lens, followed by the 27mm for buildings that were further away or when I wanted details. I used the long zoom mainly for squirrels and birds in the parks, once when two apache helicopters flew low over the Thames and a few times to compress stuff, like making the london eye big in the background while shooting through st. james' park, and such. Next time, I'd leave the long lens at home.
Now, back home, I wish I would have had the XF 10-24/4. That would have been the only lens I needed, and it would have made switching lenses unnecessary.
 
About the 35 for interior shots:
Taking pictures was prohibited in almost every church I was in. I think my only church interior shots from the whole trip are from the Abbey Church of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Bath (which is gorgeous, by the way). However, even if you find a church where you can take pictures, you wouldn't want to take them at f/1.4, because everything except what you focused on would get blurry, and I think you wouldn't want to take them with a 35mm lens, because of the narrow field of view.

 

About the 35 for portraits:

When you're in London and want to do portraiture, why would you choose a wide aperture? If you want to blur the hell out of the background, no one will ever know that it was taken in London.

 

About the 35 for night shots:

Better take a tripod and do long exposures (or put the camera on one of the many ledges and rails around the city). There's lots of colorful light in the skyline and the buildings close to the Thames. Depth of field is your friend in landscape and cityscape.

 

 

tl;dr

I'd recommend the 10-24/4. If you only have the lenses you listed in the OP, I'd take the 14 and the 27 and have a nice, lightweight kit for a relaxed trip.

Edited June 5, 2016 by quincy

[paul]

Thanks... I also have an 8mm. Still thinking about bringing my gitzo traveler tripod

 

18-135, 27, 14 are all packed.