Digital SLR Photography - UK (2019-12)

I

T SOUNDS LIKE a cliché but, just like

people, landscapes come in all shapes and

sizes. From small and intimate waterfalls

and streams to wide fells reaching for as far as

the eye can see and grand mountain ranges,

landscape photography encompasses

everything the natural world has to offer.

And naturally, with this great variety comes

the necessity to approach the subject with

the right type of kit for the job in hand.

Most landscapes are shot with wide-angle

lenses ranging from 16-35mm to capture

wide and dramatic views. While this will

always be the case, ask any professional

landscape photographer what lenses they

have with them at all times and the majority

will say a wide-angle and a telephoto zoom.

This combination provides them with every

focal length ranging from 16mm or 24mm,

all the way to 200mm in just two lenses;

weight is kept to an absolute minimum

without limiting creative options.

A telephoto lens is basically any lens with a

focal length longer than a ‘standard’ 50mm.

The most common telephoto zoom is a

70-200mm, but even a 24-70mm on a

full-frame camera or an 18-55mm kit lens on

an APS-C camera (offering an equivalent

focal range of 24-82.5mm) can be

considered telephoto at its longest focal

length. So, even if you don’t have a mid-

range telephoto, such as a 70-200mm, you

can still achieve subject isolation within

distant landscapes, although in some

situation such as mountainous areas a

70-200mm will prove much more useful.

The advantage of shooting wider scenes

and those with distant subjects, such as hilly

and mountainous areas, with a telephoto

lens is that you can get closer to the subject

and capture cleaner compositions with no

distortion. When shooting from one valley

to the next, for instance, a wide-angle lens

would capture too much of the area where

you’re shooting from, leaving the distant

focal point lost in a sea of irrelevance. The

ability to zoom in and isolate the subject,

however, will provide the focal point with the

prominence it needs and a much more

refined composition whether shot at 70mm

or as long as 200mm.