The ultimate guide for Sony 7d mark ii and 7d mark iibest travel lens for sony 7dmark ii
The Canon 7D Mark II is a big camera and it’s not the easiest to carry around. Luckily, you can use a wide range of lenses for great photos and videos. This article covers all the best lenses for the Canon 7D Mark II, the full frame DSLR camera.
Just got an amazing new camera? Now it’s time to find the best lens for your camera. I review two awesome lenses and give you my ranking.
Best portrait lens for canon 7d
A lot of photographers have been asking what is the best lens for a Canon 7d mark ii. The first step is to recognize that there are many Canon 7d mark ii lenses built today that are very good with the latest technology available. For example the Sony-Made Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 IF Vario-Sonnar T Lens which can make a fine choice if you want a travel lens, prime lens or even portrait lens .
Which lens should you choose for your Sony a7S II? I’ve made a list of the most popular lenses that work with this camera and give you a good idea on which one will be right for you.
As the name of this post suggests, we are going to talk about the best travel lenses for DSLR cameras. This question is asked alot on forums and groups. But, there isn’t a proper answer to this question as it depends on your needs. I am assuming you guys know your needs.
Best travel lens for Sony 7d mark ii
As a professional travel photographer, I’m often asked about camera gear, and in particular, folks contact me to ask me what the best camera lens for travel photography is. Often people have bought a camera with an interchangeable lens, like a mirrorless or DSLR camera, and are looking to upgrade their kit to meet their needs.
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Offering the best wildlife lenses for Sony 7d mark ii in the world, we offer great sizes, values, and styles.Sony offers a variety of lens designs. The Solaroidenergy official website is the best place to shop for Sony 7d mark ii lens compatibility list. We boast some of the best Sony lenses in the market. You can find the best macro lens for Sony 7d mark ii on our website.Various Sony lenses are available right now.now. Select one now!
I’ve already written a guide to the best cameras for travel photography, but as that only covers camera and not lenses, I thought it would make sense to follow up with a regularly updated guide to the best camera lenses – specifically for travel photography purposes. After all, a camera is not much good without a lens!
Of course, this guide does assume you have a camera with interchangeable lenses, so that means a mirrorless camera or a DSLR camera. Within those two groups though there are myriad camera and lens manufacturers. And for the most part, lenses made for one camera system won’t work on another system.
So for this post, I’ve first put together a general overview of what to look for when picking a travel lens, which will give you some pointers in terms of features to consider. That way no matter what brand and kind of system, you’ll know what to look for when shopping for a camera lens.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
I’ve then provided specific recommendations for the more popular camera systems out there, including Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, and Sony. Even if your particular manufacturer or camera mount isn’t mentioned, you should be able to get a good idea from this post of what to look for in a travel lens, which specifications matter, and an idea of price.
Speaking of price, as well as a guide to the best lens for travel photography for each camera brand, I’ve also suggested a couple of options for the best budget travel lens for each camera system. I know that lenses are expensive, and not everyone has a huge budget to spend! Let’s get started.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Contents:
- What to think about when picking a lens for travel photography
- The Best Micro Four Thirds Lens for Travel Photography
- Best Budget Micro Four Thirds Lens
- The Best Mirrorless Lens for Travel Photography for Sony Cameras
- Best Budget Mirrorless Lens for Sony
- The Best DSLR Lens for Travel Photography for Nikon Cameras
- Best Budget DSLR Lens for Nikon
- The Best DSLR Lens for Travel Photography for Canon Cameras
- Best Budget DSLR Lens for Canon Cameras
- The Best Mirrorless Lens for Travel Photography for Canon Cameras
- Further Reading
- Looking to Improve Your Photography?
What to think about when picking a lens for travel photography
Picking a lens to travel with is a bit different to picking a lens for other situations. Not only will you be concerned with image quality, but also size and weight.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Whilst it would be wonderful to have a wide range of expensive lenses to take with us on all our trips, the reality of travel is that there is only so much we can take with us, and when you’re out and about all day sightseeing, you probably don’t want to be carrying too much.
So for travel photography, it’s better to try and focus on getting a smaller number of lenses that work well in a wide variety of situations. That way you are likely to actually take them with you and use them.
Of course, there are always going to be compromises – it’s hard to find a lens that does everything well, doesn’t cost too much, and is lightweight! But for travel photography, I think there are some good travel lens options out there.
You have a few options for lens types. My suggestion would be to invest in two lenses – a walkaround lens and a fast prime. An f/1.8 50mm would be the ideal.
Some manufacturers sell a travel kit, like this bundle from Canon, which can be a great value way to get some good lenses.
If you only want to invest in one lens because you don’t see yourself changing lens often, or carrying more than one lens, then you will want a good walkaround lens, and that’s what this guide will be focusing on.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
What is a walkaround lens you ask? Well, it’s a lens that “does everything”. It covers a good range of focal lengths, meaning you can get wide angle shots as well as zoom in on further away objects. It’s basically a one size fits all lens for your travel photography needs.
You will often find that if you invest in a camera that it will come with a lens that will suffice as a walkaround lens. These will work fine but tend not to be the top quality lenses.
If you are more serious about photography and your budget allows, I’d recommend that you buy your preferred camera “body only”, and then invest in a nicer walkaround lens, such as the ones I recommend, rather than the standard kit lenses. Don’t be surprised if the lens is more expensive than the camera either – good lenses are expensive, and a worthy investment.
Price considerations – how much to spend on a camera lens for travel photography.
Speaking of money, I’ve done my best to provide a range of lenses across various price points. More expensive lenses tend to be more capable, but can also be heavier, so aren’t always the best solution for travel photography.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
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For the budget-conscious reading this, I’m also providing my suggested best budget travel lens for each category. I appreciate that not everyone has a big budget for a new lens, so I want to provide some good value options too.
If none of the lenses in this post fit your budget, my advice would be to either stick with the kit lens that comes with your camera, or to check out the second hand lens market on either Amazon on eBay. For more on buying second hand camera equipment, see my guide to buying used camera equipment.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Now, before we dive into individual travel lens recommendations, let’s take a look at some of the key terminology and other considerations you need to be aware of when looking for a lens for travel photography.
Aperture
Inside a lens, there’s a hole that lets the light through to the camera’s sensor. This hole is referred to as an aperture. An aperture can change in size, with a bigger aperture letting more light in, and a smaller aperture letting less light in.
An aperture can be thought of as the pupil of your eye. When it’s bright outside, it is smaller so less light gets in. When you’re in a darker environment, perhaps at night, it opens really wide to let more light in.
The important number for lens apertures is how big the hole goes, which will dictate how well the lens will perform in low light situations. A wider aperture also allows for greater control over depth of field. See my guide to depth of field for more on that.
When you look at the specifications for a lens, it will always have the widest aperture listed as one of the key specifications. It will be a number, something like 2.8, 4.0 or 5.6. It may also be written as f/2.8, which is the formal way of denoting aperture. The smaller the number, the wider the hole.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Some lenses, and in particular the walkaround lenses we are going to be looking at, will have what is known as a variable maximum aperture. This means that the aperture will actually change as you zoom in and out, or change focal length. This is because as the lens barrel gets longer, the maximum aperture get smaller.
So for example, you might see a lens with an aperture of f3.5-5.6. This means that at the wide angle, the aperture is f/3.5, but when you zoom in, the aperture will drop, down to f/5.6 when you are fully zoomed in.
For travel photography, as with most photography, the wider the aperture the better – more light getting in means better low-light performance, making the lens more versatile for a range of photography situations. This is particularly useful for situations like taking photos of the stars, or shooting the northern lights.
The trade-off is that wider aperture lenses tend to be bigger, heavier, and more expensive. This will be considered in the lens selection.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Focal Length
The focal length of a lens is directly related to how much magnification it provides. It’s a number that’s measured in millimetres (mm), with the general rule being that the higher the number in millimetres, the more magnification you get, and the smaller the number in mm, the less magnification you get.
If you’ve previously used a compact camera (aka point-and-shoot), you’ll be used to this being described in terms of optical zoom – for example, a camera might have 10x optical zoom. That means that the difference in magnification between the most zoomed out setting and the most zoomed in setting is 10x.
In focal length terms, each doubling of the focal length results in a doubling of the magnification. So a 100mm lens will essentially make everything twice as big as a 50mm lens.
Unfortunately, matters get a bit confusing after this, because focal lengths have a different effect on different cameras. This is because camera’s have different sensor sizes, which affects the focal length, in what is known as a crop factor.
To take the example of the Canon DSLR camera systems. There are two main types of cameras available, the APS-C size cameras such as the consumer Rebel line, and the full frame size sensors in more professional cameras like the Canon 6D or 5D line.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Some of Canon’s lenses will work on both of these camera systems, but they will give different focal lengths. On the full frame cameras, the focal length will be as expected. On the APS-C sensor, there is a “crop factor” of 1.6, because the sensor is smaller. So a 100mm lens on an APS-C sized sensor will give the same result in terms of the image as you would be able to achieve with a 160mm lens on a full frame camera.
Thankfully, lens manufacturers all use the same focal length standard, so when buying lenses for your particular system, all you need to know is the crop factor. You can then multiply this by the focal length to get the equivalent focal length.
Don’t worry if this isn’t quite clear, for the lenses I recommend I will list both the focal length and the equivalent focal length where relevant. Equivalent focal length is what you need to really worry about, as it will let you compare lenses more effectively.
For travel photography, you want a lens that goes from fairly wide (16mm – 30mm) on the wide end, through to fairly zoomed in (70mm – 150mm) on the narrow end. This will give you good flexibility, letting you shoot wide scenes such as buildings on city streets, through to zooming in on the details. A good benchmark lens is a 24-70 f/2.8, which is generally known as the walkaround lens of choice for professional photographers.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
There are some walkaround lenses which offer much greater focal lengths, well past 200mm, including some of the recommendations in this guide. Just be aware that there are always trade-offs to consider, and whilst these can offer tremendous versatility, it’s often at the expense of weight and image quality, and in particular, image sharpness, at the longer end of zoom range (beyond 200mm usually).
I’m not saying not to invest in these lenses, just to be aware that there’s no such thing as a perfect lens for all situations!
Filter Thread
When you buy a lens, it’s always a good idea to pick up a UV filter to protect the front. You may also want a polarising filter (read about polarising filters here), or a neutral density filter (see my guide to neutral density filters here).
You’ll notice that these filters come in different sizes, and the filter thread size on the lens, measured in millimetres, tells you what that size is. It’s basically just a measurement of the diameter of the lens, which is the end you put the filter on. Ok, that was an easy one.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Image Stabilisation
Camera lens manufactures have all kinds of fun terms they use for image stabilisation. These include IS (Canon), OIS (Panasonic), VR (Nikon), OS (Sigma), VC (Tamron) – the list goes on.
Whilst the names and underlying technology vary, the aim is the same – to compensate for any movement introduced by the person holding the lens (that’s you), to help you shoot at lower shutter speeds without getting blurry photos.
As a general rule of thumb, the minimum shutter speed you can hand hold a lens for is the inverse of the focal length. So if you have a 200mm lens, you would not want to shoot at shutter speeds slower than 1/200th of a second. A 50mm lens would be 1/50th of a second.
Image stabilisation technologies exist to help you get shots at lower shutter speeds than that, and they are usually rated in terms of how many extra “stops” they give you to play with. A “stop” is photography dialog for a halving, or doubling, of the light.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
So if you went from 1/100th of a second to 1/50th of a second shutter speed and didn’t change anything else, that would be 1 stop.
Modern image stabilisation technologies offer between 3 and 5 stops of stabilisation. To put that in practical terms, if you are shooting with a 200mm lens at 1/200th of a second, 3 stops would let you hand hold down to 1/25th of a second. 5 stops would let you hand hold and still get sharp images as slow as 1/6th of a second!
As you can see, image stabilisation can make a huge difference, and it is definitely worth thinking about when looking for a lens. Of course, as with everything, there are tradeoffs, and an image stabilized lens will often be more expensive and slightly heavier than an equivalent non-stabilized version.
Weight
Weight is a pretty key consideration when it comes to picking a travel lens, as the idea is that you’re going to be using the lens for travelling. I don’t know about you, but the less I have to carry the better, especially if I’m going to be on my feet all day. So definitely keep the weight of your purchase in mind.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Size
As well as weight, you’re going to want to factor in the size of the camera lens. Portability can be an important factor for a travel photography lens, particularly if you’re travelling and prefer to pack carry-on only. So consider how big the lens is in physical terms when making a decision.
Mount Compatibility
When you attach a lens to a camera body, obviously it has to fit in place. It’s like a puzzle with two pieces – the lens has to be the right shape to fit into place and lock tightly.
In addition, because the camera needs to communicate with the lens to set things like aperture, focus and zoom, the electronic connections between the lens and the camera body need to line up and be compatible.
The system that is used is known as a lens mount. You basically “mount” the lens onto the camera. Most camera manufacturers have their own lens mount system or systems, so when you buy a lens, you need to make sure it is compatible with the mount type on your camera.
Many manufacturers have multiple lens mounts, depending on the type of camera. For example, Canon cameras can have an EF-S mount, an EF mount, an EF-M mount and an RF mount.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
It is very important when buying a lens to ensure that it has a compatible lens mount for your camera. Note that some lenses will work with multiple lens mounts – for example, an EF lens will work on both an EF and an EF-S mount. However, an EF-S lens will only work with an EF-S lens mount, and not with an EF mount.
Usually the mount type is made clear in the name of the lens. For example, the Canon EF 16-35 f/4L IS is an “EF” lens, which you can see in the name of the lens. So this will work with an Canon EF or Canon EF-S camera body.
If you are buying a lens from a third party manufacturer such as Tamron or Sigma, be aware that they usually make multiple versions of each lens, with different mounts. So always make sure you buy the version that will fit your camera.
Well, that sums up some thoughts on the various factors, features and terminology you need to consider when looking to buy a travel lens.
Now, let’s dive into some specific recommendations across various camera systems to give you some idea of what’s available at different price points.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
Note that these are primarily walkaround lenses that are suited for travel, rather than for a specific function like macro photography or astrophotography. If you are interested in the latter, see our guide to northern lights photography, which has some specific lens recommendations for night situations.
The Best Micro Four Thirds Lens for Travel Photography
Micro Four Thirds camera are a popular choice for photographers. These mirrorless systems are lightweight and portable, yet offer everything you would expect from a bigger SLR style camera, including full manual controls and great image quality.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
There are a number of manufacturers, with the most popular being Panasonic and Olympus. We use and love our Panasonic GX8 which is a staple part of our travel photography gear.
Both of these manufacturers have their own proprietary lens stabilisation system that takes advantages of stabilisation technology in both the camera body and the lens. This means that whilst lenses will work across different micro four thirds cameras, to take full advantage of the stabilisation technology you need to match brands – so a Panasonic lens needs to go on a Panasonic camera body for the best results.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
In terms of crop factors micro four thirds cameras have a 2x crop factor, so you need to double focal lengths to get the equivalent focal length.
1. Panasonic Lumix G Leica 8-18mm F2.8-4.0
With a 16-36mm equivalent focal length, this is the lens to get if you love shooting really wide. Personally, my wide angle lens is the lens I use the most, so this is what I’d go for on this camera system, even if it’s not quite as flexible across shooting situations as something with a greater focal range. It doesn’t have image stabilisation, but as the lens is so light that’s less of an issue, and image stabilisation on a wide-angle isn’t as critical.
Weight: 11.11 oz / 315 g
Check price on Amazon here, B&H here and Adorama here https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
2. Panasonic Lumix G Leica DG 12-60mm Power O.I.S. F2.8-4.0
As a walkaround travel lens, it’s hard to argue with this 12-60mm lens from Panasonic, which offers a 24-120mm equivalent focal length and sharp results throughout that focal length, even shooting wide open. The aperture stops down a bit as you zoom in, but this is a lightweight lens that will do pretty much everything you could want, and includes image stabilization (Power O.I.S).
Weight: 11.29 oz / 320g
Check price on Amazon here, B&H here and Adorama here
3. Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 7-14mm f/2.8
My choices for the Olympus micro four thirds system are essentially their versions of the Panasonic lenses above. This is the wide angle, with a focal length equivalent of 12mm – 28mm.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
With a fixed f/2.8 aperture this is a very fast lens at all focal lengths, although this does make it a little bit heavier.
It also comes with dust and weather sealing. It doesn’t have lens based image stabilisation, but the majority of Olympus MFT cameras have in-body stabilisation which makes up for this.
Weight: 1.17lb / 543g
Check price on Amazon here, B&H here and Adorama here
4. Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 12-100 F4.0 IS PRO
With a focal length equivalent to 24-200, this is pretty much the perfect walk around length for travel photographers. It is water and dustproof, and features image stabilisation equivalent to an incredible 6.5 stops when used with a compatible Olympus camera.https://b4ad7f87a0154babb6004190326102bf.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html
That added focal length does add some weight and bulk though. If you’d prefer a lighter lens and a faster aperture at the expense of focal length, check out the cheaper Olympus M.ZUIKO Digital ED 12-40 F2.8 instead.
Weight: 1.23lb / 561g
Check price on Amazon here, B&H here and Adorama here
