Focal Length

Z

Zeagle

Member
I have been wondering what focal length lenses most people use in the park? At first I started off with 24-70 and now find myself using 70-200 for most of the day? Never seem to mount a wide angle lens except for Fireworks and the occasional group shot. Anyone else using longer focal lengths too?

Jason
 
i have a 24-105 that is my wain walkabout lens but i also have a 120-400 and 28-70, in addition to a 17-40.
 
My main lens is the 18-200. I find that most of my shots are in the 18-100 range
 
I have only been to the park with a rented 18-200 and I was all over the place within that range. The next time I go, I will be bringing my 28-135 because I think that will do nicely for everything that I might want to catch.
 
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My standard Disney lens is a 28-75. Used on a crop body that makes it even less wide than it already is. Overall I find it applicable to most situations in Disney World, but I do think the lack of a real wide end has limited me. In particular I can't get the kind of fireworks shots I used to get with the 17-55 kit lens. I have the Tokina 11-16 now, I'll have that available the next time I go, but that's actually going to leave me with a significant and awkward gap (between 16 and 28), I suspect. It'll be interesting to experiment with it, though.

The first year that I had the 70-200 I tried using it all over the parks and found that it really wasn't that useful. I kept it on because at the time it was my one "good" lens. But outside of Animal Kingdom I've only really found it to be appropriate for use to get shows and such.

Another way of looking at it is that I think that creatively I can deal with the 28-75 best. I'm having a lot of difficulty figuring out how to use the ultra wide, and at the other end I've heard that telephoto landscape shots can be good but I haven't really worked out how to accomplish that either. Except for one shot I got of SSE from across the lagoon, I think that worked out well. It was a shot of necessity, I wanted a shot of SSE with the 70-200 and the way to do it was from long range.
 
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Here's another with an 18-200 - it's pretty much always on my camera, unless I need my portrait lens (or a nice low light lens - my 50 1.8 is what I use then).

WDWFigment and Craig...are you guys carrying the VR, or is it the standard 18-200?

Kevin
 
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Forgot about the trusty 24-105 f4. A excellent general walkabout lens too, definitely more compact than the 24-70. I think I will have to force myself to shoot a wide angle lens for a day. That way I will see a new perspective on things. A macro lens may be a fun choice as well.
 
I use my 18-200VR for most of my photography. Last time I was at the parks, that was the only lens I brought and didn't miss my others. This trip I am bringing my beast for AK, the 80-400VR, and the fun Tokina 11-16. Mainly for blog material as I'm sure the 18-200VR will be the workhorse.
 
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I use a little bit of everything. On the dark rides, I almost always use a 50mm. Everywhere else, I'll use the 12-24, 28-70 and 70-200 depending on what I'm trying to capture.
 
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My previous camera had a fixed lens of 36mm, which I used for years...so that was as wide as I ever shot. I use a ton of telephoto there, because I had it.

But now, my main Disney lens is an 18-250 (on a 1.5x crop body), and I must say it has opened up alot more wide use than I ever thought I'd take. I always said I didn't need wide...until I had it. I do still love the versatile lenses like this though - that can give me anything from 27mm to 375mm in one lens...I can use it for castle and wide landscapes, and also for zooming in on animals at AK. I do pretty much use the entire range of the lens every trip...but I'd strongly recommend bringing a wide capable lens and discovering how much it expands your possibilities, especially getting full ride displays and vistas from tight sidewalks with not alot of room to back up.
 
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Hi, I'd like to add a question to this existing topic on focal length.

I'm going to WDW next month, first time with DSLR, and am wondering which lens is best for those darker rides like Pirates of the Caribbean and Haunted Mansion...a 30mm f1.4 or 50mm f1.4 on an APS-C camera? I'm in the market to purchase one of those lenses but the 50mm is much cheaper. So I'd like to ask you folks is the 50mm too close on those rides or would a wider angle 30mm be much better to justify the cost difference?

The 50mm is $350CND and the 30mm is double that.

Thanks!
 
it depends on what you're trying to capture. A 50mm on a crop body is just right for some shots and too narrow for others. I took all of these with a 50mm on a crop body:

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I'd start with the 50/1.4. From there you'll find out which direction you'll want to go.
 
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Thanks, I guess I just wanted some confirmation that 50mm (75mm on crop body) wasn't going to be too much zoom (too narrow) on many of those darker rides. I understand I won't be able to get all the shots I'd like but if generally speaking 50mm is fine for most of these rides, I'm ok with that.

Now what about f1.4 vs f1.7? I've read other comments here f1.4 is pretty much the minimum. mSummers, what f-stop and ISO did you use for your shots?
 
When asked which lens to get, I always say get the fastest one you can, so definitely get the 1.4

Those shots were all taken with an old Nikon manual focus 50mm f1.2 at 800 ISO. My camera at the time was not good at high ISO, so I didn't want to crank it up very high (as you can see from the pictures they're very grainy). Now that I have a camera that preforms better at high ISO, I'm going to get a 50mm f1.4 before my next trip and probably start at 1600 ISO and move to 3200 if necessary.

Tim has excellent galleries of dark ride shots, and he's listed the camera settings. Here's the links

Pirates: http://www.themagicinpixels.com/photos/list.php?exhibition=85&u=453558,12

Haunted Mansion: http://www.themagicinpixels.com/photos/list.php?exhibition=106&u=453450,14
 
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Used 2 lens last trip (1st trip with the DSLR)

18-200mm & and a 50mm 1.4. I switched back and forth a lot, used the 50 for dark rides and some night work. I also used to look at scenes differently, because I found having a fixed lens forced me to examine shots differently. I went all the way to 200 a lot, using it to take 15 shots of the Haunted Mansion, and then stitched those shots together into one Mega photo.
 
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Here are some examples of various focal lengths and crop factors:

35 x 1.6:
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ISO 1600, 1/50 sec, at 1.4


85 x 1.3:
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ISO 6400, 1/40 sec at 1.2

50, no crop factor:
main.php

ISO 6400, 1/40 sec at 1.4 (Zeiss MF)
 
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