a nice long lens.

So it came today, a nice, long *lens.

In New Zealand on honeymoon, it became clear pretty quick that my setup of primes - a 24mm, 50mm, and 100mm - was lacking the length I desired, to capture the mountains and their essence. Especially while K enjoyed the setup I used to - my old 55-250mm stuck on a 7D crop body (so an 88-400mm range) - and zoomed tight into glacial details, cloud shadows, ridgelines, and the like.

Yes, the 100mm length is still spectacular, and was perfect for a number of different compositions throughout our couple of weeks tramping and camping around the South Island...

(This shot of the West Matukituki River valley, with the hint of the valley in the background... )

(And this shot of waterfalls across a valley under the Treble Cone ski field... )





But images I had in mind, like this one up the Tasman Valley (on right) towards Aoraki/Mount Cook (hidden in Nor'wester clouds on the left)...

(I would have loved to have been able to reach much closer to Aoraki/Mount Cook and capture it - with all the wonderful bokeh and compression of a longer-than-100mm-lens - buried in weather... )



Or another, in particular, of the glacier on Mount Bonar above the Liverpool Hut where we spent a night in Mount Aspiring National Park...

It's fine. I mean, yeah, I still came home with close to 2,000 frames - of which about a quarter were taken with the ol' 100mm. And as I scroll through them, edit them, I'm brought back to the moments they captured, of K standing against the thick, solid glass window of the Liverpool Hut, her reading in the Mueller Hut, the Hooker Valley glacial moraine, Aoraki/Mount Cook itself in all its astounding and sheer epic grandeur, fog-filled valleys, sunlit valleys, waves on Lake Wanaka, moments in the camper van, and on, and on, and on...

But it'll be exciting (albeit it means I'll have to carry it) to have twice the reach, for those details that get lost even with a 100mm.





* I have still held true to my having never purchased a new piece of camera gear, sticking to only (only, only, only) shooting with primes, and keeping weight at the top of my consideration list for the treks in that my equipment must be carried... The Canon 200mm f/2.8 was an awesome option and an easy choice - significantly more affordable (around $500 used vs. $1k) and lighter (about 1-1/2 pounds vs. 4 pounds) than the stupidly-ridiculously-heavy-expensive 70-200mm f/2.8 zoom...