I shared a few monochrome landscape photographs from the Isle of Skye in the landscape forum. (I won’t post them here since this isn’t the place for that sort of thing, so click the link if you want to see them.) I want to share some notes about my equipment choices for these photographs.
We visited skye during part of a 6-week trip in Scotland, Ireland, and England. Not surprisingly, that took us to quite a variety of locations — in addition to Skye, a weeklong hike in the Cotswolds, a total of a bit less than a week in London, three cities in Ireland, and a bunch of other English towns and cities.
We travel light, preferring to stick entirely to carry-on luggage when possible. (We didn’t quite make that limit on this trip, but we still kept it relatively light.) So my usual overseas travel kit is small: XT5, 27mm f/2.8, 14mm f/2.8, 50mm f/2. But I knew that I’d want more flexibility with the landscape subjects on Skye and for our subsequent trip into far Northwest Scotland. So I took only one small prime, the 27mm, for use in cities and other places where I wanted to go light. I added two relatively heavier and larger lenses, the 16-55mm f/2.8 and the 50-140mm f/2.8, plus the 1.4x TC. (For my serious landscape photography back in the US I use a larger full frame system, a big tripod, and lenses that cover a wider focal length range.)
That set of lenses covered a lot of ground, and I’m mostly happy with the results. Using those lenses and shooting handheld, the APS-C system with IBIS can do quite well, though it captures less detail than my FF system, and not having a tripod makes it more of a challenge to work our precise compositions and hold them.
