LENSES FOR LANDSCAPES

Mike Harris explains how focal length affects your images, and why successful landscapes aren't always about going wide

- Mike Harris

Having a good-quality lens 30 is arguably more important MINS than a good camera body. This is especially true when it comes to shooting landscapes, because features like 4K video, high burst speeds and in-body image stabilisation aren't essential when it comes to photographing static vistas.

While landscapes are synonymous with wide-angle lenses, standard focal lengths - and even telephoto zoom lenses - can produce outstanding results. Faraway focal points that don't dominate the scene are easily lost when you use a wider field of view, and these are the instances where telephoto lenses can really shine.

The focal length of a lens is easily explained: the lower the number, the wider the field of view, and the higher the number, the narrower the field of view. This means a 24mm wide-angle lens provides a much wider field of view than a 200mm telephoto lens. Things get trickier for crop-sensor cameras, as you need to take into account the crop factor of its smaller sensor compared to a full-frame 35mm camera, but it's as simple as multiplying the lens's focal length(s) by the crop factor, which for most bands is 1.5 (it's 1.6 for Canon, and 2 for Olympus and Panasonic Micro Four Thirds. So, for example, a 60mm lens on a Nikon DX camera is effectively a telephoto, because it has a 35mm equivalent focal length of 9omm.