100-400mm for Travel Photography

1Dx4me wrote:

Rexgig0 wrote:

Experiment: Try walking with your 100-400mm lens in the nearest large local city, to visit temples, churches, museums, and such. A large city is a large city, whether local or on another continent. The significant differences, regarding carrying much weight, would be elevation and slopes.

One DPR member, who posts in the Nikon section, uses a 80-400G, which is comparable to your 100-400L, a 16-35G, which is comparable to your 17-40L, and, if I recall correctly, a serious mid-range zoom, which is considerably larger and heavier than your 50mm, for quite serious travel, which includes cruises, with much walking, for hours, in cities at ports of call.

I have yet to travel with my EF 100-400L II IS, and until an upper left arm injury heals, will not use any large lens very much, so cannot yet run this experiment for myself.

i visited san diego a few months ago and took both, my 24-70 f2.8 II and 100-400 II. i had my 24-70 on my camera the whole time, never touched my long 100-400! there might be a rare possibility to use a long tele lens once in a blue moon when traveling in a city but not much, in my experience!

This makes sense. When I and my nephew traveled from SE Texas, across the South, to the Chesapeake Bay region, and back, in 2015, I knew we would be parking in some areas with property crime issues, and did not want to leave anything valuable inside the vehicle. I decided to take what I knew I could easily carry, which was two D700 camera bodies, a 24-70/2.8G, and an ultra-wide-angle 14-24/2.8G zoom. I rarely used the camera with the UWA zoom, except at night, and rarely wished for a telephoto, except for a few occasional birds. The 24-70/2.8 was suitable for most of the images.

In 2016, I and my nephew traveled to the Atlanta area, and I brought my Canon* 5Ds R, an EF 100/2.8L Macro IS, and EF 35/2 IS. Due to some really bad weather, we did not walk-about much in Atlanta, but the EF 35/2 IS served quite well for most of the images.

In 2017, I scheduled vacation for later in the year, and, well, we had Harvey the Hurricane, then clean-up and repairs, during which the left arm injury happened, so travel, with or without my relatively new EF 100-400L II IS, has been postponed. (I am able to get out and about, but would have to use a tripod much more, if wanting to shoot with a large tele.)

*I have not switched systems. I started with Canon, due to the fortuitous availability of a bag of pre-owned gear. I built upon the Canon foundation, and later added some Nikon gear. I still tend to use Nikon gear when anticipating much low-light shooting. My wife shoots Nikon, so we can share lenses and some other equipment.