UKC

I have recently acquired a full frame mirrorless camera, and I have 24-70, and 100-500 zooms. Which are heavy.

For my hikes and walks it’s going to be landscape photos, I no longer climb, save for the occasional scramble, I hike all over Britain, and also big snow plods in big mountains, Alps, Dolomites etc.

I'm looking for a prime lens, to save weight, for carting around the mountains, and am undecided between 35 or 50mm.

I’m aware that in the mountains, you can’t always get closer, or further away.

I’m curious as to what you lot use, and what are the pros and cons of the different focal lengths in mountain environments.

I always used a 35mm (f2.8) on FF, you can always crop.

but now for saving weight a u4/3 E-M10 & 17mm f1.8

To be honest, for landscape photos and saving weight I would not go for a prime lens. If your camera system offers a pancake lens (usually 35...40mm), take that. If not, the usual kit zoom lens offers more possibilities than a heavy prime for almost the same if not less weight.

The first thing I could omit outdoors is large aperture...

Good point!

I have a Nikon 42mm pancake and it is really useful. it is f2.8, but manual focus, but not that close focusing for flowers or other close-ups. Most of the time if I am running or doing something faster / more adventurous I just use my phone!

If you're on Sony, the 28-60 FE is tiny and gives you plenty of flexibility, it's tiny, and weighs virtually nothing. I'm quite happy having that on my A7C in my leading pack multipitching. 

35mm gives greater feeling of space, especially with foreground interest

I went Micro Four Thirds because the camera and lenses are a shed load smaller and lighter than full frame.

But for your camera, I'd stick with a 24-70 lens but just buy the best quality one that you can other than a kit lens.

What is the 24-70 and the 35mm and 50mm lenses you're looking at?

I'm curious how much weight you can save.

My Sony 20-70 f4 is 488g, I think of it as lightweight!

I saved weight by not going 2.8, as someone else said, given how easy noise reduction is nowadays.

On focal length, 35mm as my widest lens would really limit my options, let alone 50, unless I was confident making handheld panoramas.

A lot depends on whether you are walking to take pictures, or taking pictures while you are walking

It’s a Canon R5 mk 2, with the rf 24-105 L.

looking at any rf 35-50s

Mainly taking pictures while walking in photogenic places.

I did just that, sold my 5D mk 4, and got the LUMIX G9, but was very disappointed, I guess I was spoiled by the 5D, so I want to go back.

I understand that one is MFT and the other is full frame, but what were you disappointed with?

Image quality

Features

Ergonomics 

I know that my mate's Panasonic s5m2 takes better quality and resolution images than my Panasonic G9m2 but the image results are so small that you would really have to pixel peep with a side by side comparison.

It really boils down to the fact that I’m a habitual heavy cropper, somewhat mitigated by my  point that you can’t normally get closer in the mountains. The weight saving, to me, was not sufficient to offset the quality of my crops.

thanks, I was trying to id lenses for weight comparison, when I noticed you said 24-70 in first post and 24-105 here!

Which is it?

Regarding the prime lenses, have you never zoomed out wider than 35mm for foreground and sky interest?!

IMHO, is way too long for a landscape lens.

One of my pet hates is skylines crammed up against top of frame though 😂

Does this not suggest to you that moving to a fixed prime lens isn't the best idea? 

I've just been out and about on Skye for a few days and just used my usual walkabout landscape lens, which is the excellent 24-240 zoom. It's not lightweight by any means, but if you are someone that likes to crop in hard to frame interesting bits of landscape, you should probably look at something similar. Or if you want to use primes, then  upgrade to something with ridiculous cropping power such as an A7IV, but it'll never be as good as getting close with the glass.

Sorry, I don’t know why I wrote 24-79, it’s a 24-105.

The 24 - 105 is 700g

The 50mm is 160g

The 16mm is 160g

The 24-105mm is L-series, the 16mm and 50mm aren't, they're still good Lenses just not professional standard or weather sealed.  

Or picturing yourself taking a walk

 I thought the OP said looking at RF 35 and 50mm, I didn't see 16mm, although if you  really wanted a prime, that would be  better, as you can crop in, but not out!

Ignoring 50mm, the RF 35mm I found was a 1.4 (which I'm ignoring again) and

RF 35mm F1.8 IS Macro STM  305g, which is still a night and indoor lens, unnecessarily fast and heavy.

It looks like you found a cheaper series, which makes more sense on the weight saving?

But overall I agree with a few that the 24-105L is a really, really nice lens for the purpose , well worth the weight and I wouldn't be replacing it!

If you are only taking one lens, I would have thought it has to be a zoom. Otherwise you would just miss too many good shots. 

Sorry, yes the OP did say 35mm but I don't have one to weigh. 

Agree with Robert and Mark here, and the 24-105L is a superb workhorse.

Depends on the whats and ifs. In the last few years, most of my mountain and travel shots were with a 35mm f/2 on a Fuji X100 or something similar in the 28-35-50 range. You don't always need a superwide for travel or landscapes – I spent a lot of my career with a 16-35mm permanently glued to one camera, and while pretty useful for any rapid action shots from up close back then, the widest part wasn't actually my general favourite.

Especially for landscapes. It's just too enticing to go as wide as possible and as close as possible to any subject up front, for a more dramatic effect, which can be (and often is) just lazy.

But since I no longer work in that industry, I am pretty glad I have other choices than just the 16-35 & 70-200 f/2.8 PJ zoom combo. Of course the cooler photographers got to play with 24/1.4 or 35/1.4 or similar (as did I, up to making way too many wide‑open portraits at 35mm f/1.4 before I realised it's just another fad like the full‑frontal bare‑bulb flash in documentary photos), but the gist of it used to be those two lenses (with a 24-70/2.8 usually thrown in for just staged press conferences in limited space venues, where the 70-200 was just a bit too long).

Going a bit tighter often lets you make better composition decisions, especially if not covering a war, civil unrest or looting where some looser framing issues are totally understandable. I find the 28‑35mm range pretty nice for that, but of course, YMMV!

Just like with UK trad, Elbsandstein trad or similar – we often limit ourselves artificially (seriously, soft slings tied into a knot named "a child's head" in 'kinderkopf' as the only pro? And almost no bolts either?) for either a better experience, or perhaps to focus on the things that matter. Or toexperiment. Limiting choices is a valid artistic choice in itself.

Some of the landscape photos I am most fond of (and that gallery viewers liked the most) were shot wide open at f/1.4 or f/2. Which is an absolutely no‑go according to most landscape photo sites, guides and the such as in "everything must be in focus" – well, I have a surprise for them...

Just saying, go out. Photograph. Experiment. Find what you like. Don't just follow the crowd.

If I only take a single prime lens, I am usually pretty sure what I want to do with it. Unlike with a superzoom. Obviously a 35mm or 28mm won't cut it when the photographer's vision calls for a tight perspective with a tele. But it can still work.

I actually nearly said that if you want to save weight by just taking a prime, why are you carting around a full frame camera - just take a Fuji X100 (or I suppose a Leica if you have the cash). 

I am using my wide zoom (cropped 12-24) less and less. Having come round to the thinking that a wide angle is not for getting in lots of far away mountains but rather one near one, I often don't carry it if weight is a consideration.

But I must admit that I love framing details of the landscape and would never be without my 55-200.

I run a landscape photography magazine and competition and I'm also a climber. I really do know the compromises involved in camera weight and quality. I don't think there is an easy solution but my own personal answer is a Sony A7RIII (I'd buy a V if it was lots better and I could afford it, neither are true) with a Sony 24-105. The range of 24-105 is great but I could live with a 24-70. 

However, I've talked to a fair few photographers who work as climbing instructors when they have asked for solutions and it's never been primes that have come up. I've recommended the Olympus Em1 with a 12-45. Pretty small and weatherproof. 

I'm sticking with the Sony and 24-105 - the quality is worth the weight.

I went for a walk across the Pyrenees last year with a 27mm prime (APS-C). There were almost certainly good photographs I didn't take because I had the wrong lens - but I wouldn't have taken them anyway if I'd left the camera at home due to weight. I guess a lot depends on one's approach to photography and personal priorities, but if I could only choose one lens for walking the hills with, it would likely be a normal prime. I'm personally likely to get more bored carrying a 700g chunk of zooming glass than I am inspired by having it.

Excellent post, thank you. 

In particular
"Limiting choices is a valid artistic choice in itself." (it's why I preferred the limitation of Lego vs the greater freedom of Meccano as a child);

and "an absolutely no‑go according to most ... photo sites, guides and the such as in "everything must [such and such]" – well, I have a surprise for them..." (edited to broaden the vibe of it)

Used to bring a 35/2 and a 70-150 back in the film days with Pentax. Both really small, and the 70-150/4 was pretty much great for any landscapes that required a telephoto. The rest was pretty ok with the 35. Nowadays, I can do a 24mm‑equivalent panorama with the X100 anyways, if I need to go wider, given enough light. Most of the time good enough, and the rest of the time I'd be taking all my pro gear anyways.

I couldn't buy in to that for my photography. Limiting oneself to identical lego blocks forces you to use your imagination which is stimulating (and you can always use meccano another day if you want to), but miss a unique shot because you've not got the right lens and you are never going to get that chance again; it's not about imagination for me but about being able to photograph what I find in front of myself.

I can see the point of going out sometimes with just one lens to force oneself to focus on and explore its capabilities (just for practice if you like), but not when it really matters or on a special trip.

If weight and cost were no issue I would carry a full frame camera and cover every focal length from 10mm to 1000mm all the time. If I really had to only carry one lens for my Fuji it would be the 18-135 and I'd consider getting one for those for days when weight really is a big issue or in conditions when I really don't want to be changing lenses all the time. But most of the time I'm happy to carry my three zooms.

no argument from me on this. Everyone has their own approach and their own way of enjoying a process. 

After decades of lugging a SLR round with a big zoom; I’ve gone for a aps-c mirrorless with a pancake lens.  I’ve just given up carrying and bulk and weight around when I’m out in the mountains. The new camera isn’t much bigger than a compact and fixed lens means I don’t faff around or take the lazy shot. I focus much more on composition, including putting camera away as shot not quite right.

What is a lazy shot?

Is that the same as saying you miss a shot because you have the wrong lens🙂?

For me my Olympus OM-1 and 12-100 (24-200 35mm equiv) f4 pro lens is the best compromise in weight and bulk vs versatility and image quality

You get you camera out, play with the zoom a bit, but don’t move position to frame it well.  You just stand there like a sack of potato’s.

Why would you do that when you can both move position and zoom to optimise framing? Best of both worlds. If you don't it's your fault not the lens'.

No, in plenty of landscapes you most often miss the shot because you have had bad timing or are in a wrong spot to take the best possible shot anyway. Especially with longer lenses that exacerbate the parallax between any closer and farther subjects. Not because you don't have that 1000mm lens with you.

Last time I did a particular landscape shoot with roughly a 1000mm lens, I had to plan it for days beforehand, from timing to location to even precise elevation, otherwise it wouldn't have worked.

You don't really always stumble upon the equinox sun rising perfectly centered behind a distant church spire out of the morning mist randomly, wishing you had your supertele with you, do you?

Yes, I only very rarely carry my long zoom in the hills if I have something particular and planned in advance. It weighs a tonne! I bought it for wildlife.

But, as I said, I always carry my 55-200 and almost always use it (definitely more than my 10-24), most often on unanticipated  shots which I would have missed without it. Only two days ago I flogged up a mountain in the Pyrenees, expecting the best shots to be wide ones towards the peaks opposite, but it turned out that I was far more pleased with more distant snowy peaks beautifully lit at sunrise and perfectly framed in a nearer rocky col. The weight of the lens is really neither here nor there on top of all the winter clobber!

I should think half my most pleasing shots are planned but half are by luck (though it is usually luck having already made the effort to be in a good place at a good time).

That sounds a great combination. 

For my mountain photography books (in pre-digital days), using a Hasselblad with 120 roll film, I was always a three-(fixed-)lens man - a 50 mm moderate wide angle, an 80mm standard, and 150mm moderate telephoto. The Zeiss 50 and 150mm lenses were very big (about 3 ½ inches in diameter and about 6 inches long) and weighed a ton (well, over 770 grams each). The 80mm was much more compact. I also had to lug around a quite heavy Manfrotto tripod (with a simple ball-head to reduce weight). But it was all worth it for the quality of image.

I agree - I'm hardly one to moan about weight as I also lug my 5x4 and four lenses (110, 150, 240 300) up the hills and also have been known to take the 10x8 plus two lenses (300, and 600/800 combo) which is about 12kg 

So my Sony A7RIII is a compromise in itself but the quality is still good enough. If I wanted lightweight to go with this, I might choose the sony 20mm pancacke lens and the sony zeiss 55 f/1.8... 

Yes … I didn’t mention my 5 x 4 rosewood Wista field plate camera. Which I’ve now sold (many years ago, with all the Hasselblad gear). The biggest snag with that - actually there were many! - was that I had to take a much heavier tripod with me. Also a windbreak made of tent flysheet material. It was an unbelievable palaver but worth it for the odd double page spread.

After tentatively trying out a few alternative LF techniques, my admiration for the old photographers of yore coating their own plates in the field for their 18x24" cameras or such had risen considerably...

I still like using mine but I'll only take my lightweight Chamonix and couple of lenses into the mountains (about the same weight as my Sony kit). I also carry a small, lightweight golf umbrella for the wind - it was amazing in Iceland in 60-70mph straight line winds.

I've got a couple of friends who still shoot wet plate landscapes, it's another level of faff!! (I don't know anybody working with glass above whole plate though. 

I'm in awe of what Frank Hurley achieved on the Shackleton expedition with his camera and the technology available.

The lightweight golf umbrella sounds a good idea.

Vittorio Sella is worth a look at as well!!

Occurred to me we might be answering the wrong question!

Most obvious way to save massive weight is sell it all and get top of the range APS-C camera and lenses. 

Yes, I'd been thinking that. No point in the FF camera if it means compromising on lenses.

Did that, regretted it.
Want to buy a top of the range APS-C camera and lenses?

As a matter of interest, why? I sometimes toy with the idea of going full frame*, but I know it would mean carrying a lot of weight around because I couldn't compromise on lenses.

*I covet that Nikon with Fuji-like retro knobs and button controls.

https://petapixel.com/2023/08/01/canon-rf-28mm-f-2-8-review-a-golden-pancak...

?

yes I'm curious too. What did you get?

I said earlier in this post that the weight saving was not worth the loss of image quality. I also said said I was a heavy cropper. 
I had a 5D mk4 with a 24-105 zoom. - 1590g.
I got Panasonic Lumix G9 with 12-60 zoom (24-120 equiv) - 1065g.
So basically the 525g difference was not worth the inferior image quality.
My new R5 with 24-105 zoom weighs 1563, so 498g heavier than the Panasonic.

I'd rather ditch the coffee flask or lose a pound off my belly for the sake of the best pictures.
Obviously the more lenses you carry may have a bigger total weight saving, but I think the much touted weight saving is a tad over-hyped.

I have decided to persevere with the zoom, and lose some belly weight.

APS-C Cameras are getting better but they still don't save a huge amount of weight and when I tried a few out last time, they didn't have the sensor quality. 

If you were going smaller, I'd go micro 4/3 but you're dropping even more quality in my opinion. 

However, quality and 'look' is a personal thing so some people will be happy with different quality and look than I would be. 

That said - I've just reviewed the competition I run (Natural Landscape Photography Awards) and some of the best small camera images have been taken with the Olympus OM1mk2 and the 14-42mm pancake lens (or 12-45 f/4 PRO for better quality) or the Fuji XT-3 4 or 5 with an XC 15-45 (or XF 16-80 for better quality).

 

My old analogue camera had 3 or 4 lenses to choose from but the 28mm f3.5 virtually lived on the body. I’ve never really valued having the zoom capability, I always used to prefer walk about til I got a nice composition.

It seems you can have best image quality OR heavy cropping but not both. With a full frame system availability / weight / cost may preclude an ultra long lens, hence the need to crop. However excellent portable pro  MFT lenses are available in the 150-400 (300-800 35mm equiv) range.

You have prompted me to look up what weight I carry around. My Fuji X-T2 with three zooms giving 10-200 (FF equivalent 15-300) totals about 1800g. I expect I would be adding a good extra kilo to get that range full frame. 

I wonder whether that reflects a meaningful improvement in the Fujis over the X-T2 (in which case I should upgrade!) or whether it just means most people have upgraded. I am surprised that the budget XC lens is being used by serious photographers though (could just be the small sample size though)

Are the great majority of entrants using full frame?

The XC got a few good reviews from what I saw. There was only one photographer that was using it in the competition though but the results were pretty good. I've seen feedback saying that it's a real pain with the motorized zoom but then again it's tiny and light (which is the goal). The photographs taken with it were high mountain stuff in the alps so I'm presuming it's the lightweight nature that made the photgrapher choose it.

I've just gone through this years raws and nobody used it this time. Here's the X lens list of usage (people who got past the first round). 

 

I also just looked at the most used lenses and they're the Sony 24-105, the Canon RF 24-105 and the Nikkor 24-120. The prime Hasselblad 24 f/2.8 was pretty damn close behind and all of the 100-400 lenses did extremely well. 

Yes, I bought one (recommended by someone on here) to put on my old XT-10 body to give a lightweight combination for when sort of mountaineering (I just take my compact for technical climbing). But I absolutely hate the motorised zoom and find it almost unusable when in a hurry climbing - why do these things always zoom so fast that you inevitably overshoot. Need to think again.

That is very interesting that the wide zoom and long zoom were used so much.

Particularly interesting in the context of this thread that, along with the Fujis, it is overwhelmingly zooms. Food for thought for the artistically self-hobbling prime fundamentalists😉

There is absolutely no need to use primes for photography apart from self-satisfaction. There may be a benefit to creativity, but then again any limitation can be seen as such. 

The fact that many people are using zooms and older cameras says much about what tools are 'needed'. 

Here's a list of the cameras and lenses used by the top scoring images. 

Good zooms are a thing now, I have a 24-120mm Nikon Z, I am very happy with it although I was very sceptical when i bought it (I got it primarily for video initially) the reason I was sceptical id had the previous nikon version and just didn’t like the results, the inconsistency across the range etc. I sold it after 6 months.

Ive always had a soft spot for prime lenses and still use them but “quality” zooms are priceless for a day in the hills. My one proviso is the ultimately good glass still has a weight penalty but definitely worth taking the hit of a few hundred grams for the F 4 “pro” zooms that most manufacturers provide, I've also used sony’s 24-105mm f4 and they are a world away from zooms of a decade ago.

Depends on what you're photographing. For astro, primes still significantly outperform zooms, particularly for astigmatism and coma. Some are OK, but those are usually big and expensive (compared to primes). And big usable apertures rule!

What even is "improvement"? Do you ever look at your photos and go "I'm not happy with these results; I wish I had a different camera"? If not, why change?

I use an X-T1 and now increasingly a Nikon FM. The venture into 35mm has forced me to reappraise what "good" actually means in photography, because the result is very far from the technical perfection of a modern digital camera in objective technical measures. But that's absolutely fine, because none of those things are what actually make a good photograph at heart. They might become important if one is working commercially, or hoping to blow things up to big sizes - but they are entirely irrelevant to what makes a good photograph. 

A lot of my photography these days is documenting graffiti and street art around my city, and I've embraced 35mm for that precisely because it is far from perfect. Because it's far from perfect, I'm not even tempted to pixel (grain?)-peep, nit-pick and get bothered over irrelevant 'objective' measures of goodness. I feel that when one isn't distracted by these things, it becomes easier to see and judge by the important things. The story becomes the focus, rather than whether everything is still pin sharp when you zoom in 400%.

To be controversial, I proffer that hobbyist photographers obsess inappropriately over technical specifications. To be really controversial, I think many of the people who do focus on these things would become better photographers if they were forced to walk around with a pinhole camera for a year.

(I'm obviously not saying these things are entirely irrelevant - they are obviously important considerations if you're planning to blow something up to A2  or something - but how many of us are regularly making massive prints of our personal photography?) 

Yes, quite often. But then I'm weird. And I enjoy astrophotography as a pursuit.

For me it's really all about the 'process' rather than the end result. Very few of my pictures see the light of day, printed or otherwise. The engineer in me enjoys the process of trying to get the best possible picture with the equipment I (reasonably) have. The artist in me revels in the fact that photography (of any subject, not just astro) has made me 'look' at the world in a way I hadn't before. That's the real value. Not the picture.

Ah yeah - for specialisms they still have a place. Macro, Astro, Tilt/shift, wide aperture, soft focus, probes, wildlife, etc.

Discussion has moved, but going back to the original question:
Why don't you opt for a camera with fixed lens?

Don't know the english expression for "edelkompakt", but something like this:

https://leica-camera.com/de-DE/fotografie/kameras/q/q3-43-schwarz#

full frame/60 MPixels, available with top notch ("prime") lens either 43mm or 28mm, below 800 gramms -- shouldn't that do?

There might be some other, more affordable suppliers...
(edit: e.g. Sony RX1, various DSLMs)

Early days (1979/80) I used to lug about, on public transport, not one but two medium format cameras, with several kilos of glass, in that massive case. I soon learned, and bought an Olympus.

So overwhelmingly full frame with zoom lenses. 

Before this thread I would have assumed that the best photographers were carting around a whole selection of primes, but it seems I am happily proved wrong.

I wonder whether the prevalence of full frame cameras actually reflects their superiority or whether it is just that most serious photographers use them.

Yes, my only prime is the manual Samyang 12mm f2 which I specifically bought for night photos (my wide zoom is only f4), but I do sometimes carry it instead of the wide zoom to save weight.

Well I sometimes wonder whether I would get better low light performance and generally more out of the shadows if I upgraded my Fuji or went full frame, but I certainly don't feel in need of more pixels (in fact when I get prints of A3 or bigger I am always amazed at the detail compared with the compromised resolution of a my monitor.