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Friend of mine is heading to Europe soon. Thankfully he listened to me when buying and has himself a 350D and a 17-40 F4L lens. That's it, however (oh, besides the rubbish kit lens).

He's travelling to europe soon and is keen to get another lens. Currently he is looking at the 70-200 F4 or the 24-105 F4 IS. I have the 70-200 and have travelled with the 17-40 and 70-200 combo and suits me okay, but I really think that maybe the 24-105 is a good idea as I doubt he'd need more than 100mm for landscape/cityscape type photos over there?

His main use back home is shots of his kids, just general photos (I know he has grumbled about 17-40 being a bit limiting for those shots - not enough zoom, but I tell him the 17-40 is a better investment than the 70-300 generic zoom he was looking at getting).

Suggestions - what focal lengths do you use for travel in Europe? He will be hitting Germany, Italy and Greece. I am imagining most of it will be wide angle type stuff anyway, with maybe the odd zoom on some feature of a building or city (in which case, is 100mm sufficient, or is 200mm better?).

Dion,

While I don 't know the lenses personally, I think I'm inclined to aggree with your thoughts, especially when you consider that if he gets the 70-200, while he'll gain that reach, he will also have a significant gap in the focal lengths available.

Dion, my suggestion would be to go wider i.e. Canon 10-22 or 3rd party equivalent. When I was in Europe last year for 6 weeks I used the Sigma 12-24 more than any other lens (I also had the 24-120 VR and 70-200 VR). The only time I used the 70-200 VR was at the Belgian GP and for a few shots at a wedding; the 12-24 was my 'walkaround' lens whilst in Europe.

When I was in Thailand (and other places) I found that it depended a lot on the location and what I was shooting as to what f/l's were useful (well duh )

Obviously landscape stuff and general 'feel of the town' usually work best with wider-angle, but for a lot of the statues and architecture stuff, I often found I was using the long end of my 70-210 (film camera) and wishing that I had more length (id guess that now being on a dSLR with the crop factor that a 70-200 would be about right). The reason was that I quite often wanted to isolate smaller things or else couldnt get as close as id like to something, either due to crowds or obstacles.

We went to Paris last year and looking at my images, I realised that the lens I used the most was my 70-200 f/4L (which I sold recently to buy the 24-105 f/4 L IS). To date, I do not regret selling this superb lens as I found that I was rarely using it. One day I might buy the 2.8 version if I feel the need for this focal length.

Cheers
Sheila

Thanks for the varied opinions all.

Seems he has a decision to make.

Perhaps looking for a series of lenses which specially built for Europe and North America
They're difference with the lenses, which are using in SEA and South America or South Africa.

birddog114 wrote:Perhaps looking for a series of lenses which specially built for Europe and North America
They're difference with the lenses, which are using in SEA and South America or South Africa.

Heh ... I guess it was more just what is the type of scenes over there. Here in Oz is much different to o/s and old European towns in terms of layout, style etc.