The last time I went on a legitimate vacation was 2014. We could refer to that time as BCE: Before Camera Extremism. I had three or four lenses at that time that I used on my cropped sensor Nikon D7100, so it wasn’t too hard to decide what ones I was going to bring with me. I always left the heavy work for my old reliable, but 70-300mm. It was a beast, but it did (and still does) beautiful work. It allowed me to capture each and every side of Israel I visited. 

 

Three years later, however, I am fully in the CE era, so the struggle is real in regards as to what lens to take on vacation. I can’t take them all, and nor would I want to (I have nightmares as it is about my 85mm falling and breaking moments before a wedding as it is, I don’t need any reason for that scenario to become a reality). But now that I am a little older and wiser, I know that my lens needs have changed that make my 70-300mm somewhat obsolete for my style (despite the fact that just this morning I received an email about this lens’s evolution): I know I have a hankering for wide angles, and I no longer live for major zoomability (which is not a real word, but should be).

 

I had read a blog post by Virginia-based photographer Katelyn James where she recommended the 24-70mm for travel, which seemed to be a solution to my problem. She shoots Canon, but there is a Nikon version as well (so far, so good). It had a decent f-number at 2.8 (it is this number that creates a soft, blurry background; the smaller the number, the wider the the aperture, and the softer the background detail. See how much I’ve learned?). And it is a solid Nikkor lens.

 

 But really? Would I be OK with that restricted limit? As optimistic as I was (as I said, I knew too much to use my previous primary travel lens).

 

Well, after two weeks on the east coast, you tell me…