Which travel lens for A55?

[timcurtis@btopenworld.com]

I'm off to Nepal for 3 weeks trekking at Easter and I've just bought an A55.

I was thinking of buying the sigma 18-250 lens to take with me but it looks like it could be quite heavy. Would it be a good choice or is there another lens which would be better suited?

Thanks!

[ianpinion]

I take it Tim that you only want to take one lens with you? That's great if you want to save weight, but these superzoom lenses suffer from soft focus at either end of their focal length range and have a relatively small sweetspot somewhere in the middle. The trouble is, you tend to want to use at either it's widest end or narrowest. I'd only use aperture values between f/6.3 and f/11 for optimum performance with this type of lens.

Otherwise, take a 10 - 20mm and a 50 - 200mm.

[chris-p]

Ian is right about the reduction in image quality the larger the focal length range of a lens (in general).

It's really a case of how much you want to carry and how much you want to spend. The 18-250mm isn't particularly heavy and is certainly lighter than carrying more than 1 lens. You could also look at the Tamron 18-270mm VC (if it comes in Sony fit) which is pretty good in it's class.

WRT the suggestion of a 10-20mm and a 50-200mm, you're leaving a gap in the middle but that might not be an issue. It's a much more expensive option though and you've got more to carry around as well.

[Bpzzr]

Hi I have the Sony A55. I am a merchant navy officer and I take my camera away with me. I find the folowing combination to work well. A Tamaron AF 17-50mm f/2.8, Good wide angle very good results. I also carry the Sigma 70-300 1:4-5.6. With these two lenses you can cover most of the range that you need and they pack down in to a small camera bag. I use a Cheap ASDA bought (£20) tripod, alright it has issues on stability sometimes but you can work around them, and at £20 you do not mind if it goes missing. It comes with built in level guage as well!. I have polorising filters for both lenses, a must.