Today I explain to you why I don’t like off-road lenses. If you already own one of these lenses, please don’t be offended 😉 Off-road lenses aren’t that horrible, they have their audience and use, I just personally don’t like them. Today I explain why. If you were thinking of getting an off-road lens, you might be interested in reading this first 😉
What is an off-road lens?
To begin with, let’s define what an off-roader is. This is what is called, in the world of lenses, those that have a very, very wide focal length range. You already know that each lens has a certain focal length, there are lenses with a short focal length, for example 18mm (wide angle), there are long ones, type 200mm, that allow zooming, and there are those that cover a whole range of focal lengths, allowing you to use them at both 18mm and 200mm, for example, with all the focal lengths in between.
It is “all-rounder” due to the fact that it allows you to shoot both in the field of short and long focal lengths.
What is an off-road lens for?
«What lens do I buy?» must be the second question I receive the most from blog readers, after «What camera do I buy?«, which was already answered here.
In the market today, the offer in terms of objectives and lenses is immense. But this abundance of options, something that had to be an advantage, can sometimes be overwhelming. With so many options the choice becomes difficult. It’s as if there were a thousand dishes on a restaurant menu, you wouldn’t even know where to start. So many photographers end up opting for a lens that would theoretically allow them to enjoy all the options at once. The SUV. A kind of tasting menu of objectives. So one of the most frequent uses or advantages of an all-rounder is precisely not having to give up a range of focal lengths. Where other photographers would buy 2 or 3 lenses, each with a specific focal length, you can save yourself the effort and money by getting all those focal lengths while buying a single lens.
An SUV also helps you, in theory, to save space and weight in your backpack when you go on an excursion. Other photographers will carry several heavy lenses, plus all the effort and risk involved in turning the camera on and off, attaching one lens and detaching another. You, on the other hand, stand there with your SUV and go light on weight. What do you have a landscape in front of? You quickly switch to a short focal length (18mm for example). What puts a bird in front of you? Quickly switch to 200mm without having to turn off the camera or undock the lens.
An SUV is, in appearance, all advantages.
Why don’t I like off-road lenses?
Have you noticed how many times I have used the expression “in theory” and “supposedly” in the text so far? And it is that I see it like this, everything is beautiful but only in theory. In practice, an off-roader is far from making you the best photographer. Again, I emphasize that this is a very personal and subjective opinion, this is not an exact science.
Here are my reasons:
1) Greater the range, worse the optics: The optics, the lens, the glass, play a fundamental role in the quality of the photograph we take. Not all lenses offer the same optical results. The optical quality of a lens depends on several elements, one of which is the focal length for which the lens was designed. Normally lenses with fixed focal lengths, that is, those that do not allow you to play with various focal lengths, have a certain focal length and you can only use that one, for example a 50mm or a 35mm, these lenses being designed to work EXCLUSIVELY with that focal length, it is much easier for manufacturers to provide them with a very high optical quality, since the crystals inside them are combined to ALWAYS work under the same focal length.
The lenses made to work with more than one focal length are versatile, they effectively give you the freedom to shoot at 18, 50 or 200mm if you want, but of course, in order to offer you that freedom they do so at the expense of optical quality. Nor am I saying that they give horrible results, because otherwise they wouldn’t sell, their results are acceptable, but only that, they remain acceptable. They do not even reach half of the optical quality that a fixed focal length lens can offer you.
So, the larger the focal length range of a lens, the worse its optics.
2) SUVs let in less light: In general, off-roaders tend to have a relatively small maximum diaphragm opening. Maybe f/3.5 at best. In a fixed focal length lens, a 50mm for example, it is normal to find much more generous diaphragm openings, we plant ourselves directly at f/1.8 and f/1.4 without problem. Which affects huge amounts of light that will give us as a photographer much more flexibility to capture that photograph.
A detail is missing. In the off-roader I said before that in the best of cases we get an aperture of f/3.5 (it’s just an example), what I didn’t say is that we only have those f/3.5 in the smallest focal length of the lens, but at As we go up in the range of focal lengths of that lens, those f/3.5 are disappearing, giving way to much smaller apertures (worse light, darker, more moved and blurry photos, etc.)
Let’s see it with an example: An 18-250mm f/3.5 lens will normally give us that f/3.5 aperture only when we use it at 18mm. The moment we go up to the other end of the focal length, 250mm, we will see that the maximum aperture also changes until it reaches f / 6.3. Shooting at 250mm with an aperture of f/6.3 is very poor The truth: as I explained before, in these conditions much less light enters, with all the complications that this entails for the photographer to stabilize the image and achieve a correct level of sharpness and exposure.
3) You may not need an SUV: It is typical that at the beginning of our love of photography we want to monopolize all kinds of photos as photographers. That’s usually the moment when we think we need an off-road lens. The truth is that as we progress as photographers, our taste and photographic style are defined, as well as the type of photos/motives that we like to photograph. Most of us photographers end up becoming fond of a certain type of photos. There are landscape artists, portraitists, macro lovers, etc. That does not mean that we do not like to take other types of photos, most of us like to take more than one type of photos, for example, I love portraits and landscapes mainly. But I mean that not all of us like to photograph absolutely everything and with absolute regularity.
In other words, you probably don’t need to shoot at all focal lengths between 18 and 300mm. You will probably end up shooting especially in the 18mm if you are a fan of landscapes, or the 200-300mm if you are more into birds and animals. Or maybe portraits are your thing and you end up shooting almost exclusively in 50mm.
In the end, most of us photographers manage well with one lens or at most a couple. In my case I carry in my backpack a 50mm (for me, the king of lenses) and a wide angle specialized in landscape photography. Spot. I don’t need to shoot at 200 or 600mm, why would I want an off-roader? Is it cumbersome to switch from one lens to the other? No. Keep in mind that I am not changing targets between shots. After half an hour of landscape photos, can I end up getting tired and wanting to play with my 2-year-old son by taking some portraits? Yes, there I would change the objective, but I would not change it again immediately after a minute, but after a while.
I want to tell you that changing from one goal to another is something you will do occasionally and on time. There are Sundays when I go out with my camera and backpack and maybe I don’t change my lens during the whole session. Do not think that the target is changed before and after each shot.
4) Off-roaders clog your creativity: With a telephoto lens you frame and shoot, if you don’t like the photo, even if it has a solution playing with the composition or working on other aspects of the photo, your mind will always make you go to the easiest thing, change the focal length. So you shoot at 18mm and look at the result, you’re not convinced and all you do is switch to 30mm and shoot, then 100, 200 and 300mm. You see that no photo is worth it and you end up leaving it and looking for another reason to photograph. It is the laziness that causes the SUV.
When you have a 35mm lens attached and you want to photograph something, if you don’t like the photo, since you can’t change the focal length, you repeat the photo but change the focus, modify the perspective, move yourself to another angle. You work as a photographer. You put your brain to work. In short, fixed focal length lenses stimulate your creativity and help you put your most “photographic” side to work.
Outside telephoto. what is the alternative?
Have I convinced you? Once you know more or less what kind of photos you like to take, you have a huge range of options at your fingertips. I summarize them for you in this article with my most recommended SLR lenses.
Remember that half of the beauty of a photo lies in the lens with which it was taken. Choose your next lens with care and care.