After shooting photography for a decade and HDR photography for half of that, you end up figuring out a lot of little weird nuances.
One of the biggest questions I always had when starting out was, what lenses should I buy and which lenses are best for what? For example, what lens should I use for HDR Photography?
Although this question does vary with style, there are fundamentals. Sports and Nature photographers typically use long lenses, Landscape photographers typically use Ultra-Wides, and Portrait Photographers typically use mid- to long-range lenses.
What Lenses Are Best For HDR And Landscape Photography?
HDR Photography is its own weird little thing, and it’s really kind of become almost trendy these last five years. It requires a totally different mindset and gear usage than all the other traditional photography. So what about Lenses? What do I need for HDR Photography?
It took me a while to understand this question, and the answer comes when you look at it the other way around. You have to ask yourself; What kind of situation should I shoot HDR Photography? The answer should be obvious: when I need a high dynamic range.
Shooting Situations
Typically, long lenses like 200 mm don’t need a high dynamic range because they are focused on a single subject. However, when you’re much wider, say at 14mm, you are capturing an entire scene filled with lots of different lights, shadows, areas of contrast and dynamic colors, etc., so it only makes sense that the best lenses for shooting HDR photography would be something wide or ultra-wide.
I rarely shoot HDR on anything over 70mm unless it’s a very specific thing in a high-contrast area, such as zooming in on a pier and capturing all the different details from a distance. I will only occasionally shoot HDR on a 50mm, but that’s mainly when I’m going for some sort of effect.
My HDR Lenses
My main HDR photography lenses are my Samyang 14mm, my Canon 16-35mm f2.8L II, or my Canon 24-70mm f2.8. Sometimes, I shoot HDR on my Zeiss Sonnar 35mm T* with my Sony A7r.
However, I shoot on a full-frame camera. When shooting on an APS-C camera, you’ll want a much wider lens to compensate for the crop. Like the Tamron 11-16mm.
