I admit it. I own five camera bags. That is not too bad though. I know of several people who have double that number and still aren’t satisfied. The problem with camera bags is that each photographic situation requires a different combination of equipment. I tried the one lens solution with an 18-200 mm VR lens, and thought I had the ultimate lightweight travel kit, but that didn’t work out. For city travel, the lens is not wide enough, the zoom is wasted, and I have never been blown away with the quality of the photos from the lens either. I keep it as my backpacking lens though, because in the backcountry, weight really does matter.

City travel is different though, especially old European cities with narrow streets and large crowds of tourists. My requirements for a city kit are:

• Wide angle for close-up work of buildings and other sites
• Fast lenses for indoor shots without a flash
• Relatively compact, but not minimalist
• Nice portrait capability for taking pictures of people in travel settings
• Camera bag that doesn’t make me look like a gear-head tourist

I should also note that these requirements are for leisure travel. When I am traveling on business and still want to bring a camera along, I lean more towards the minimalist side and would favor a single lens, since I need to carry a laptop and other business-related stuff.

My most recent leisure trip was to Florence, Italy with my wife Lisa. We planned to spend most of time in Florence with a day-trip to Siena. The primary purpose of the trip was not photography, but I knew that I would want to capture our memories as well as I could. I also knew that there would be times when the camera stayed in the hotel so that I could just enjoy myself.

That said, I solicited some advice in the travel forum on Nikonians, and I got a lot of great feedback. Some of the respondents advocated the 18-200 lens, but I had already ruled that out because of the requirements stated above (it is not fast and doesn’t do nice portraits). I had just bought the 17-55 mm f/2.8 and I definitely planned to bring that one, but the real pressing question was whether to bring my 12-24 mm f/4 wide and my 50 mm f/1.4 for indoor work.

Several posters strongly advised bringing the 12-24 mm for the tight streets and expansive views, and they were correct. The best decision I made was to bring this lens. While 17 mm is fairly wide on a DX format, it is still not wide enough to photograph many of the sites in Florence. I probably had this lens on the camera 50% of the time.

Here is a wide shot taken with the 12-24:

I also decided to leave the 50 mm at home. While much faster than f/2.8, I reasoned that it wouldn’t be wide enough to photograph the inside of cathedrals anyway, and I think that turned out to be true. In fact, I sometimes dealt with f/4 and its higher ISO just to get the wide angle needed inside, but most of my cathedral shots are 17mm f/2.8.

Here is a decent high-iso shot from inside:

Having decided on photo gear, I then needed the right bag. I have a Lowepro cube that would easily fit this kit and it has a waterproof cover as well. However, in a city, if the bag is getting that wet, so am I, and I am not carrying the kind of rain gear I might have at home in Colorado. There are two things I don’t like about this bag. One, it screams, “camera bag.” The other, it is so rigid that it bounces against me as I walk. I knew I wanted a bag of a similar size, but something softer and more stylish. After all, we also like to dress well when traveling abroad.

I found the Crumpler bags interesting for their unique looks, but I didn’t want to order one without seeing it and trying it out (and their website is horrible). I couldn’t find them anywhere here in Denver, but I had a trip to New York City this fall and was able to visit the Crumpler store there to test them out. I opted for the 5 Million Dollar Home. It is comes divided into 3 sections, but for these big lenses I took out one divider and just split it in two. It was a great bag for walking around in Italy and I am quite pleased with it (I got the khaki).

Unless some super new versatile lens comes out soon, this setup is likely to be my urban travel kit for a while. I never really missed the zoom of the 18-200 and the added quality from the 17-55 was appreciable in shots like this one.

Some people would complain of the weight from this kit, but I really didn’t find it troublesome. I see a lot of jokes in the online discussions about lifting weights if you buy the 17-55 lens, and that really isn’t a bad idea for those who find it heavy, because the lens is worth the weight and everyone can use some more fitness.

More photos from the trip are available here.

Or a larger set for those who really like to look at travel photos here.

tags: camera | lenses | Photography | travel