Gear selection for Europe trip

Nobody wins unfortunately.

Hi TS,

I used only the 24mm 1.4 and the 50mm 1.2 only and found it sufficient.

Ted.
Let's face it. Most of the people that are using flash inside a museum where flash is prohibited, do not even know how to turn off the flash. Ruining it for the rest of us.

I was in Paris in 2012 and took photos in the D'Orsay. They just did not allow photos in the special exhibits.
I like to take a zoom, preferably with IS, and a fast prime, like the 35F2.
If going back for another trip to Europe, I would want a fast prime for indoor, low light, and a zoom. On full frame, the 24-105 would be great, along with the 35F2IS, or the 50F1.4. On a crop I would want a zoom, and a fast prime-the 35F2IS. I would rather have an ultrawide along, than a long telephoto. On full frame, 24 should be wide enough for most of your shooting. The only place where I missed a 70-200 was at Notre Dame, and I wouldn't carry a lens for just one use...on a family vacation.
The 5DIII gives you great low light performance, but there are some pretty dark galleries in the Louvre and the Dali museum. If carrying a zoom, I would rather have one with F4 and IS than F2.8.

I would take a 24-105 and a 35 prime.
And lots of cards.

artyH wrote in post #17325700
I was in Paris in 2012 and took photos in the D'Orsay. They just did not allow photos in the special exhibits..

I am surprised and pleased to hear this. Maybe they changes the rules back to what they were previously. I might be visiting there myself next Spring, and would look forward to using my improved equipment: 70D vs 30D, 15-85 vs 17-85, etc.

The main problem the museum had was with bands of people standing right in front of pictures and taking "selfies." thereby blocking the view of others in the galleries. This was especially a problem for me, as my best "pictures of pictures" are usually taken at a distance with a longer lens. Doing this often minimizes reflections from lighting.

Perhaps they should allow photography only with DSLR's and ban cellphones.

artyH wrote in post #17325700
I was in Paris in 2012 and took photos in the D'Orsay. They just did not allow photos in the special exhibits.

I was stopped right in the middle of d'Orsay when I was trying to take a shot of the wall clock. It was in 2013. This year nobody bothered me, but I do not take pictures of pictures. In fact, my best (to me) museum shot was a photo of a crowd of people, all with cameras, taking shots of Mona Lisa in the Louvre!

JeffreyG wrote in post #17285844
I'd take my 5D3 and probably just my 24-105L, because that kind of vacation is specifically where the IS equipped broad range zoom is most handy. I'd probably leave the UWA and the other body home and in your case just bring the 24-70.

There will be odd shot where wider than 24mm would be nice, but unless you are a super lover of UWA all the time, I bet you find you don't need wider than 24mm all that much. I travel to Europe a lot and I stopped taking my 16-35 because I just didn't need that wider end much.

+1 for this. 90% of my photography is travel photography and 90% of my shots are taken in this focal range. Taking more lenses with a family is probably going to end up being just more suff to carry unnecessarily.

I have visited Europe three times in the last two years. This is what i take in terms of lens/accessories:

Canon 16-35 F/2.8 II
Sigma 35 1.4 ART
Canon S95
iPhone (which ever one i have at the moment)
Tripod (only take it because its very small and light. I pick specific days to carry it not always)

Thats it. Europe is filled with very small towns. Very narrow streets. To get it all in you need to go wide. I see you have a 17-40 i would pack that. You have a 50 Sigma i would pack that for speed. Take a P&S and go enjoy the trip.

I took a flash with me the first time around as well as a the Canon 85L. Both never came out of the bag. The 16-35 was on there 90% of the time. While the Art came out in low light situations.

Interesting enough when i was there two years ago there was no sign you could not take images in the chapel. Here in this shot i took you can see a gentleman with his phone stretched out taking a picture. Many others were doing the same and the guards said nothing:

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/dW5X​aq _MG_8581 by CiclismoNY, on Flickr

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/dW5V​hG _MG_8569 by CiclismoNY, on Flickr

Buy the 50mm 1.8 for $100 new, and take only that...youll be happy to have a light package and low light ability

I know this is an old post but I realized I never followed up after everyone gave me lots of good advice for my trip.

After taking all the advice I got into consideration I had planned on taking my Sony RX100 III and my Canon 5d3 with a small selection of zoom lenses including my 17-40L, 24-70 F4L and 70-300 DO.

Two days before leaving for my trip I had a complete change of heart and bought an Olympus E-M5II with the 12-40 F2.8 lens. I already had some other m4/3 lenses from an older Olympus PEN I had.

This turned out to be a great decision. The E-M5II was an easy to use great handling camera but the real benefit was the size of the lenses. I could go out for the day and drop an extra lens in my wife's purse without any hassle since they are so small and light. My camera bag went down about 3 sizes to the point where I could stuff the whole bag into my one small piece of luggage along with all my belongings. For the purpose of a family vacation I had a quality pocketable camera in the RX100 and a lightweight ILC for the rest of the time. The camera + lens was light enough that having it hanging on my shoulder was barely noticeable when I wasn't using it.

Will I be trading in my FF Canon gear for the Olympus? Definitely not, you are clearly making a sacrifice with the 4/3 size sensor but for family travel it was pretty awesome.

Some of you, most of you then probably Americans, write about "travelling to Europe" as if it was a place no bigger than Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and with no more variety either.
The proper stuff to bring can't be determined unless you at least have an idea about where you are going.
Fortunately, that's well described by the OP in this thread. Just don't think that Europe is a place that looks the same everywhere.
The only general advice I can give is that many continental European towns are more crowded, with tighter spaces, than what you see in the US. Most of European architecture was planned long before cars where a fact, and are retained like that. At least the areas that are picturesque and of main interest to tourists.

But this "tightness" depends a lot on where you go. Belgium has about 20% higher population than Sweden. The surface area of Belgium is about 6 (six!) percent of Sweden's. Then 90 % of Sweden's population lives in less than half of the country.

There's just as much difference between different places in Europe as there are between Lower Manhattan, New York, NY, and Dimond, North Dakota.

When I go to the US, I typically have one camera, a wide angle zoom, a standard zoom and a light-weight telephoto zoom. Then it's a question about if I know in advance that I'll take photos of specific things, then I may add, or replace, some other stuff. Like a macro lens, a flash, a fisheye, a teleconverter or whatever it could be. It's also a question about if I know that I'll rent a car and drive, or if I will ride with others, or rely on public transport (in the US, yeah...). Well, in some areas it works fine, but frequently not where I'm going. It works better here. Railway stations are frequently at airports, not somewhere else, and so on.

While some Americans do go to Europe to see something like fiords in Norway or geysers in Iceland, the vast majority of them are going to see great cities like Paris or Rome or Barcelona or you name them. Or they want to visit small beautiful historic towns, etc. That involves a lot of walking, and of course one of the things that comes to mind is how compact and lightweight the equipment is.

apersson850 wrote in post #18059718
Some of you, most of you then probably Americans, write about "travelling to Europe" as if it was a place no bigger than Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and with no more variety either.

That's because "Gear selection for a trip to Frankfurt, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Munich, Hohenschwangau, Salzburg, Vienna and London" makes for an excessively long subject.

Just did Rothenburg, Munich, Hamburg, Baden Baden and Salzburg, with 28 2.8 50 1.7 and 85 2.8 Zeiss Contax primes on my Sony A7ii. I'd do the same again, I prefer the size and weight of primes and they make you think about what you're doing...and at the end of the day, isn't that why you would take a FF body? Otherwise yep, stick with something like the RX100. If I was shooting Canon (I used to shoot 6D) I'd take the 28 IS and the 50 STM and maybe 100 2 or not. 28 or 35 will have less distortion, I find distortions from my 24 IS distracting. lot of my shots were with my 28mm as everything is pretty tight and this isn't going to weigh you down, esp paired with the 50 which weighs nothing. Both these will cover you 90+% of the time.