Lens for Egypt tour

[TonyShen]

Dear all,

My wife and I are going on a tour to Egypt in April. I am starting to gather the photographic gears that I'd travelling with. The tour covers quite a few places in 10 days, from Luxor up north to Alexandria.

I'll be travelling with my Nikon D700 body, SB-800 (flashgun) and 24-70mm f2.8 (I expect it on most of the time and it should give me a sufficient wide angle).

Question 1:
I have the following lens under consideration:
50mm f1.4 (pro: for low-light situations in temples? con: maybe my f2.8 lens will be enough)
70-200mm f2.8 (for snapshots/portraits of the people/locals from a distance? but it is a heavy lens)

Question 2:
Should I bring a tripod, a monopod, or neither?

Question 3:
Since I'm taking polarizers, can I leave lens hoods at home?

Question 4:
For the guys who have been there/done that, is it really a hostile environment for lens changing in Egypt?

Thanks in advance.

Tony

[stever]

you may want to do a search or post under landscape locations

i would leave the flash behind unless think you will use it for fill - photography is not allowed in many of the temples and sites and flash nowhere that i can remember

i probably wouldn't take a tripod or monopod - you can get past security with a monopod in most places, but not a tripod.  even for panoramas i don't find a monopod to be a big improvement over handheld.  i did use the tripod for panoramas and sunset shots in the desert and night shots of Cairo from the hotel room

i always use the hood as i like to carry the camera without lens cap

it's only hostile if the wind is blowing sand around - not that much worse than a lot of places.  that said i did a lot of sensor cleaning on the 5D and still had spots

if you're going to be cruising on the Nile, i'd recommend a reasonably long zoom, i used the Canon 100-400, and would probably recommend the Nikon 80-400 (or whatever) - or maybe a backup crop-frame body for your 70-200

i don't know how much better the Nikon 24-70 is than my 24-105, but i had a bunch of shots of temples and murals that the distortions made subtly disturbing until they were corrected with PT lens.  otherwise the 24-105 worked well for walking around and for wider shots from the boat.  the next time i go (and there will be a next time) i plan to take at least one and possibly two wide primes - something like the amazingly compact Voiglander 20 and the Zeiss 35.  the Canon 50 1.4 is very light and compact and i use it for pans stopped down and you can open it up in an emergency - i think the Nikon may be similar

i'm sure you're away it's going to be plenty hot in April - the Ex Officio Air Flyte (sp?) shirts are the lightest, fastest drying i've found.  the up-side is fewer tourists in Luxor and Valley of the Kings

have a great time

[TonyShen]

Thank you for your advice! I did a search in the Landscape Locations, finding a lot of valuable information. I guess I've posted this thread in the wrong place.  

I think I will simply take all the lenses and the the tripod with me. Although heavy to carry, but I will be sure that I will be well pretty equipped for most of lighting conditions.

For more tele range, I don't think I will be buying another lens, instead I may check out the tele converters.

[AndrewKulin]

Tony:
 
 We did a trip to France last summer, and though I had quite a bit of gear with me (and a car to carry it), when strolling through towns and old castles/churches and the like I simply carried my Canon 40D and 17-55 f2.8 IS lens and this combo probably accounted for 90% of all shots I took on the entire trip (the Canon is an APS-C sensor so on full frame which I think your D700 is, this provides a slightly larger range than your 24-70 (27 - 88 mm equivalent)).  Most shots were hand-held too as I wasn't walking around with my tripod in these places - the image stabilization really helps in my opinion so if you are going to buy a new lens for the trip consider one with such a feature especially in low-lit interior places.

   

  Be careful with the tele-converter - I have one for my Canon (Canon not 3rd party) and the following need to be noted:

  -  It may not be compatible with your lens (check Nikon web-site it should be somewhere in the specs for their tele-converters) - there are only certain lenses in the Canon arsenal I can use mine with

  -  you will see some image degradation using these.  I have seen debate on pros/cons of using tele-converters vs. up-rezzing on the computer afterwards - the 1.4x is reported less "bad" in this regard than the 2.0x converters

  - you will lose some stops at the low end of your lens - e.g., a 1.4X results in a 1-stop loss and a 2.0X results is a 2-stop loss (so your f2.8 à f.4.0 or f5.6)

  - you may lose autofocus ability - non-pro Canon SLRs need lenses f5.6 or faster to autofocus, their top-end pros can autofocus down to f8.0