Convince me that I need my 55-200 lens

In looking at the gear that people bring on their trips I am amazed/impressed with the volume people take. We will be taking a 4-week land tour plus cruise to Europe shortly and I'm in the mode of final packing list creation. The trip will be Bavaria, Vienna, Alps, Rome, Eastern Mediterranean. After schlepping too much stuff on/off trains, etc. last year, I have been preaching to my wife that we need to keep it LIGHT this time. Now it's my turn to look at my own stuff to take. I am wondering about the value of taking my 55-200 Sony lens for my NEX-5n. Quite frankly, I'm at a loss why I need anything longer than the 55mm that my kit lense provides.

My output medium is one of computer screen, HD-television, and photo books. Since I don't plan on large prints, wouldn't I be just as well served by tightly cropping images that I might want to highlight segments of?

Yes, I know a single lense of that size isn't going to make a huge difference, but I would feel stupid taking it all around Europe and then not actually using it. Since most of you are far more experienced with travel photography than I am, perhaps you have good reasons for me to take it that I am overlooking.

I have an 18 - 200 that I used on our Med cruise (mostly Adriatic). I would say that I zoomed in greater than 55 mm almost a third of the time. Here is an example from Athens of how the zoom was used to capture detail.

http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff386/mmkbx75/IMG_2930_zpsac3abc17.jpg

http://i1233.photobucket.com/albums/ff386/mmkbx75/IMG_2931_zps0d9ec4e0.jpg

In looking at the gear that people bring on their trips I am amazed/impressed with the volume people take. We will be taking a 4-week land tour plus cruise to Europe shortly and I'm in the mode of final packing list creation. The trip will be Bavaria, Vienna, Alps, Rome, Eastern Mediterranean. After schlepping too much stuff on/off trains, etc. last year, I have been preaching to my wife that we need to keep it LIGHT this time. Now it's my turn to look at my own stuff to take. I am wondering about the value of taking my 55-200 Sony lens for my NEX-5n. Quite frankly, I'm at a loss why I need anything longer than the 55mm that my kit lense provides.

 

My output medium is one of computer screen, HD-television, and photo books. Since I don't plan on large prints, wouldn't I be just as well served by tightly cropping images that I might want to highlight segments of?

 

Yes, I know a single lense of that size isn't going to make a huge difference, but I would feel stupid taking it all around Europe and then not actually using it. Since most of you are far more experienced with travel photography than I am, perhaps you have good reasons for me to take it that I am overlooking.

Ship to shore in the ports.

Sunset/Sunrise

Architectural Detail

Small cost in volume and weight for the added versatility.

Dave

Whenever you crop you are reducing the resolution of the image, and increasing the pixel size. If done to excess, it will end up visibly reducing image quality. I would not crop any more than 2x, which means if you take your kit lens only, you should limit your cropping to an equivalent of 110mm.

If it were me, I'd take the extra lens. But you know what your needs are better than I do.

Adding to Dave's list, all of which I concur, longer lenses are quite vital to me when traveling for wildlife, portraiture, candid street life, stage performers, more distant landscape/cityscape, macro/closeup, telephoto compression and perspective distortion, and sometimes to simply bridge unbridgeable gaps to shoot something (ie: a beautiful building across the river that you can't cross). Cropping will suffice for minor situations to help fill the screen a little more, but limiting to a 55mm lens and trying to crop to the equivalent of a 210mm focal length, or worse, trying to crop to the relative equivalent of a CROPPED 210mm photo, which can get you even closer...just won't do for me.

I would consider the 55-210mm lens quite reasonably compact enough to justify bringing...personally I couldn't live without it.

Looking back on my last two cruises, I had more than 20% of my shots in focal lengths from 90mm to 300mm...one was a Caribbean/central American cruise, and the other a Canada/New England cruise...so though one was more bird/wildlife intensive, I found just as many occasions in the scenic northeast to use longer focal lengths.

I like to shoot either wide or long. Details and abstracts are great to do with a long lens. The 55-200 Sony is small and light so it won't be much extra weight. Go for it!

Hi,

I hope you are convinced by now with all the above wise advice. Would it not be a real shame to have missed various shooting opportunities at distance for the sake of not carrying 1 lens?

We are off today and I am taking an 18-55mm + a 55-300mm Nikon.

Enjoy your cruise. :)

I am wondering about the value of taking my 55-200 Sony lens for my NEX-5n. Quite frankly, I'm at a loss why I need anything longer than the 55mm that my kit lense provides.

I will be going on a small cruise - Quebec to Boston - and I will be just carrying the NEX5N with a Sigma 30mm AND the 55-210 Sony. It's light and you never know when the need comes up!

You all have almost convinced me to buy a 55-210 lens for my Sony 5N. Up until now what I have resorted to is...

I have a small Canon ELPH HS camera with 12x optical zoom. I carry it as a backup camera or pull it out when I want something way off in the distance a bit closer. It's no super camera, but for $100 it fits in my pocket or the side pouch on my camera bag. A few times I've pulled it out after using up all my 5N batteries.

I have to profess my love for the 55-210mm lens on the NEX - I consider it one of the finest lenses for the money you can get - excellent stabilization, optically very good even at full zoom, and even a small filter thread (49mm) allowing me to use adapted teleextenders to stretch it out to 357mm optically, for a nice 535mm equivalent reach which makes it close to travel zooms, but of course with that much much bigger sensor. It doesn't compete with my 4-figure prime lenses on my DSLR, but for the money it's excellent, and gives me a solid birding backup cam for lightweight travel. I even used the NEX and 55-210 with teleextender in Costa Rica for birding last year because it was rainy and I didn't want to chance the DSLR.