What lens to travel with

[the dane]

hi guys bought my 35m prime lens on Friday night for my Sony a 6000, had a little bit of a play with it yesterday after work Saturday. And have to admit I quite like it. I enjoy taking my camera gear away on holidays with the family and friends, but it becomes a bit of a chore sometimes. Carrying a camera 2 lenses and used to be a GoPro! Sometimes it feels like I'm the one who's missing out on the activities which we are looking at! If I take my camera bag it's not as bad but most of the time my camera bag has a lot of open pockets and in a tourist area I tend to take a backpack, and all my lenses are in protection cases inside the backpack, in other words it can take a while to put the backpack down find the Lens take it out the cover swap them over blah blah blah. Earlier this year on holidays I carried that backpack everywhere and being so much humidity my back was just sweating the whole time, got to the stage the last 3 days of our trip my camera stayed in our hotel room and I just used my mobile phone when the the opportunity arise. So my question is can I get away with just the 35 millimetre lens? I also have the 16-50mm & 55-210mm. Most of my photos are face shots up to 4m away, pubs scenes cafe scenes, and the normal tourist photo destination photos!
My wife just bought me a new pacsafe sling bag for our trip to Bali in 4 weeks time, it's nowhere near as big as my osprey adventure pack! And do most of you guys use the protection lens cover cases in a backpack? And do I need a protective lens filter? Cheers

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[Lance B]

I guess it depends on how keen you are. I recently traveled to Myanmar, humidity 95% and 32 deg C every day! I was basically wet with sweat the whole time lugging around my Nikon D810, D500 (sometimes left in the hotel safe), 15-30 f2.8, 24-70 f2.8, 80-400 f4.5-5.6 in my Lowepro Protactic 450 backpack - best travel backpack I have ever used and I've used many! With the D500 in the pack it was about 8.5kg! However, I am dedicated to photography and did not mind lugging this stuff around. We had to climb 770 steps to a temple anmd pagoda atop a volcanic plug and I was still the first one to the top! I usually carry a wash cloth to wipe the sweat from my face and in Myanmar that was a constant occurrence.

I never put lens protection covers when in my backpack, the backpacks have the same soft material in them as many lens cases. This makes for quicker access to the lens as well. I also never use "protection" filters, they do nothing and can affect image quality. The best protection is your lens hood, IMO.

I also sometimes take a Lowepro "lens exchange case", which you can attach to the belt of a Lowepro backpack and thus gives you quick access to a lens at front rather than have to dive into your backpack. It is essentially a lens case, but when you unzip it, it folds out and hs two "pockets", one has the "other" lens in it, and the other a pocket to put your current camera mounted lens into. You then swap lenses on the go. See here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1J1LL4LQfg

[Mark L]

So my question is can I get away with just the 35 millimetre lens? I also have the 16-50mm & 55-210mm. Most of my photos are face shots up to 4m away, pubs scenes cafe scenes, and the normal tourist photo destination photos!

So choose the best lens for the purpose you want. Does 16-50 give more options??