The Sigma 18-300mm Travel Zoom
A few years ago I threw all my zoom lenses under a bus and become a prime man, preferring to zoom in and out using one of the best, recent (in geological terms), innovative advances, human feet. The zooms had become too heavy and unwieldy and I never once regretted my decision.
But lately, with a three day voyage to the Lofoten Islands looming, I was becoming more concerned. Zooming with my feet was all well and good on dry land, but if you’re on a ship wasn’t there a serious danger of those feet, and for that matter the rest of me, becoming very wet?
And there was another problem. The small army of cameras I’d packed were all wide angle, so while all the talk in the evening bar would be of hair-splitting close-ups of sea eagles and hump back whales, all I’d have to show was a small brownish dot on the horizon!
Fortunately Sigma came to my rescue and so as the ship set sail I was fully equipped with a SD1 Merrill paired with a 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 OS HSM travel zoom, and this zoom wasn’t big and bulky at all, in fact is was a relative lightweight!
Lofoten is an unsurpassable place, a place where around each corner the scene takes your breath way, a place where a ten-minute journey stretches into hours as you stop and reach for your camera again and again, a place where you need to be prepared for that chance moment …
… that instant when the last rays of the sun kiss a cliff face; or above your head sea eagles tumble in the sky; or the sun’s rays burst through an overcast sky; or a trawler shatters a perfect reflection. It was at those moments I reached for the lens.
Sadly the whale never showed its hump, but the 18-300mm was there to capture my favourite image of the entire trip; the most perfect, Foveon, sunrise above the mountains of the Norwegian coastline.
Lofoten Sunset
Without the travel zoom I’d have lost the shot, instead I’d have just been able to stare and wonder, shake my head, turn, and walk back home. I guess there are times even a prime man needs a zoom.