Lens selection for Orlando vacation.

[maflynn]

Hey guys (and gals) I'll be heading to Orlando for Disney/sea world/etc later next month and I'm pondering what gear to bring (and/or buy).

I currently have the Olympus OMD with the 12-50mm weather sealed kit lens. Its a nice lens, a bit larger physically then I prefer to take but it should be ok.

I also own the 20mm f2.8 panasonic and I'm thinking of buying the 45mm f.17 lens.

I have two lines of thought, first to use the two primes for my trip. Second - use the kit lens along with the 20mm. The kit for outdoors type stuff and the pancake for indoors (as most events disallow flash photography).

the 50mm max focal length may be a bit limiting, especially if I'm stuck far away from some shows that I'm trying to shoot such as something from sea world. I really do not want to lug around a lot of lenses and stop the family every few minutes to swap them so I'd like to keep that behavior to minimum

There is the 45-150 and 45-200 zoom lenses but to be honest I'm not sure how much I'll use them on vacation or afterwards. There's also the 14-140mm lens but I've read reviews that discuss its slowness and not being as sharp as they want it to be in the longer focal lengths.

Any advice is welcome

 

[a.jfred]

Let me start off with: my primary camera is an Olympus e500. I also have a Panasonic P&S, and the nearly-ubiquitous iPhone.

When I went to Orlando for a week a few years ago, I took all three cameras with me. The lenses I opted for the DSLR were my Sigma f/2.8 105mm EXDG Macro lens (older model; Sigma has since updated the lens) and the Olympus 70-300mm zoom. My trip included 5 days of DisneyWorld & a trip to Kennedy Space Center. For Animal Kingdom (Day 1), I alternated between them (and really should have used a lens hood with the zoom). Epcot (day 2) ended up being primarily the macro lens. By Day 4, I left the DSLR at home, took the p&s, and didn't care so much about taking pictures.

Shorter version: at least 1 decent zoom would be good, make sure you have something weather-sealed so you can go on more rides & don't worry about getting wet, and get something that'll do well in low-light conditions.