Featured Photographer - Adrian Gidney FRPS

from RPS Landscape Group Magazine - Winter 2021/22

Featured Photographer - Richard Revels FRPS

5 days with a hired lens in Snowdonia

Adrian asks the question which I’m sure we’ve all pondered over the years: ‘Have you ever thought about buying a new lens but, even after reading all the reviews, were hesitant about hitting the ‘buy it now’ button?’ This was exactly the position Adrian found himself in a while ago. Here we find out how hiring a lens may be the way forward before getting your credit card out for that big purchase.

Have you ever thought about buying a new lens but, even after reading all the reviews, were hesitant about hitting the ‘buy it now’ button? This was exactly the position I found myself in a while ago. I had been looking at the Canon RF 14-35mm f4 lens which was released in August this year. As a predominantly landscape photographer I already had the EF 16-35mm f4 which I used on my Canon EOS R6 with the EF-RF adapter.

Whilst at the Photography Show in Birmingham in September I happened to come across a couple of Lens Hire companies and thought that it would be a good idea to try the lens for 5 days during a trip I had booked to Snowdonia at the beginning of November. After making enquiries with them I went online to ‘LensesforHire’ and read through the process.

I have to say, all you need to know about hiring any equipment is on the website. Pick the equipment, the date and number of days you want to hire it for and it comes up with a price. For the 5 days I wanted it for it worked out at £89. Having said that, because I wanted it Monday to Friday, they sent it by courier to arrive the Friday before and a courier collected it the Monday following the hire period so, in fact, I had it for 9 days for the price of 5. A few facts about the Canon RF 14-35mm: It’s the world’s first full frame 14-35mm lens and the first 14mm lens to take normal 77mm filters. It’s currently the widest native lens for the Canon’s mirrorless cameras (Other EF lenses are wider and work with the EF to RF adapter). It’s smaller and lighter than the other ultrawide zoom, the RF 15-35mm f2.8

The lens arrived by courier appropriately packaged and came with a protective 77mm UV filter, lens hood and Canon soft lens bag. They also provide a bag and label for the return. The first thing I noticed about it was it was lighter and more compact than my 16-35mm. In fact, when weighed, it was around 200g lighter than my 16-35 with the EOS EF-RF adapter.

So off to North Wales to meet up with my brother who is also keen on photography. We stayed on the outskirts of Llanberis in my camper van. Dawn of day one, we awoke to the sound of rain on the van roof. The rain always sounds worse than it is on the fibreglass roof. The forecast said it was due to clear by sunrise which was a reasonable 7.18am so we walked down to Llyn Padarn lake to see what the ‘lone tree’ was looking like. I was pleased to find the water level was quite high as I had never photographed it properly flooded before. A couple of wider shots with the 14-35mm looked pretty good as the tree was nicely reflected in the lake.

**Llynnau Mymbyr ISO 125, f19, 1/20th sec, 32mm, 3 shots bracketed, tripod**

During the week I made good use of the lens at Tryfan, Dinorwic quarry and Llandudno. However, to use it at its widest 14mm, you have to find strong foregrounds otherwise there can be a lot of ‘unused’ or uninteresting space in the frame. I did notice when looking at images on my laptop at its widest focal lengths that there is some vignetting, especially if using filters. This is either managed in-camera using Peripheral Illumination Correction set to its default position of On or, in Lightroom and Camera Raw, where it can easily be removed using the lens correction section within the Develop module. Adobe programmes have the settings for this lens.

The lens seems incredibly sharp from corner to corner. It has almost instantaneous focusing and a very close focusing ability 0.20m from the sensor. It also has lens image stabilisation which, when combined with the R5 or R6 IBIS, reportedly gives up to 7 stops (real world means you get around a 3-4 stop advantage when using handheld to get sharp images every time).

Like any ultrawide lens you need to be wary of angling the lens up or down and consider what this will do to verticals and horizontals in the images. Pointing a wide angle lens down makes parallel lines, e.g. buildings converge inwards from bottom to top. This can be corrected in post-processing but often at the expense of having to crop the image afterwards. The only other downside of this relatively new lens is the price, at between £1,700 – £1,800 depending on where you buy it but you are getting a quality piece of equipment which should last you many years.

So would I buy one? Well, since coming home, I have sold my EF 16-35mm f4 to help fund the purchase of this lens. Will it make me take better photos? No. It will, however, enable me to take wider shots when the composition demands it, especially in portrait orientation, which is one of my preferred styles of landscape photography.

Regarding my post-processing, where I have taken 3 shots bracketed for exposure either on a tripod or handheld, I have blended 2 or 3 of the images in Photoshop using luminosity masking with the ‘plug in’ Lumenzia. The black and white image I converted to B&W in Photoshop using a blend of two layers, one converted in Camera Raw and the other converted using the Nik Collection silver efex.

Ade Gidney FRPS www.adegidneyphotography.com