Trinity for a nature walk:
- Pentax DA 12-24 f4 (or Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6 for a cheaper option, or Pentax DA 15 for a lighter more compact option)
- Pentax D FA 100mm f2.8 macro (or Tamron 90 for a cheaper option)
- Pentax DA*300mm f4 with a 1.4 or 1.5TC (or F* or FA*300 f4.5, or the more affordable, excellent but rare-as-hen's-teeth Sigma 300mm f4 Tele macro or Sigma 400mm f5.6 Tele macro)
OK, add a compact prime in the pocket somewhere in the 28-70mm range. If the compact prime was a DA 35 Macro or D FA 50 Macro, it could replace the D FA 100 I have included. On the other hand the D FA 100 could be used with the TC for some more versatility, and if you want to use it for insects, spiders, etc the 100 is a better length.
At a pinch, one of the Sigma tele macros could do enough of the macro duty to leave the specialist macro lens behind. Then the middle one of the trinity is your favourite normal-moderate tele prime (31, 35, 40, 43, 50, 70?).
That gives you waterfalls, big skies, trees, vistas, flowers, insects, birds and animals, and portraits of your companions (if you have any who are patient enough to walk with a photo nerd!), all at very high quality. The 100 and 300 are weather resistant too.
This is a bit like MikeD's trinity above, except he has the 15 instead of the 12-24 and he includes a DA*60-250 (maybe with a TC). In theory the versatility of a long or longish zoom like that (or 55-300 WR, forthcoming Pentax 120-450-ish, Bigma, etc) would be good, but in practice I tend to use my longer zooms (55-300 and 170-500) most often at their longest end (and still often end up cropping), so a 300mm or 400mm prime would do fine. (That's why I got the 400mm tele macro.) I prefer the versatile zoom to be at the wide end.
Ideally you would take a tripod too, but if you don't want the weight, a Joby gorillapod would be a reasonable compromise (for use with the lighter lenses not the 300+). You could probably live without a flash but a CPL and/or ND filter could be worth taking.
Last edited by Des; 12-28-2014 at 04:30 PM.