spitzbergen-3
fb  Spitsbergen Panoramas - 360-degree panoramas  de  en  nb  Spitsbergen Shop  
pfeil Calendar 2025: Spitsbergen & Greenland pfeil
HomeSpits­ber­gen infor­ma­ti­onArc­tic tra­ve­ling – some prac­ti­cal hints → Spits­ber­gen pho­to­gra­phy – equip­ment and tips

Spitsbergen photography – equipment and tips

Spitzbergen(-Svalbard.com)-photography

Spitsbergen photography: Rolf Stange

Pho­to­gra­phy is beco­ming incre­asing­ly more important to me and many others, and ques­ti­ons about it, about how I am working, are get­ting more fre­quent. I’ll ans­wer some of them here. I may add stuff as ques­ti­ons come up.

You can get nice pix with any litt­le came­ra. But to get high-qua­li­ty images, you need some serious equip­ment. In other words: pro­fes­sio­nal equip­ment is expen­si­ve and hea­vy. Unfort­u­na­te­ly, the­re is no way around this, if you want to get ever­y­thing out of uni­que oppor­tu­ni­ties, qua­li­ty-wise. You’ll see what I mean espe­ci­al­ly in dif­fi­cult situa­tions, for exam­p­le low-light, when pho­tos taken with small aper­tu­re len­ses and small sen­sor came­ras will turn out to be of infe­riour qua­li­ty. Or with ani­mals that are far away. You can’t just blow up a wild­life pho­to with a 2-pixel-polar bear on the com­pu­ter and expect it to be gre­at. At least when you look at it more clo­se­ly. If you don’t care too much about it – the bet­ter for you, it will keep your life a lot simp­ler.

I take pho­to­graphs seve­ral months every year on a dai­ly basis and I use the results pro­fes­sio­nal­ly. That should be kept in mind when rea­ding my equip­ment list, espe­ci­al­ly when you look the pri­ces up. A fre­quent ques­ti­on is: do I real­ly need that much expen­si­ve stuff for a trip to the Arc­tic? The simp­le and true ans­wer is: no. You can get beau­tiful stuff with much less equip­ment. It’s only if you care about the very last bits of qua­li­ty that you can get out of it, to get 110 % qua­li­ty, then you need pro­fes­sio­nal equip­ment. Most peo­p­le will be per­fect­ly hap­py with 95 % qua­li­ty, and that’s some­thing you’ll get with most smal­ler up-to-date came­ras. If you want to gear up for a trip to Spits­ber­gen, but you haven’t real­ly had much inte­rest in pho­to­gra­phy so far, then some­thing like the Canon 700D or the 80D will be good choices. If you want to enter on a hig­her level and you have, say, wild­life as a main inte­rest, then con­sider the Canon 7D Mk II. The Canon 6D Mk II is gre­at for, well, any­thing and defi­ni­te­ly for land­scape inclu­ding low light situa­tions (nor­t­hern lights!) and more afforda­ble than the 5D series.

Here is my com­men­ted equip­ment list. And no, I am not spon­so­red or paid by Canon or anyo­ne else for this, I pay for my stuff just as anyo­ne else.

Came­ras

  • Canon 5D Mark IV. My main work­hor­se and some­thing I recom­mend to anyo­ne loo­king for a pro­fes­sio­nal body, unless you are alre­a­dy sett­led on ano­ther sup­pli­er with your len­ses etc. Full-frame sen­sor, fast and relia­ble, robust, ama­zing auto­fo­cus, gre­at video-func­tion (which I don’t use a lot) etc.
  • Canon 5D Mark III. That was my main work­hor­se for a good num­ber of years until I bought the Mark IV ver­si­on of the 5D. Still a gre­at came­ra and I can still recom­mend it, it is cer­tain­ly a bit more acces­si­ble regar­ding the pri­ce tag.
  • Canon 5D Mark II. The pre­de­ces­sor of the Mark III. Full-frame sen­sor with good image qua­li­ty, but slow auto­fo­cus. That’s why I deci­ded to upgrade and get the Mark III. But still an excel­lent back­up and I use it hap­pi­ly when­ever speed does not mat­ter.
Spitsbergen photography: photography: damaged camera body

Even the best and most robust came­ra body won’t like it when you tre­at it bad­ly. An over­thrown tri­pod cost me 1000 Euro in a second here. Insu­rance cover for you expen­si­ve equip­ment is defi­ni­te­ly a good idea.

Len­ses

I am pho­to­gra­phing while tra­vel­ling with groups on ships and while hiking on shore. So situa­tions are con­stant­ly chan­ging quick­ly, and I need to be able to adjust at any time. As a result, I use most­ly zoom-len­ses to be fle­xi­ble in my ever­y­day work. When­ever pos­si­ble, howe­ver, I like to use prime len­ses with fixed focal length becau­se of their bet­ter opti­cal qua­li­ty and light strength. But they are hea­vier, more expen­si­ve and less fle­xi­ble.

And, by the way, I have rea­li­zed that it is too expen­si­ve to buy cheap len­ses. Get good stuff righ­ta­way rather than buy­ing some­thing cheap today and some­thing more expen­si­ve later. Two good len­ses will ser­ve you bet­ter than three cheap ones.

Zoom len­ses

  • Canon EF 24-105 mm f/4,0 L IS USM. This len­se covers many situa­tions in ever­y­day use. If I could take only one len­se with me, it would be this one.
  • Canon EF 16-35 mm f/2.8 L II USM. I love wide-ang­le pho­to­gra­phy, so this is a len­se that I use a lot.
  • Canon EF 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6 L IS USM. My tele-zoom that I have almost always with me, also during hikes.
  • Canon EF 11-24 mm f/4 L IS USM. A pret­ty extre­me wide-ang­le zoom that does not distort the image. In other words, this is not a fishe­ye. It is actual­ly hard to use, you real­ly have to work to find good frames regar­ding com­po­si­ti­on. But if you have time and decent appro­pria­te sce­n­ery (or archi­tec­tu­re) around you, then this is defi­ni­te­ly a gre­at len­se 🙂 .
  • Canon EF 8-15 mm f/4 L USM (Fishe­ye zoom). Spe­cial len­se that most nor­mal peo­p­le won’t need. Only used for spe­cial artis­tic effects and for pan­ora­ma pho­to­gra­phy. It’s the lat­ter that I am using it for, and quite a lot. Not much else.
Spitsbergen photography: Rolf Stange at work with the wide-angle lense

At work with the wide-ang­le len­se

Addi­tio­nal­ly, I have the fol­lo­wing prime len­ses with fixed focal length:

  • Canon EF 24 mm f/1.4 L II USM. Very big aper­tu­re and my secret wea­pon for the Auro­ra borea­lis (nor­t­hern light). And in any other low-light situa­ti­on.
  • Sig­ma 20 mm f1,4 DG HSM | Art. One more lumi­nous secret wea­pon for nor­t­hern lights, more wide-ang­le than the 24 mm and opti­cal­ly a bit bet­ter qua­li­ty (not that the 24 mm is a bad len­se, though …).
  • Canon EF 50 mm f/1.2 L USM. High-qua­li­ty stan­dard focal length. I don’t use it too much, alt­hough the opti­cal qua­li­ties are exci­ting. I just find the per­spec­ti­ve a bit bor­ing. Well, I am pro­ba­b­ly just not able to use it pro­per­ly. Gre­at len­se for por­trait pho­to­gra­phy. But polar bears rare­ly come that clo­se, that’s the pro­blem. But when the light is get­ting more scar­ce, for exam­p­le during twi­light con­di­ti­ons in Sep­tem­ber and Octo­ber – which can be pain­ful­ly beau­tiful – then this len­se comes in extre­me­ly han­dy!
  • Canon EF 100 mm f/2.8 L Macro IS USM. Short tele, main­ly used as macro, for exam­p­le for flowers. Very enjoya­ble. Excel­lent qua­li­ty, so I also use it for land­scape when­ever I can.
  • Canon EF 600 mm 1:4 L IS II USM. Others buy a motor­bike when they are pas­sing 40, I bought this len­se. A gre­at thing! Of cour­se an extre­me focal length that can only be used in cer­tain situa­tions: obvious­ly wild­life that is far away and that doesn’t move too quick­ly. For­get about pho­to­gra­phing an Arc­tic tern with it that is chan­ging flight direc­tion and speed by the second, but impos­si­ble to beat when that polar bear just doesn’t want to come any clo­ser with his seal meal. Ama­zing opti­cal qua­li­ty. But too big and hea­vy to car­ry around during hikes, so I use it almost exclu­si­ve­ly from the ship. A smal­ler tele len­se will make most peo­p­le per­fect­ly hap­py (and still lea­ve you with enough cash to go for a trip …).
Spitsbergen photography: Rolf Stange with the 600 mm-tele lens

At work with the 600 mm len­se. It does almost not mat­ter any­mo­re how far the ani­mals are away. Well, almost.

And what else:

  • Canon Exten­der EF 1.4x III, a tele con­ver­ter. When the polar bear is still too far away for the 600 mm len­se.
  • Flash­light. Never far away, alt­hough I don’t use it too much. I pre­fer available light.
  • Tri­pod. An important thing that is never far away and I use it as often as I can.
  • Pan­ora­ma head. In my lug­ga­ge sin­ce ear­ly 2013 and now fre­quent­ly used for my gro­wing coll­ec­tion of polar pan­ora­mas. You can take a hand-held pan­ora­ma of the sce­n­ery in the distant, but for­get about it when things are clo­ser, then you need the pan­ora­ma equip­ment.
  • Fil­ters. I don’t use them too much, main­ly the sim­ply ones to pro­tect the front len­se. But it is important to get high qua­li­ty fil­ters. Why ruin the bene­fit of a high-qua­li­ty len­se with a cheap fil­ter.
  • Don’t for­get regu­lar clean-and-check of your equip­ment. Don’t come with half a kilo of desert sand on the sen­sor to the arc­tic and expect con­trast rich images ☺

A 24 mm tilt-and-shift would be the next thing to buy for me if I could afford it, to pho­to­graph sett­le­ments and huts in Spits­ber­gen (and Green­land and Ant­ar­c­ti­ca, of cour­se) wit­hout opti­cal dis­tor­ti­on. So if you want to spon­sor me, that would be an opti­on ☺ but in the mean­ti­me, if you buy some of my books or a calen­dar, you’ll also help me to get the­re.

Spitsbergen photography: Rolf Stange with a completely different toy ...

A com­ple­te­ly dif­fe­rent toy …

Back

BOOKS, CALENDAR, POSTCARDS AND MORE

This and other publishing products of the Spitsbergen publishing house in the Spitsbergen-Shop.

last modification: 2024-03-20 · copyright: Rolf Stange
css.php