Exploring Switzerland with the Samyang 45mm
I love exploring the world, meeting new people and getting lost with my camera. My recent opportunity to do this was in Switzerland, visiting a friend. To top it all off, I had the pleasure of packing my backpack with Samyang’s latest Sony E-mount lens for my trip, the Samyang 45mm 1.8.
The first thing I noticed about the 45mm was its size. Pairing the lens with my Sony A7III camera body, I really felt the weight or lack of especially compared to my Samyang 35mm 1.4 FE. It was a delight to take the 45mm on the trip, as you can see from the size comparison’s the smaller size was really useful for packing a travel backpack full of camera gear, clothing and tech accessories.
Once you travel to Switzerland, you’ll find what a vibrant and diverse country it truly is. Like a kaleidoscope of many cultures intermingling with each other, Switzerland has four national languages, German, French, Italian and Romansh with German being the main language. It was amazing to travel through Switzerland and take in the differences geographically, culturally and visually.
I started my trip in the French-speaking city of Lausanne, just a 35-minute train ride for Geneva airport. Shortly after meeting my friend, we explored Lausanne where we came across interesting buildings which also made some great backdrops for portraits. For portraits, the autofocus was fast and accurate with the lens working well with eye-autofocus.
I really enjoyed using the focal length of 45mm as I prefer to capture more of the environment with my go-to focal length being 35mm. I was able to still shoot with the environment in mind without as much distortion as 35mm and compared to the 50mm focal length, 45mm gives a perspective closer to the human eye.
The next day, we went snowboarding in the Swiss Alps. Again, I needed to consider space when packing where having a compact lens such as the Samyang 45mm 1.8 made it easier to balance camera gear with snowboarding gear and essentials for the alps. The best camera is the one you have with you and a truly felt that throughout this trip.
About a 2-hour train ride from Lausanne, we arrived in Les Diablerets where we took a bus and a cable car to ascend up the mountain. Arriving at Glacier 3000, we took the peak walk to get a breathtaking 360-degree view of the Swiss Alps. We then had a cruise in the mountains for the rest of the day snowboarding.
The scenery from Lausanne and Glacier 3000, certainly made me want to explore more of Switzerland particularly nature, as a different subject to the architecture and cityscapes I usually capture around London.
The following day we rented a car for a road trip across Switzerland travelling from Lausanne to Lavizzara, the journey had two routes where we took the southern route through Montreux, Sion and Domodossola.
As we drove past snow-capped mountains, forests, cities and everything in between, I fell further in love with Switzerland. There was such diversity in the landscape and the drive felt like experiencing all the seasons in a single journey. Struggling to continue the journey with the constant temptation of exploring the locations on our route, we finally arrived at the Italian region of Switzerland. With time on our hands, we explored Lavertezzo.
Just over an hour from Lavertezzo was our main destination, a town called Lavizzara. We had a scenic drive to Lavizzara full waterfalls, trees and the wonderful nature Switzerland had to show us!
As we got closer to Lavizarra, there was a downpour of rain which by no means ruined the scenic views if anything it heightened it and showed how moody mother nature can get. As we drove further up the mountain we came across numerous hairpins turns, taking shots where we were lucky to have small windows of opportunity without rain. The following photos certainly reflect the moody atmosphere in the mountain.
The following shots are a timeline of the drive back to Lausanne. It was amazing to see how the diversity of Switzerland and how much the landscape changed in a single day.
Arriving back in sunny Lausanne we had a nice view of the mountains and Lake Geneva.
All in all, the Samyang 45mm 1.8 is a compact sized lens that places itself very well as a travel lens. Along with the advantages of its compact size, the perspective of the focal length made it a great general purpose lens to capture a variety of different subjects. The autofocus capabilities along with the quality of the images from this lens certainly make it a great addition!
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