Best Travel Lenses for Sony A6300

Take a look at our best lenses for traveling with the Sony A6300.

What kind of a travel photographer are you?

• Do you want to have 1 all-around zoom and use it everywhere?

OR

• Do you want to be as prepared as possible, and are ready to carry 2-3 lenses with you no matter the weight or wherever you go?

If you see yourself more as the first type, then you’ll be extremely happy with 1 zoom lens. They offer plenty of versatility and allow you to go from shooting landscape to sports in less than a second.

If you’re the second type of a photographer, you might want to carry 1 simple zoom and/or 2 prime lenses to take advantage of their bigger apertures and more compact setup (unless you carry them all in the bag)

The Sony A6300 is a fantastic camera, one of the best mirrorless models on the market. It’s compact and lightweight, yet sports a ton of amazing features which makes it a perfect travel companion.

Let’s check out all of your options.

Best Sony Travel Zoom Lenses:

Sony 10-18mm f/4 G OSS
Sony 18-105mm f/4 G OSS
Sony 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS 

Best Sony Travel Prime Lenses:

Sony 24mm f/1.8 Zeiss
Sony 35mm f/1.8 OSS
Sony 50mm f/1.8 OSS

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The 3 Best Sony Travel Lenses – Zoom

1. Sony 10-18mm f/4 G OSS

The Sony 10-18mm f/4 G OSS is the widest zoom lens available for APS-C Sony cameras.

Aperture stays fixed at f/4 regardless of your length, which seems to be a standard for almost all Sony’s zooms and it’s something we like. While f/4 is not the best aperture for low light, it’s still better than f/5.6 or f/6.3, something that’s common when zooms under $1000.

If you like photographing landscape, cities, architecture and wide places when traveling, you’ll love the field of view. Auto focus is also quick and usable for shots on the go even though this isn’t aimed at sports shooters.

Distortion is very well controlled for a lens this wide, but vignetting at f/4 and 10mm will have to be corrected either in the camera or in post process, as you’ll most likely find it too strong.

The lens is also really light, yet feels solid and is mostly made of metal. It’s far from heavy at 0.50 lb (225g). The minimum focus distance is 0.82 ft (0.25m) and it takes 62mm filters.

It’s a perfect lens for landscape, streets, buildings, nature and even for traveling. It’ll be fine indoors too, but you will probably have to raise the ISO when in dim light.

A really useful feature is the OSS (stabilization) so if your camera doesn’t have it built-in, you can rely on getting around 4 stops of extra stabilization if you’re not stable enough.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

2. Sony 18-105mm f/4 G OSS

The Sony 18-105mm f/4 G OSS is our favorite all-around zoom lens. It may be a little bit heavy for some, but the quality at this price is absolutely worth it.

Focal length is great for pretty much everything; landscape, streets, indoors, portraits, animals, closer sports and much more. At 15.1 (around 500g) oz it’s not the lightest lens when compared to other Sony zooms, but it’s still pretty light to be honest. In return, you get a fixed f/4 aperture at all lengths and really sharp images.

Colors, contrast, sharpness are great, and it feels solid in hand as well. If you’re looking for that one zoom to do it all, this is it.

It’s usable at f/4 but in certain the situations at 18mm, the vignetting is fairly visible. One stop smaller and it gets all better.

We also considered the Sony 16-70mm f/4, but for $300 more, all you get is less reach and a lighter lens. If weight is absolutely the most important factor to you then it will be a good all-around lens, but simply looking for the best value for your money, nothing beats the 18-105mm.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

3. Sony 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS

As if big the lens above wasn’t bulky enough, we present the Sony 24-240mm f/3.5-6.3 OSS. It’s almost twice as heavy (at around 1.7 lbs), but reaches twice as far.

The lens is ideal if you’re looking for 1 single lens that can do it all with good image quality and 10x zoom. The quality obviously can not match that of prime lenses, but it’s not competing with them. The 24-240mm is something you take with you when switching between different lenses and carrying a ton of equipment sounds like it’s going to stop you from taking pictures. We’ve all been there and it’s something we often forget before purchasing gear. Image quality is one thing, carrying all that stuff is another.

It weighs 27.6 oz / 780g and costs less than $900. Surprisingly, the lens is very good at controlling vignetting, chromatic aberration and distortion, which for such a big zoom is really awesome. Colors and sharpness are also quite good, but again not on the level of primes.

Another downside is also f/6.3 at 240mm. Outdoors you’ll probably be fine in most situations, but as soon as it gets darker you’ll have the raise the ISO speed or use a tripod. OSS helps, but at 240mm it’s easier to get a blurred shot than at 24mm.

With a big zoom you always have to make some compromises, but it’s good knowing that the actual quality of the shots is far from bad.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

The 3 Best Sony Travel Lenses – Prime

1. Sony 24mm f/1.8 Zeiss

If you you don’t want to spend so much on a zoom lens, or prefer using prime lenses due to their bigger aperture and smaller design, the Sony 24mm f/1.8 is our widest pick.

Weddings, street photography, group shots, anything indoors, traveling… you name it. On an APS-C camera like the Sony A6300, it’s equivalent to a 36mm lens which is quite wide and usable.

There’s no OSS (stabilzation) like with our other prime choices below, but at 24mm the depth of field is a lot bigger which means you can shoot with long shutter speeds and still get crisp results. 

The lens is very sharp, images have rich colors and contrast. It’s also usable at f/1.8 but corner sharpness gets better as you stop down of course. Auto focus is also quick and silent, and it rarely hunts in bad light (review at PhotographyBlog).

Best of all, it’s compact, light and easy to use for both manual and auto focus. Lenses can hunt indoors, and at such moments you’ll have to focus manually.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

2. Sony 35mm f/1.8 OSS

While the lens above is suitable for full frame cameras, the Sony 35mm f/1.8G OSS was built strictly for APS-C cameras like the A6300.

For low light photography, an aperture f/1.8 is always good to have. Compared to f/2.8, it lets in almost twice as much light and you’ll appreciate it when shooting in low light and trying to use a fast shutter speed, or keep the ISO low.

For achieving a shallow depth of field (blurred background), a big aperture is also a must, anything bigger or equal to f/2.8. This makes it great for portraits, weddings, pets and whenever you want your subject to pop out.

The lens is really light (5.5 oz/155g) and accepts 49mm filters. For shooting on to go, or traveling light, the focal length + weight make it an excellent companion. Its auto focus is quick and accurate although you can expect it to hunt a little bit in low light. It was a no-brainer to include it here.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

3. Sony 50mm f/1.8 OSS

If you’re more into portraits and isolating your subjects, the Sony 50mm f/1.8 OSS is great.

The 50mm length on APS-C is equivalent to a 75mm lens on full frame. It sits between the ‘standard’ and ‘telephoto’ range so it it’s good for both casual (but not wide) photography and weddings, concerts, any situation where you can’t always be too close to your subject.

It’s more or less like the 35mm above; same aperture, similar weight and size. The 50mm is around $150 cheaper though! Quality wise, it’s similar to 50mm f/1.8’s from other brands; usable and sharp at f/1.8, but by f/4 everything gets even better (including corners). If you’re shooting in low light and want good results, you can expect them at f/1.8 so no worries.

You can buy it at Amazon or see more reviews here.

Travel Lenses – What’s Important?

Focal Length

This is what makes a lens all-around; the more zoom, the more versatile it is. Traveling is such a broad term and you want a lens that allows you to capture every moment regardless of where you’re at.

Full Frame: 24mm to 120mm range.

APS-C: 18mm to 100mm

The reason why APS-C users should get wider lenses is because an APS-C sensor has 1.6x crop factor, which means that any lens you use will actually look as if it’s 1.6x longer. Read more about the crop factor at B&H here.

Aperture Size

Zooms that are perfect for traveling have aperture sizes from f/4 to f/5.6. Sometimes you’ll see a third stop smaller or bigger values, but generally speaking this results in best combination of price, quality and reach.

You can not expect a super zoom to cost less than $1000 and have an aperture f/2.8. Not only would it be expensive, it would also be big and heavy so that would be pointless for most people.

More expensive lenses have fixed apertures so even if you zoom all the way, the opening doesn’t get smaller. Cheaper ones usually stop down by 1 f-stop. When shooting indoors, you’ll definitely have to raise the ISO if the light is bad, but if you have a newer Sony then you can confidently shoot at values around ISO 3,200 – 6,400.

• In short, f/4 to f/5.6 are perfectly good for zooms, while f/1.8 to f/2.8 is the standard for prime lenses.

Size & Weight

Perhaps the most important question you should ask is how light and small does the lens need to be.

If you don’t find your current setup heavy at all (that includes the camera, backpack etc.) then every lens on our list will be good. However, if you already feel tired or that owning a big heavy zoom would only reduce the amount of time you take your camera with you, then by all means get a compact prime lens.

Since Sony’s cameras are considered pretty small and lightweight compared to standard DSLR systems, you have to be more specific when choosing a lens. A small body with an enormous lens might make it hard to balance.

 

Last Updated on September 17, 2021 by Nick Voorhees