These are things that everyone knows about picking the right equipment for the subject, right?

Use wide angle lenses to shoot landscapes. When people ask what lens to get, I always ask them what they’ll be shooting. If they say landscape I generally recommend something wide rather than something long. Here’s an example of use of a very wide angle lens on a landscape shot:

First Light, Banner Peak and Thousand Island Lake

Use long lenses to shoot sports. Everyone notices all of the Really Big Lenses at sporting events. I sure saw plenty of them at this week’s Amgen Tour of California bike race. Heck, I even used one myself to get shots like this one:

Riding to the Starting Line, Prolog Time Trial, 2008 Tour of California

But wait a minute…

Sometimes the “common wisdom” can be exactly wrong, or at least it is possible to get interesting results by doing the opposite of the obvious thing. How about a landscape shot with a very long lens:

Big Sur Fisherman, Winter Surf

And here is another bicycle racing shot, done with an ultra wide lens. (That’s Mario Cipollini banking into this turn, for the cycling fans out there.)

The Peloton Enters San Jose – 2008 Amgen Tour of California

I’ll share one bit of technical information here. All four shots were made with two lenses. Both of the wide angle shots – landscape and cycling – were done with a 17-40mm zoom at the wide angle end. Both of the telephoto shots were done with a 100-400mm telephoto at the long end.

Just to tweak another assumption about “the right equipment,” both bicycle racing shots were done with a Canon 5D – and everyone knows that the 5D is only useful for landscapes and that you can’t shoot action subjects with it. ;-)