Among photography professionals and enthusiasts, the “Holy Trinity” refers to a set of three professional zoom lenses designed to cover a vast range of focal lengths with constant wide apertures. These are:

• 16-35 mm f/2.8
• 24-70 mm f/2.8
• 70-200 mm f/2.8

For the last 8 years, my lens kit has included the following zooms:

• 16-35 mm f/4
• 24-105 mm f/4
• 100-400 mm f/4.5-5.6

I chose f/4 lenses because they are lighter than their equivalent f/2.8 counterparts, and I already have a set of primes for low-light situations. Even though it is quite heavy, I chose the 100-400 mm for shooting birds and soccer.

Today, I began the transition to what I am calling the “Dynamic Duo,” a pair of zoom lenses to replace the trinity.

• 20-70 mm f/4
• 70-200 mm f/4 + 1.4x teleconverter

I started with the purchase of a new 20-70 mm f/4 lens (pictured above) to replace my 16-35 mm and 24-105 mm lenses (pictured below), which are now up for sale on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. My new kit will weigh 3.2 pounds, down from 5.7 pounds. I will lose 4 mm on the wide end and 120 mm on the long end. It remains to be seen if the reduced range will be worth the lighter load. I would not have gone down this path if I were not already fairly certain about the answer. I used Lightroom to create a histogram for the 115,000 photos I have taken to determine my most frequently used focal lengths. The answer: roughly 6,000 taken at each of 24 mm, 50 mm, 70 mm, 85 mm, 100 mm, and 135 mm.