I went on a vacation last November and I took a deep breath and only took one camera and one lens. It was a stretch; especially for a guy who has enough lenses to outfit a camera club. I wanted to travel light, pay more attention to my best friend and partner, and really just experience the city directly. Sometimes the gear can really get in the way. It becomes a focus and then a burden.
It all sounds good, the minimalization of gear, when you are discussing it with another photographer/friend over coffee on a rainy and bleak afternoon. But then, the day before you leave, you find yourself packing and re-packing. Pulling stuff out of your luggage and replacing it with something else. I probably did five rounds of choosing the day before we were scheduled to fly out.
Zooms seemed too big and too wishy-washy. As in "make up your mind already!" And if I chose wide angles I'd spend the trip seeing nothing but long shots. If I took a short telephoto lens I'd spend the trip dreaming of normal lenses. And then there is the whole issue of cameras. If I'd had the Q2 at that point it would have easily been my camera of choice because 30+ megapixels at 35mm and 15+ megapixels at 50mm would have been fine and dandy with me.
In the end I chose the Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 lens made for Leica M mount. I used an M to L adapter to fit onto a Panasonic S5. It was all just so perfect.
Having no choice but what I had in my hands my brain stopped wishing for other focal lengths (and other camera bodies) and just got down to business. It was a good exercise in giving up control to a great extent. I'll do it again soon. But I'm still going to go through the packing decision overload trauma drama the night before we leave on the next adventure just for the hell of it. It was kind of fun; in a masochistic sort of way.
No filters on the lens. Just filter settings in the L. mono. D profile in camera. Juicy skies were my reward.
3 comments:
Do you ever use the 75mm setting on your Q2?
Not yet.
I'm slowly coming round to your way of thinking. You know how you've said that zoom lenses provide too much choice, leading to compositional paralysis. I'm paraphrasing, not trying to put words in your mouth; it's how I interpreted what you wrote. Well, I've been driving myself nuts converting colour digital photos using a B&W layer that allows you to move those colour channel sliders around till I've moved them left to right so often I lose track of what I'm doing. Sometimes, it seems more like video-gaming than photo editing. And I hate video games.
So now I'm thinking maybe setting the yellow or orange filter menu choice and using jpg only might be more fun. Not clear I'll make more interesting photos, the limitation there is always my brain and that's not getting any better, but going the direct-to-jpg route might mean I waste less time confusing myself. If the shot turns out no good, just toss it, hell, I've tossed enough lousy negatives in my time, what's a few more jpg files.
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