Daily Archives: October 3, 2018

 

For years I’ve taught a lot about lens selections, yet on every major trip I take, mostly the same lenses, almost all zooms. On this last trip to the Badlands and Black Hills, by the end of the trip I realized I had used only two lenses, the Fujifilm 18-135 and the 100-400.  I took the 10-24, never used it, took the 60mm Macro, never used it, the 90mm f2, nope stayed in the bag!  I used two zooms instead!

 

I fear I’m getting lazy, and zooms help me stay that way.  The thing about zooms is they allow you stand in one spot and zoom to compose, and sometimes that is great because you can’t really move in or back up, but it keeps you from exploring other angles!  I think that generally, in the Fujifilm system, the single focal length lenses are sharper and have faster wide open apertures, allowing more shallow depth-of-field affects.

 

So you ask yourself, “What if I go on a two week trip to the UP of Michigan and on to Acadia N.P. and you don’t take zooms and find you hate working with only the single focal lengths, what do you do???!!!  I really want to limit myself and force myself to make it work, but how???

 

Here is the plan;  I have filled a Think Tank back pack with most of my single focal length lenses:

 

14mm f 2.8

 

16mm f 1.4

 

23mm f 2

 

35mm f 2

 

50mm f 2

 

90mm f 2

 

One body:  the Fujifilm X-H1

 

In a second “LOCKED” bag, I mean it actually has a lock on it that has to be opened with a key is the 18-135 and the 100-400, and and extra body the X-T2.

 

I plan to shoot with only single focal lengths and make myself compose and move to get the shot and taking advantage of the faster lenses.  ONLY in the event of my feeling it is not working at all, do I UNLOCK the other bag and admit I really am a zoom freak!!!!  Trust me I ‘m commited to making this work and I’m excited to ee how differently iI work whenI limit myself to single focal length lenses!

 

I will post images and share my findings!  I leave Sunday a.m. and will start really shooting over the first days of next week, stay tuned!!!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim