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 p.2 #7 · Which Combo for Travel? | |
Pixelpuffin wrote:
Honestly
I really really wish there was a modern digital version of the Rollei 2.8F
Shooting fixed lens, waist level always seemed to pull off the shots.
I still have my 2.8F but the expense of running that today would be insane 😳
Waist-level shooting is now easier and better than it was back in those film days. (I also shot TLR Rollei and Yashica bodies long ago, and I owned and used the tiny Rollei 35 for years.)
Waist-level shooting has a few pluses. It provides a different perspective than when the camera is at eye level. (Photographs of people are quite different when the camera is lower.) It also changes the relationship between the photographer and potential subjects. Sometimes it makes sense to have the subject looking straight at a camera at eye-level as if looking into the eyes of another person. But sometimes subjects are more at ease if they don’t feel that someone is staring at them — and when the photographer is looking down into a waist-level viewfinder/screen they can be more at ease.
Fortunately, we do have easy access to waist level shooting on modern cameras with adjustable rear LCD monitors. I use a Fujifilm XT5 for street and travel, and I often treat it like a waist level camera when shooting in crowded areas or when I want the lower perspective. It actually works great.
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On a more general note, on the previous page I mentioned that I was then still on the last days of six weeks of (mostly) European travel. We were in Portugal, Spain, Belgium, and (briefly, on the way home) New York City. I did a lot of photography in cities and towns, ranging from small villages up to big cities like Lisbon, Bilbao, Brussels and others. (And, obviously, NYC.) But we also spent a week walking trails and backroads in the vineyard region of the Douro Vally in Portugal.
I’m quite serious about my photography, so I had to balance flexibility, size/bulk, image quality in ways that worked for all of these activities and which would allow me to create potentially-salable images that could be printed fairly large. On this trip I took:
Fujifilm XT5
14mm f/2.8
27mm f/2.8
50mm f/2
90mm f/2
(All lenses are Fujifilm. This is a 1.5x cropped sensor, so FF angle of view equivalents would be about 21mm, 40mm, 75mm, and 135mm.)
I probably used the 27mm f/2.8 for 80-90% of the photography. For me that is a very adaptable focal length for these kinds of subjects, and because it is a pancake lens it makes for a very small and unobtrusive yet high quality package with the XT5.
The 14mm was useful in tight urban confines, for example in the Alfama area of Lisbon, La Ribiera in Porto, and also for architectural interiors, including large churches.
The 50mm gave me a rough added reach for many photographs of slightly more distant subjects, including in cities and on those walks. It also works well as a portrait lens.
I used the 90mm much less than I expected. I like its extra reach for some landscape subjects, and I used it that way at times. It is also obviously a potentially fine portrait lens, though with the 50mm f/2 that seemed less necessary.
Since I generally did not carry the 90mm around with me, the entire kit is small enough to fit into a non-photography secure should bag (I use something from PacSafe) that also holds things like wallet, passport, sunglasses, phone. I mostly use the camera with a wrist strap rather than hanging it around my neck. All of this makes me look less like Photographer Tourist, which I think is helpful. Given that we walk a LOT — in cities and on our rural walk — the maller, lighter, more easily packable stuff means i do more photography.
Primes aren’t for everyone, and there’s a good argument for replacing the three I used (not including the 90mm) with a zoom covering approximately the same range. A year ago on a trip to Scotland and England (that also involved a week of hiking plus urban stuff) I left the 14mm and 50mm behind and took a 16-55mm f/2.8 instead. (I still brought the 27mm pancake for street photography.) I prefer zoom lenses for landscape photography — more compositional control — and we were walking through some spectacular landscapes on the Great Glen Way. That worked well, and I also used it in some urban settings… where I didn’t always like the larger size of the zoom. But that’s a fine option for many people.
There’s often a fear, especially when investing a lot of time and money in long-distance travel, that you might miss some opportunities if you don’t take a wide range of gear. I see people lugging around big bags of multiple cameras and big lenses and even tripods. There’s a place for that for some travelers, but for many of us that actually decreases the range and quality of photographs, not to mention dragging you down as you travel from place to place and within the places you visit. With practice, I learn to “see with the lenses I have,” and it is extremely rare to find myself in a situation where I can’t photograph a subject effectively with the fear I’m carrying.
Happy traveling.
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