2251 - The Coast

2012-12-17

Here are the images for Saturday. I was out in the snow (not much admittedly) for a few minutes, armed with my new 7-14 mm lens.

The figurine of the frog is only maybe 10 cm high and sitting on a planter used for herbs, but that’s exactly the kind of foreground / background trick you can do with ultra-wide lenses: focus very near on something small in the foreground and the proportions shift completely.

Oh yes, one new lens, one new bag. It was inevitable, and this time there will be enough space: The Tamrac System 3 bag comes with an enormous number of dividers, and using micro-fibre cloth as a separator to stack two small lenses upon another, I can put the camera with one lens into it and up to eight additional lenses. At the moment I am at one camera and seven lenses.

As the bag is big enough, the Olympus 40-150 is back. I have decided not to sell it, because it is a decent lens and a long lens that I can keep with me. The rumored Olympus 40-150/2.8 seemingly won’t come and so far the 35-100/2.8 does not entice me.

What definitely will go into the bag as soon as it becomes available (probably next week) is the Olympus 35/1.8. I guess that’s it, I can’t imagine any other lens that I would need or want.

Maybe for special occasions the Nikon 180/2.8 AI-S, but I wouldn’t carry that around regularly.

The new bag has an excellent shoulder strap, much better than the Hama bag last time, has plenty of additional space for cards, filters, pens, papers and whatever, and it is extremely comfortable.

The Song of the Day is “The Coast” from Paul Simon’s 1990 album “The Rhythm Of The Saints”. Hear it on YouTube.

There are 3 comments

Flo (tonebytone)   (2012-12-19)

Just reading about all the space inside your new bag made me feel exhausted! Andreas, I thought that the whole shift in your focus, pardon the pun, this year has been to go lighter and lighter! I don't take a bag any more, even a little one. Because whatever carrying space I have access to inevitably gets filled - and therefore, heavier! BTW, I love your little froggie. Takes me waaaay back to my kiddie days when I loved playing in the snow!

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andreas   (2012-12-19)

Yeah, I'm beginning to contradict myself, that's the reason why I have to stop 🙂 At the moment I am at pretty exactly 2 kg for 1 camera, 8 lenses and a camera grip. Add to that two batteries, the bag (676 g), a battery loader and the macro light arm. I suppose this will add up to around 3 kg. Yes, that's already much again, but compared to DSLR standards it is fantastically light weight, especially considering that I cover focal lengths between 14 mm and 300 mm, and between 24 mm and 150 mm I have a set of six fast primes. It's what I try at the moment. I can always slim it down, just as I did with the DSLR. I still have all the intermediate bags, thus I can always select a subset for a given purpose. In that sense, 3 kg is the worst case. How about 1.3 kg for camera, grip, two batteries and four fast primes? Or 800 g for camera, grip, two batteries and a single fast prime? Basically the advantage gets bigger the more lenses you add, but there is an upper limit for what makes sense to carry, even if it's composed of only light parts. Where exactly that limit is, I still do not know. It may be all that I have now, it may be less, it may depend on the purpose.

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Flo (tonebytone)   (2012-12-19)

Andreas, 3 kg is more than 6 pounds! To me that's heavy when it's all jammed into one bag. I'm trying to stay under a pound (0.45 kg), which means one body (DSLR) and one lens. If I were to get the Olympus, I'd still go out with only one lens! Well, maybe 2 - or if they now have a decent zoom, then it'd be a tad heavier than a single prime.

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