Month: April 2012
My Lightweight History
In my previous posting, and the first Lightweight Photographer blog I set out what I mean by Lightweight Photography and why this is of so important to me. In this posting I’m going to look at the history of my interest and what got me to this point in my Lightweight photography.
Now if you are reading this posting on my regular Lenscraft blog (www.lenscraft.co.uk/blog) you might wonder what’s going on so I will take a moment to explain. After a lot of soul searching about my photography I realised I am enjoying my photography more when I am using lightweight equipment; it helps me feel more free and creative. I decided therefore to create a second blog on WordPress (https://thelightweightphotographer.wordpress.com/) to explore this, but I will also post the same blogs on Lenscraft under a new category called “The Lightweight Photographer”. Back then to the blog.
There is a new trend in Photography that I’m sure you will have noticed and that’s the almost meteoric rise of the CSC (Compact System Camera). Not surprisingly the camera manufacturers have started to jump on the popularity of these small cameras as it’s a new market for them to extract even more money from us photographers. Initially I was sceptical about these cameras but now I am a huge advocate.
If I look back to where all this started for me, about 5 years ago I won a competition giving me money to spend with Olympus and a trip to Paris to use it. At the time Olympus offered either pocket cameras of SLR’s and I wanted neither. I already had an SLR and lenses (I was hooked into Canon) and wanted better quality than was offered by a pocket camera, I decided to use the prize on their new bridge camera. This was supposed to be a pocket camera that gave SLR quality by virtue of having a good lens, larger sensor than a compact and allowed image capture in RAW. I won’t go into if this was in fact the case because it’s irrelevant, what is important is that I became hooked on shooting with Lightweight equipment that could produce high quality results.
After my initial steps with the Olympus I traded it in for a Sony R1 as I wasn’t happy with the quality of the images. The R1 was a spectacularly good camera with a fixed 24-120mm lens. Image quality was and still is amazing but it was big; almost as big as my SLR. This caused me in time to trade the R1 for a NEX-5 which was Sony’s new baby at the time. This again was a great camera that was much easier to carry than the R1. It was however let down by down by the limited available lenses and the suspect quality of some of these.
Around the time I bought the NEX-5 I also purchased a Panasonic Lumix LX5, which is a top end compact camera with a superb lens and which shoots RAW. It may seem counter intuitive but the results I was able to achieve in many of my shooting conditions were better than I managed with the NEX-5. I also found the LX5 much easier to handle and was therefore more likely to use it. On one trip to New York I found myself gravitating away from the NEX-5 and using the LX5 almost exclusively. It was this trip that convinced me to sell the NEX-5 and make the switch to a Lumix GF1 in the hope the expanded lens choice and better quality would give me what I wanted – great image quality that Stock Libraries were happy to accept.
Looking at it on paper the NEX-5 should outperform the GF1 on almost every level. It has a higher pixel count, a larger sensor, better ISO performance etc. None of this however mattered to me as in practice I was achieving much better results with the GF1.
In the past couple of days I took the decision to upgrade the GF1 to a GX1 in order to take advantage of the 16Mpixel sensor and improved ISO performance. I suspect I will upgrade this when something better comes along but for the time being I am happy. What interests me about my latest upgrade and also the GF1 is the quality of results that can be achieved with small cameras has become outstanding. This is something I will look to explore in future posting.
For now, here is an example image taken on the GF1 which prints beautifully on Matte paper.
The Lightweight Photographer Begins
It might just be my advancing years but I have become a huge fan of Lightweight Photography. By Lightweight, I mean trying to minimise the size, weight and amount of equipment I carry when going out on photo shoots. Call it a minimalist approach to photography if you like, but I think it goes beyond being minimalist.
With a minimalist approach I would likely place constraints on myself around the type of images I capture, for example I might only carry one lens with a limited zoom. No, what I am talking about is being able to still make the same images as I would with my full SLR kit, without compromising my work. This is about minimising the weight and bulk of my equipment without constraining myself.
So this blog begins. It’s about my experience, findings and frustrations in trying to make this lightweight approach work for me.
If you are wondering why someone might follow such an approach when they already own a top quality SLR with a full set of pro spec lenses, there are a lot of advantages. I won’t list the advantages now, that’s for a future posting. What I will do however is share my key reason for choosing this approach which is convenience.
I like to do a lot of my photography in the outdoors, often up mountains or when I am out on long treks. Whilst I could and have in the past taken my SLR and lenses with me, I find the extra weight limits me in a number of ways:
- I don’t want to spend 4 hours walking to arrive on location so tired that I can’t be bothered to make any photographs.
- The weight does slow me down and can limit the time I have available for photograph.
- Exhaustion and photography are not a good mix and it shows in my work.
- I am limited on how much additional non photography equipment I can carry e.g. Winter Gear, which places other restrictions on where I can go with the camera.
If I could find a way to deal with this problem and remove these limits I should find that my photography will improve as will my enjoyment of the experience.
Visit again to read how I fair and also share your own thoughts and experience with me.
