I was wondering – do I have favourite cameras and lenses? Is there a particular reason why I’m using the equipment I’m using? Why am I using 35mm and not four thirds or medium format?

Certainly, equipment I used to take my favourite images would be expected to score more highly, but surprisingly it doesn’t. It’s quite weird now that I think about it, but I don’t get sentimentally attached to gear. So, the question of sentimental attachment is very easily answered; I like using stuff that produces the results I like, and does it effortlessly, but I will replace cameras and lenses without much thought if something better comes along.

As for the format, I guess I ended up using the format that required the least justifications to keep using, because it just had all the lenses I wanted, I could produce the kind of pictures that I wanted to produce, it was not too expensive to get all the gear I wanted, and the stuff was not too heavy. Basically, when 35mm digital cameras became affordable, that solved my problem. Sure, I did think about going with 4/3, but it always turned out that the lenses that would work for me would be too heavy and expensive in order to compensate for the small sensor, dark tonality doesn’t work as well as it does at 35mm and that’s one of my favourites, it’s more difficult to control the depth of field, and so on. Too many things to fuss over, and no need since 35mm solves all those problems. I thought about the medium format as well, but here the system gets too heavy very quickly, and the lens choices are far too limited. Also, it tends to be very expensive, and the benefits are very small; mostly resolution and dynamic range, which are plentiful already at the 35mm, so I didn’t see it as an upgrade, but rather a system for somebody else. I wanted something that can be used to photograph a bug or a flower one moment, and transition to a portrait or a landscape shot instantly, something that could do the stuff that I want to do, rather than me having to adjust to the limitations of the gear. Also, I dislike super expensive stuff, at least unless there’s no other way to get the results I want. I would always take a smaller, lighter lens/camera that is 5% less capable than the multiple times heavier, bigger and more expensive monstrosity. That doesn’t mean I’m willing to make great sacrifices in image quality; it’s just that image quality can be easily obtained using non-extreme means. This meant that Hasselblad and Phase One were out of the question, but I also gave up on the 4/3 as well, since it tended to require extreme lenses in order to compensate for the sensor size, and my calculations showed that the system as a whole was in fact anything but small and light, when I consider the exact equipment choices I would have to make. 35mm felt “right”, I could do everything I wanted, so I stopped fussing about gear for quite a long time, but Canon 35mm was still bigger than a 35mm system had to be, which I knew from my experience with Minolta film gear. When Sony started making small and light 35mm cameras with image stabilisation, that solved multiple issues for me. Sure, they do make some huge monstrosity lenses, but fortunately I don’t have to buy them, because there are lighter, smaller and less expensive alternatives that sacrifice some of the ultimate image quality for portability and affordability. I’m into photography because I like producing photographic art, not because I want to enrol into a competition of who can spend more money on gear. Thanks, but I prefer having money. 🙂 Something really needs to entice me with the offer of photographic abilities that I don’t currently possess, for instance I can no longer make this:

I took it with a huge, very expensive telephoto of stellar image quality that I had for review, and I currently don’t have anything resembling a properly long telephoto; the longest one I have is a 90mm macro. I have been taking almost exclusively normal and wide-angle shots for years. I can’t even take this anymore:

It was taken with a borrowed Nikon APS camera with a 70-300mm telephoto, which means I would need a 100-400mm on 35mm in order to replicate this capability. The problem with such a telephoto is that it is very expensive, and very heavy to carry around during my regular walks, but I keep seeing shots that would be perfect for such a lens, if I had it. In any case, the big telephoto is always on the bottom of every list of necessary hardware acquisitions, simply because it combines heavy, expensive and rarely used, which is my least favourite combination. It does, however, also combine the ability to take an interesting detail out of otherwise uninteresting scenery, with the ability to cut depth of field at a distance, which are among my favourite combinations. We’ll see. 🙂

I do, however, have the ability to do the same thing in the world of tiny things:

Yeah, I’m trying to convince myself I don’t need it too hard, which means I’ll probably just buy it. 🙂