I’m not prone to overthinking…
I love photography, you've probably noticed. It occupies an unreasonable amount of my waking thoughts and the topic of which lens, which camera, which way to treat my images, is a common cycle to find myself trapped in.
To help me focus I've been careful to remove options. I only have one camera now, a corker which is compact and is complimented by a small selection of prime lenses. I have found this has helped me reduce noise from overthinking about the tools but more recently I think I messed up. I picked up a Zeiss 35mm f2 at Christmas but didn't like it as much as the Biogon 35 f2.8 so I’ve gone back to that. It is an absolute beast oozing character, it’s also very small and I find that when I use it to make black and white images in particular it sings. Two such images have been highlighted by the LFI and have boosted my confidence enormously.
But… sometimes I want to see the world in vivid colour and while I'm pleased enough with an image in the moment from the Biogon, when I look at images produced by friends I start to feel like an imposter.
Do my images say anything? Do they have a personality? If I don't have some sort of mastery over my palette does that matter? Should I seek to emulate film? Everyone else does. Then again, the one thing you can say for sure is that ten to fifteen years from now folks on social media will extol the virtues of high megapixel back side illuminated CMOS sensors just as they do the CCDs of yesteryear right now. In fact, it's going to be the X100V isn't it. It will now and forever be some variant of the X100 :)
Fortunately, today as I drove back from visiting my 92 year old Grandma I had a bit of an epiphany. I’m writing it down so as not to forget it.
A message to my future self.
Your camera and lenses have a look. It’s partly why you chose them. If the Zeiss is the go-to lens for black and white then the Summicron 50 can be your colour lens. Don't worry about aping the images of the past, you weren't there, you've shot with digital longer than film and you've never been one to look back, you're excited by the new, by change and possibility. Your images will be the future retro. Clean, just punchy enough with a hint of crushed black and shot with available light. And the thing that will kill your sense of progress is making the mistake of acting like it's your job and adding pressure to this thing that’s fun.
So there we are. Two lenses. One camera. One goal, use what you feel like using and don’t over think it.
Phew. Thanks for listening.