放棄28mm鏡頭拯救了我的攝影

You've seen the title, it seems a little bit ridiculous, but how did selling my favourite lens improve my photography? And if it was my favourite lens, why did I sell it in the first place? So I think what we need to do first of all is kick off with what was my favourite lens If you've been here a little while now, you'll know that I absolutely love the 28mm focal length And if you follow me over on Instagram, you might have seen in a bit of a moment of weakness that I was selling most of my Leica gear I was selling my 28mm Elmarit, my 35mm Summerlux, my 50mm Summerlux and my M10 Fast forward a couple months and for all of the stuff that I was selling, only the 28mm Elmarit has sold And that's probably the one thing that I didn't want to sell That was my favourite lens because I love 28mm and that new Elmarit is just a cracking lens I'm also transitioning some of my Fuji gear at the same time And that has still meant that I haven't got my hands on the 18mm f1.4 that I want over there as well So as I sit here now and for the last couple months, I haven't had my favourite focal length The only way I've been able to get 28mm is through using a zoom lens But this really got me questioning something And that was, have I become too comfortable with 28mm to the point that it's actually having a detrimental effect on my photography Because I'm picking it up over everything else This lack of a 28mm really threw me off And I looked at my other two lenses that I got the choice out of, the 35mm and the 50mm And my head just instantly said, well, you pick the 35mm, that's the closest lens This got me thinking then, why is it that my brain seems almost wired to pick the widest lens option I've got as my staple And I've come to the conclusion that an element of it is a bit of FOMO, a bit of fear of missing out If I pack a 28mm, I can always crop it in a little bit But if I pack a 50mm, well, I can't exactly zoom out, can I And because of that, I worry about when I go on trips that I'm just going to miss photo opportunities And the trip to Venice maybe highlighted that a little bit Because Venice is quite cramped and narrow streets That you just can't back up from some subjects enough to actually be able to fit them in the frame So in that case, my fear of missing out is kind of correct I am missing out, I am missing shots that with a wider lens I could have got But a couple months later, having sold that 28mm and having predominantly shot now 40mm, 50mm lenses I've come to a different conclusion And it's one that I should have probably realized a couple months ago But because I was so focused in on 28mm, I just hadn't appreciated it And that's the fact that carrying a 50mm gets you shots that you could never get if you only had a 28mm It seems obvious, but this really hadn't clicked in my head until I was forced to ditch 28mm altogether And to see how much this kind of fear of missing out had affected my photography What I've done is I opened up Lightroom and filtered it to only show me images that I've taken With my 16-55mm f2.8 Fuji zoom The reason behind that was this zoom lens includes both the 28mm and the 50mm full frame equivalents within that zoom range Now filtering to this lens, initially it doesn't surprise me There is a pretty good mix of focal lengths which you kind of expect using a zoom But if I filter it to just the images I liked, something really stood out And that was the fact that an awful lot of the images I like And by far the majority of them was actually taken at the far end of the zoom So this really got me thinking, hang on, I'm opting for a 28mm But every time I put a zoom lens on, I end up liking the images taken towards the far end of it My actual preference when it comes to the images is longer photos And I honestly did not see that coming And to push this even further, if you've been following along with the channel You'll see that I recently picked up a Ricoh GR3X And I picked up the X variant because that is a 40mm lens rather than the non-X variant which is a 28mm So I was continuing to avoid that 28mm because I could sense by not having it My photography was actually improving a little bit So then how have I kind of ended up with this kind of weird love of the 28mm focal length But a clear obvious preference when it comes to the actual images of these longer focal lengths Now I've sat and thought about this for quite a while And I think I've come to the conclusion And that's the fact that my photography over the last few years has changed quite a lot My style has moved from kind of traditional landscapes I used to take loads of them a few years back Into more kind of like capturing moments or scenes that frequently involve people And that's exactly it These kind of moments and scenes tend to be kind of far smaller They're not the wide expanse of a landscape They're like a little piece of it Therefore these kind of telephoto focal lengths are something that would match my style It's just that my photography progressed and changed But what was in my bag didn't Now don't get me wrong I am not suggesting that I am never going to shoot a 28mm focal length again 28mm definitely has its place And I will be buying a 28mm lens still Even though I sold one previously Just the difference is going to be Rather than just me defaulting to 28mm Because it's that little comfort blanket And I have this weird fear of missing out I'm instead going to pick up that 28mm When I actually need to shoot 28mm And I have this big new appreciation for these longer focal lengths like 50mm So over to you guys then If you are using a lens like 90% of the time And it is a fixed focal length Just ask yourself the question Are you using that focal length because it makes you just feel comfortable Or are you actually using it for the right reasons Because I found this experience super enjoyable Where I've been forced to adopt a different focal length If you've enjoyed this video though guys Please do not forget to like and subscribe And if you want to see this 28mm Elmer in action That I've been talking about Then you can see it in my Milan video here Shot on my Leica M10 Thank you for watching And I'll see you in the next one Cheers