40 Years, 1 camera and 1 Lens

Gordon, give him a week here and he'll have a complete collection of J-8s!
 
Although I have two cameras, I only use a 50mm. I think that using one lens exclusively can be a good thing, since it becomes part of the way you think.
 
Good read although I think the fact that he used 1 camera and 1 lens is the least interesting part of it. I question why they even included it.

The sentance "Limiting his tools to a single camera with the same lens over the years has deepened Mr. Wessels sense of how light translates to film and then to paper, that it's almost instinctive" sounds good at first but if you think about it, it's pretty much non-sense. Would a second lens or third lens at the same f-stop and film speed translate light to film significantly differently? I mean really, the image might have a different signature but it ain't magic. It's sort of a reverse fetishing of equipment.

Would you think more or less of a Hemingway story if he used a fountain pen or a ball point or if he typed some of it and handwrote the rest? I think these type of details tend to minimize photographers as mere technicians in a way that other artist aren't subject to.

The real trick is that he made pictures out of relatively mundane circumstances that say more than what is literally pictured. If you can do this with 1 lens or 10 it hardly matters.
 
wow, for about 7 years all I shot with was a Yashica T4. I got a high-end P&S digicam the year mt daughter was born, then about 3 years then I picked up an electro GT and found this forum. Since coming here I have acquired an obscene amount of cameras and lenses, mostly since moving away from digital and back to film. The good news is that all of this gear acquisition was done under the pretense of defering purchasing an expensive and soon-to-be-obsolete DSLR. 7 film camera bodies and at least as many lenses I've picked up for less than a mediocre DSLR kit.

Maybe it's time to go back to one camera and one lens...

This might beg a new thread asking what everyone here would pick if they decided to do the same as Henry Wessel.

Cheers,
-Amit
 
RJBender said:
From what I've read, most RFFers don't like the 28mm.

R.J.
Click to expand...

R.J.

BTW: I think the shot of the birds, bush and man would have won the RFF "HCB-wannabe" contest - except he used a 28mm! 😉
 
nightfly said:
Good read although I think the fact that he used 1 camera and 1 lens is the least interesting part of it.
I question why they even included it.
sounds good at first but if you think about it, it's pretty much non-sense..
Click to expand...

No. It isn't, not at all. Its an experience many of us have made. Shooting one lens for a long time exclusively makes you look at the world with this focal length.
This makes composing beeing a matter of instinct, you find the right standpoint at the first attempt , composing gets fast and easy, because the photo is framed BEFORE you look through the finder.
And the 28 is perfect if you use one lens only, a 35 isn't less good, a matter of taste.

A matter of expereince tho, one cannot learn it by reading books. Needs time.

bertram
 
Here here, Bertram. When I only had a 50, I think I made some good photos with it. When I got a 100, I used that so much I made some good photos with it. Then a 35 became my standard, the other two used very infrequently, and I made most of my best photos with it. When I got a 28, I grew enamored of it, saw its possibilities, but haven't stuck to it, so not many of my photos are very good. Plus I keep changing film. I used shoot pretty much only TriX developed in HC-110.

Thanks for the post, George; I think the real message is how he sees. The one camer/one lens formula is not a rule for him, but is an enabler of that vision. In a way it's the photographic implementation of the KISS principle. Sometimes my wife says "How many cameras do you need?" She's right.
 
Trius said:
Here here, Bertram. When I only had a 50, I think I made some good photos with it. When I got a 100, I used that so much I made some good photos with it. Then a 35 became my standard, the other two used very infrequently, and I made most of my best photos with it. When I got a 28, I grew enamored of it, saw its possibilities, but haven't stuck to it, so not many of my photos are very good. Plus I keep changing film. I used shoot pretty much only TriX developed in HC-110.

Thanks for the post, George; I think the real message is how he sees. The one camer/one lens formula is not a rule for him, but is an enabler of that vision. In a way it's the photographic implementation of the KISS principle. Sometimes my wife says "How many cameras do you need?" She's right.
Click to expand...

Trius,

Yes, that was my point.

I'm as much, if not more, guilty than anyone here on this. House full of gear - didn't we just see a thread about how many unused cameras do we have laying around?

I don't know how good a photog Wessel is - there are only three pics in an article discussing a 40 year oddessy. But, as I said, I did find it humbling that for him it came down to a single camera, a single lens and one type of film - and he's stayed with that equation for forty years!

Cool.
 
1 camera, 1 lens and 1 film.... Makes me question his sanity! Or mine. 😛
 
Simplicity can be a good thing. From 1960 to 1970 I used one camera and one lens (all I had was a fixed-lens rangefinder with a 45mm lens). I took many good pictures with that simple setup. I learned to use the "foot zoom" to move in for closeups and to back off for "wide-angle" shots. But I did feel some limitations because at times I wanted to do telephoto and macro work. Those problems were solved in 1970 when I purchased my first SLR and additional lenses.
 
Until about 10 years ago, I only had a single SLR, and a single 50mm lens. Photography was always fun.

Then came the internet...

I amassed gear to the point where I was always fretting about what to take with me, even if it was only for a day trip. Wides couldn't be wide enough and teles weren't long enough to get me through a single day of shooting.

I've since calmed down a bit, and find that the more I shoot, the rather I go for just that normal lens.
 
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