Switching To A Short Telephoto Lens

Fuji X-E1, 50mm F 2.0 Lens

I am absolved. I have seen the cliché, and I have photographed it. There. It's done. Time to move on.

The morning walk was a little later in the morning, by my standards. The day was a cool, crisp autumn morning awash with bright, clear sunlight. I decided to switch to a  Fuji 50mm 2.0 WR lens, which behaves like a 75mm on a conventional 35mm camera. I was a bit "disoriented" by my earlier walk with a 16mm lens, wider than my usual 25mm, and decided to make it worse by switching to a second lens in so many days.

Working with a longer lens allow me to "get closer" without actually getting closer. Perspectives change, sometimes for the better. For this gargoyle photo, the shot could be made from a greater distance so my shooting angle was much closer to a true horizontal. The results were less perspective distortion, and fewer minutes spent in post production.

After nearly 18 months of manually focusing my lenses, these few mornings in the luxury of autofocusing lenses was a breath of crisp Autumn air. Those manual 7artisans lenses, which I used daily, forced me to adopt and adapt techniques I haven't used since my film days. After years of squinting through the viewfinder of a Pentax SLR, using my cameras at their full performance capabilities was a photographic Valhalla for this old film warrior. This photo was made by reaching over a short, brick wall and holding the camera at arm's length. I used the LCD to compose the image and let the camera focus itself. Easy, peasy, shutter squeezy.

One thing that I've noticed is the number of public art projects initiated by creative, stuck-at-home children. I am all for this creative outlet as long as the painters and sketchers take responsibility for their work and the consequences that may follow. I find chalk a most wonderful medium, primarily because the artist's easel will be wiped clean with the next big rain, when it finally comes.

Spending the morning with a short telephoto lens was indeed refreshing. I could now photography at longer working distances, and my backgrounds took on a soft dreamy look. The 50mm lens wasn't that much heavier than the 25mm I've been carrying, and using autofocus was a real treat. Now comes the problem of deciding what to carry tomorrow.