Downsizing

Now I know what I need in the way of lenses, rather than what I want (or have been lead to believe I need) it's time to have a cull. The first step was to trade two lenses for one. The first was a lens that didn't match any body I have and the other was the hated 85mm! The lens I acquired is an old 20mm. I had been contemplating the new all sing all dancing super-sharp 20mm, but it's not a lens I envisage using much and wanted something small to keep in a bag or even a pocket. The question was, would I like the focal length?

As my ultra-wide zoom is my least used lens (after the vile 85mm) my intention is to have just the 20mm and get rid of the zoom. But would 20mm be wide enough? I don't like the curvature and edge distortion that anything wider than 18mm gives, so my reasoning is that if I need wider than 24mm then 20mm should do the job.

In an attempt to get used to the lens it's pretty much never been off the camera and I've been using it to photograph all sorts of things. It certainly lacks the near-fisheye look of an ultra-wide angle lens. In fact it gives a look I don't find dissimilar to that from a 28mm lens. But it's still possible to get the forced perspective look from a close up foreground object against the background. In fact this gave me an idea for a short project of pictures of trees in front gardens. I'd taken some in the past with longer focal length lenses but they didn't get all the house behind the tree in the frame. 20mm does. I need to work out a few things but I've made a preliminary grid of the shots so far. Quite what the pictures are about I'm not too sure though!

I've even used it for a chicken picture - albeit with a slight crop. So far so good and it looks like my plan will work. My fisheye is now up for sale and the ultra-wide zoom will be next to go.

Project wise there's not been much movement beyond a couple of roadside egg sales I've been wanting to photograph which have been in hiding. The hand-drawn chicken one (complete with superfluous apostrophe) was worth the wait.

Noticing more activity at the sandplant the other day I took a run over with the camera this evening. Not easy to see what had been going on apart from the removal of sand from the heaps. The big tides are starting to mak their mark, depositing flotsam at the base of the new bund, but that was about all. I gave the 20mm lens a bit of a work out and managed one frame I am reasonably content with.

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