More mono

Despite pretty well exhausting the possibilities at the poultry auctions I was back again on Saturday. The aim being to once more evaluate approaches to gear. What the day proved was what I'd already worked out! The Fuji is okay, but clunky to use and that a 'big' camera doesn't necessarily make you any more obvious than a tiny one. At least not when you stick a small lens on it.

Possibly the most difficult sort of picture to pull off well is the candid group shot. It's bad enough trying to capture the look or gesture of one person, but to get a number of expressions which work together, in an arrangement of figures which works, when you can't control any of them, is like herding the proverbial cats!

I also had my felling that for most 'documentary' photography the 28mm and 50mm combination covers most of my requirements, with the 100mm in reserve. Why not use a 24-70mm zoom? Because it is true that using single focal length lenses makes you think about framing more critically. You have to move. Sometimes, though, all you need is a snapshot - when any lens will do!

As I've mentioned a time or two before, the light in the sale ring is bloody awful for colour photography with the mixture of lighting. It's also a bit gloomy. Using the Fuji in there showed yet again why I can't love it. At higher ISOs the way it renders skin is 'unusual' to my eyes. Less natural than the big cameras.

Outdoors, in good light, photographing anything other than people, the Fuji is fine. Where I am coming to appreciate it is when using it to make black and white pictures. In fact it's the reason I'm dabbling in that style at the moment. Black and white might be the way to approach photographing in the sale ring.

It's certainly proving its worth when I wander round the wood in late afternoon when the sun is bright and low. My previous attempts in colour always seemed too cluttered, but a monochromatic approach is simplifying things. There might be a project starting.

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