Here Is Your Only Lens - Part One

on December 16, 2017

" You may have it for a year. It will be attached to your camera - your one and only camera - for twelve months. During that time you will take all your professional and amateur pictures with it.

You may adjust the camera as much as you like. You may adjust the lens as many times as you wish.

You may use a flash or not - it is your choice. What you cannot do is dismount the lens. You must see the world with the angle of view that this lens provides for the following 365 days. It is for you to choose wisely now - which lens shall it be? "

Dream? Challenge? Nightmare? Folly? Well, all these and more for some people - people who have become accustomed to owning and changing a vast variety of lenses and cameras. They would undergo an agony of indecision while they contemplated the year's shooting and all the disparate factors that might make up a lens choice. Some would go instantly to what they want and some would try to wheedle their way out of the thing entirely. Some might never be able to make a decision, and would have to have one forced upon them.

But however the year was started, it would be certain that by the end of it - if the person attempting it was honest with themselves - they would be the absolute masters of that lens and camera. They would know it by feel in the dark and be able to make it perform to the utmost of its capability. Rather like the pioneer who could only afford one rifle and learned from necessity to protect and provide with it.

It would not be an easy experiment to make, but it could be the making of an artist. There would be a period of euphoria, then of doubt, then despair. Then discovery, and finally delight.

Next post: The optical options and how one might balance them out.

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