Why less is more (if you know what you’re doing)...

[lichtundlaerm]

Hey everybody!

 

Today, I’d like to share a brief story about a photograph I took two days ago, the joy of having a small, lightweight but high-quality camera equipment and knowing how to use your (limited) resources. It's the same that I already published on my blog.

The story started a few days ago when I walked past this spot:

 

 

It’s the Marienberg Fortress in my current home town, Wuerzburg. I hadn’t realized how good this spot was before, but as you can see, the time of the day and the weather conditions were not too great. So I just kept it in mind.

I’m currently pretty damn busy at work, so I don’t really have time to go out and shoot, let alone actually PLAN anything. Nevertheless, I take my “go-to” equipment with me every day, which comprises of:

 

• The Fujifilm X100T
• A Haida 49mm ND 3.0 filter
• A tiny table tripod (Cullman 50007 digipod short)
• A cable release

 

I’ve got no dedicated bag for this. I sometimes use a ThinkTank Retro 5, but normally I throw it into whichever bag I have with me (keeping everything organized with the power of the almighty zip-lock-bag… which also serves as a nice protection in case it rains). The whole thing weighs less than your average DSLR body, gives me full control over all relevant settings and yields images of great quality… moreover, I actually TAKE it with me.

Anyway, back to yesterday: So I sat in the office, prepared a talk I will give next week and saw that the weather was behaving more or less in the same chaotic way as the days before – promising some nice clouds at sunset. So I just grabbed my bag, rushed out to the spot and set everything up, which more or less looked like that:

 

 

The combination of the built-in ND filter, my screw-in filter and the great image quality at several apertures and most ISOs allows for a decent amount of freedom in exposure time, so I chose something one-minute-ish (although in the end I chose a 30s picture as the “keeper” thanks to a boat driving through) to nicely blur out the water but keep the clouds visible (they moved in the wrong direction for nice cloud-trails). Of course the whole thing wasn’t too stable on the tiny tripod and the surprisingly shaky bridge, but it sufficed to get a sharp picture. Thanks to the built-in WiFi, doing a rough edit on my smartphone was a breeze. So there you go:

 

 

The point here is: It’s not about the equipment you have with you – it’s about knowing what you want, what you need, how to get it out of the things you have with you and how to work around the limitations. Whatever this means for you depends tremendously on your style of shooting, your own expectations and which compromises you’re willing to make. And you will have to make them.

But this is something that you have to figure out for yourself, so don’t believe anybody who tells you about “that prefect camera” or whatnot. However, for ME, my current “small” setup is pretty close in terms of a daily companion and a whole lot of fun!

To conclude, here’s the final Lightroom edit and another one I took later in a moody b&w edit:

 

[ThorstenMUC]

Did something similar a few hours ago... not such a great location - just wanted to play with an ND-Filter and my small Cullmann Magnesit Copter "Tripod" during an afternoon-walk.

 

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[andrew brown]

Lovely set of images to suport the thread title...

 

Surely as fine an example as you need to explain WHY people should move over to thw 'less is more' filed of photography

 

For the record, my enite kit now consists of an X-100T, old style cable release, very compact Manfrotto tripod and a Lee Seven5 filter kti with ND10 filter.

 

The camera goes every where, when I'm feeling adventurous, I take out the tripod which is housed in a bag that can hold the camera, cable release and filter kit - and could look like I was carrying a foot long Subway roll!

 

On those days - my pockets whinge like hell at not being used properly...