I recently purchased a Viltrox 23mm f/1.4 lens to give me a little bit more light gathering and wanted to test it out by taking it on a short hike. Since the weather was so chilly, I figured I’d take nothing else to prevent changing lenses. It was nice not having to think about what focal length to choose and just focus on composition.
Normally when I go out to combine my hobbies of hiking and photography, I load up a backpack full of gear, a tripod a Clif bar, a water bottle and head off somewhere. In that bag is my usual landscape kit consisting of a Sony A7iii with multiple lenses such as a 15mm and 50mm primes, 28-75mm f/2.8, and even a big 100-400mm just in case I see some wildlife. Add to this bag batteries, remote shutter, cleaning supplies, various ND filters and all of the other random stuff and that bag gets rather heavy. Not this time however.
After a day in the office, I stopped on the commute home at Laurel Mountain State Park and then Linn Run State Park. These are great places for hiking, mountain biking and even swimming in the creeks. Knowing I was coming from my day job, I brought along only a single camera and lens on a strap. No bag, no tripod, no filters and no accessories. I brought along a Sony a7iii with an attached 7Artisans 35mm f/2 manual lens in a Leica M mount adapted with a Haoge LM-NEX close focus adapter. Simple.
Having only a single focal length was great. It really helped me compose my images with care, made the process of shooting a joy and my back was happy not to be lugging around all that gear.
This past week I received a new lens in my ever growing collection of glass for the Fuji X series, the Laowa 9mm f/2.8 ultra wide angle. Before this, the widest lens I had at my disposal was a 12mm, which, while very wide, seems like nothing compared to this Laowa. The extra 3mm makes a huge difference in composing and framing. I haven’t been able to devote a lot of time to using this new lens, my initial impressions of this lens are very good. The build is solid, but tiny and so far the images look wonderful (technically at least, my composing leaves something to be desired).
The ball dropped late last night and we somehow made it through 2017. Before all of that took place, I went out in the frigid cold with a backpack full of camera gear and did some light hiking. With a fresh snow fallen, the trails were beautiful and the sights were snow covered.
