In July, I will be visiting my family in OH for a week. I'm kind of thinking out loud on what equipment to bring. Despite what people say about equipment not mattering, I find that equipment choice has a major impact on photographic motivation, and vice versa. I also find that complicated equipment choices totally confound my flow, which is why I'm thinking about this ahead of time. I need to simplify my LF kit, or just leave it at home. This is made worse because I don't have a good LF kit tailored for travel.
Normally these trips are great because rural OH can provide some good photos. But since I'm visiting my family, there will be a lot of family/outdoor activity/kid photos but also, when I'm able to get away by myself, landscape/still life/portrait LF photos. The problem with bringing LF is that it's not very useful for the first category, so I have to bring at least some 35mm gear anyway.
I'm trying to avoid the temptation just to leave ALL my LF gear at home. Here's all my photo-gear:
Tripods: monstrous surveying tripod/3047 head which I use for LF, and a cheap Slik tripod which works fine for 35mm, medium format, and maybe the speed graphic. Maybe.
35mm: Plenty of gear. Very versatile, but I hate 35mm for "serious" pictures. The good thing is I can bring miles of film and never worry about running out or having to change film holders. I can either leave the tripods at home or do very well with the lightweight Slik tripod.
My complicated, unportable Large format gear:
Lenses: 135, 150, 210mm lenses, but only one working shutter between them. I also have a 90mm lens with a frozen shutter.
Compact/lightweight box camera--the box camera has a dedicated 90mm lens because it's not practical to remove the lens from the focusing helical in the field. This camera is fairly usable with the cheap Slik tripod.
Pacemaker speed graphic--I love 4x5 negatives, but my speed graphic tends to frustrate me for landscape because of no movements. A good MF would honestly be better because you still wouldn't have movements but at least would have increased DOF. There's always the option of throwing on the 90mm and stopping down, but is this really worth bringing the camera, when I have a dedicated 90mm box camera that is much smaller/lighter?
Calumet CC400 monorail--because of no FP shutter, I don't have a 90mm lens and have to shuffle the lens elements into my working shutter. If I bring this camera, I have to bring my giant surveying tripod.
All in all, I know that my equipment is going to frustrate my photography, because it's too complicated for travel. I need to do one of three things, before my trip. I can get a good field camera with movements, and a compact, quality tripod, which would probably cost nearly a thousand dollars. Or I could get a medium format SLR with a basic lens kit, and I could just bring that, use my Slik tripod and dispense with LF. This might be slightly cheaper but not much. Failing either of those, as it is, I'm seriously considering just going with 35mm, which wouldn't cost anything, but sure seems like a waste of an opportunity.
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