Fujinon 27mm, UK Holiday Hero
I am an obsessive idiot. After spending hours considering, and blogging about, the perfectly minimal (yet complete) camera and lens combination to take with me on a family holiday in the UK, I ended up doing something entirely different.
In my previous post, I wrote about taking to the UK two camera bodies, the Fujifilm X-T1 and X-E1, and two lenses, the Fujinons XF 35mm and 18-55mm, in anticipation of every photographic possibility. I was proud of this perfect travel kit.
Before we left for the airport, I slid the XF 27mm f/2.8 pancake prime lens into my bag. “Why not?” I thought, “It is small enough.”
This impulse decision proved to be a game-changer.
In the UK I carried my two cameras and three lens bag with me wherever we went: Walking around Somerton. Walking around Glastonbury and up and down the Tor. Touring Caerphilly town and castle. However, it was during an extended walk-in Devon, from Fingle’s Bridge to Castle Drogo and back, that I really got tired of carrying the two cameras and three lens bag. It was heavy!
By Dartmoor I could not face carrying the bag anymore so before I walked up to Grimspound, I left the bag in the car and put the X-T1 with 27mm lens in my coat pocket.
This (even more) minimal combination was truly liberating. From this point of the holiday, I ditched the bag and used only the XT-1 and 27mm carried in hand or slipped into a coat pocket. I enjoyed the walks with my family more and still pulled in decent results. Here are a few pics from the latter part of the holiday taken with the X-T1 and 27mm.
27mm Image Parade
While I was happy with the 27mm FOV for town and landscape use, I was also pleased with my people pictures using the 27mm.
Dad and Daughter Selfie
Kudos to the X100 series owning folks who realized the beauty and simplicity of a single body/prime lens combination from the beginning. This is a reminder to me with my fixation on gear acquisition and having a lens for every situation, that in reality, it does not really take much to enjoy photography, capture memories, and still achieve results.
