No, I’m not talking about my stomach … although it’s also widening … unfortunately … I’m talking about lenses. It appears that the older I get, the wider I go.

When I bought my first SLR as a teenager, I considered a 135 mm a wide lens and preferred a 200 mm or 400 mm. When I bought my first DSLR I used something like a 24-120 zoom for almost everything, later I’ve become fond of prime lenses, first a 90 mm, then 85 mm, then 50 mm, then 40 mm and the latest lens I bought was a 28 mm.

I don’t understand why this has happened, but I find it interesting that this happened. I still use my zoom lenses a lot, but I’m increasingly drawn to prime lenses. Currently, my favorites are the 85/1.8 + 28/2.8 for my Nikon, and the 40/2.8 on my Ricoh IIIx.

I wonder what I will be using in two-three years 🤔

Yesterday I got my new wide-angle lens, new and new … it’s an old second-hand lens (14-24/2.8) from MPB, and it’s a giant piece of glass. Compared to my other lenses it’s “silly big”, I’m starting to get a bit worried if I can fit it in my rucksack!!

Anyway, I went out today to test it and here is my first shot … and it’s going to take some time to get used to this lens. When I took this photo, I could almost touch the sign—I’m not used to that.

I then tried to take some more "open landscape" photos, and it's really different from my other lenses. I was standing right beside a tree, not visible in the photo, and the branches from it were visible in the frame, so I took a step forward and made a second attempt … and the branches were still there. Not until I walked up to the tree you see, it's almost within touching distance, I was able to get the branches out of the frame. This photo is more the kind of photos I expect to take in the future. This one has an obvious flaw … the branches melts together with the background. But what really amazed me was that it felt like I had the camera below the tree … I still got the whole tree in the frame with room to spare.

The final photo was taken with me crouching down right beside the track and the snowmobile passing me just 20-40 cm away.

It was fun to take it out to see how it works, I really need to practice a lot, to learn how to best use this lens. It’s quite different from the other lenses I have for this camera.

Every so often, I wonder if I need a larger working memory. A couple of days ago, we went on a short trip to visit family, since it was a short family trip, I decided not to bring any serious photo gear. Instead, I would just take the GR IIIx (almost always in my pocket) and the Lumix GM5 with the small 12–32 and 35–100 zooms (fits easily in a pocket). My idea was to take a walk or two and try to capture three landscape photos.

Right before we were leaving home, I realized that I had forgotten the 35-100 and ran in to fetch it. Then we left home and after a couple of hours of driving we arrived at our destination.

After eating lunch, I decided to take my walk before the sun disappeared, and I started to dig in my bag to get the GM5. After about 30 seconds, I realized that I had forgotten to pack it … what an idiot I am!!!! So I had the tele zoom but no camera, great !!

Fortunately, I had the GR IIIx in my pocket, so I was able to capture some photos … but not what I had planned.