Peter Truman Photography

Be really honest with yourself. How much of the photographic gear you normally carry do you actually need? How often do you use all the lenses and the other accessories that you carry with you?

Only a few years ago the standard lens on a 35mm film SLR was 50mm focal length. Remember that? If you have been through that experience you probably had the 50mm standard lens and little else, but you still managed to get some great pictures. The 50mm lens is now rapidly becoming a specialist lens and a ‘standard zoom’ covers that and a range of other focal lengths. Then we were tempted by a variety of other lenses and accessories…

I spent years carrying all my gear to every place I went thinking I would need everything I carried with me. The bag got bigger and heavier and I started to question my own sanity at carrying all this junk as the reality was that a lot of the stuff I carried stayed in the bag for most of the time. To prove to myself that I was being daft, I went through a whole year’s worth of images to check what lenses I actually used and how often. The results are embarrassing. Suffice to say I used just one lens for the vast majority of my images. The next used lens represents a few percent and ‘the rest’ fill up the remainder. Like most DSLR users I have a collection of lenses that cover a broad range of focal lengths. In my case from 15mm to 500mm, beyond if you include the teleconverters. My most used lens in 2008 was the 24-105mm f4 L IS. Next were the 70-200m f2.8 L IS, 180mm f3.5 L macro, 50mm f1.4 and 16-35mm f2.8L. I will not divulge the remainder but there are several lenses I owned all through 2008 that did not get used. That doesn’t seem very sensible.