Figuring it Out

I'll say it before and I'll say it again: wide angle is life. I live and die by the 28mm focal length. But I've been trying to get out of my comfort zone lately. I started by going a little tighter. I had this Leica Elmarit 35mm lens that wasn't getting much use, yet I loved its rendering when I did use it. So, I decided to let it live on my R4s for a bit and adapted it to my SL a lot in the same time period. But then I had the crazy thought that maybe 28mm wasn't wide enough! I found a great deal on a TTArtisan 21mm f1.5 lens with a native L mount. Score! The good folks at TTArtisan had long since sold out of that lens with an L mount and now I could use it on my SL without an adapter. And what a great lens too! I'll eventually have to invest in the Leica R mount 21mm, but that's another story. However, when it came time to pack for a cruise my wife and I were taking for our 15th wedding anniversary, I fell back on my usual travel combination.

This was taken with my phone and shows the set up I had originally planned on taking: My R4s, SL, many rolls of Portra 160, Pro Image 100, CineStill 50D, and Harman Phoenix 200, with the Elmarit 35, Summicron 50, and Elmarit 90. I didn't need that much film and slimmed it down, taking only one roll of Portra, but kept the others. I decided to stick with what I was comfortable with and left the 35 in favor of the Elmarit 28. And since the thought of changing lenses on a sandy beach makes me break out in hives - and infection-chic isn't in vogue at the moment, nor has it ever been - I decided to stay the hives and pack my favorite zoom, the Vario Elmar 28-70 and call it a day.

Vintage film cameras and rolls displayed on wooden table with black camera bag.

All together, was it too much gear for a five day cruise? Yes, and I knew it was when I packed it. What I didn't know was that in a very un-me-like fashion, I could very well have left the 28mm and 90mm at home, as the vast majority of all photos I made were with the Summicron 50. This is partly because I wanted to keep shooting after the sun set and it is a whole stop faster than the other lenses (f2 vs f2.8), but also because I was really digging the way my photos were coming out.

Rediscovering 50mm

When I first started taking photography more seriously I did so with a Pentax ME Super that I bought from older gentleman here in Miami. For $50 I got the camera body, a case that was crumbling, a strap that was so brittle I wouldn't dare touch it, and a SMC Pentax-A 50mm f1.7 lens. The camera died after a few rolls had been put through it, but there were two things that happened with those few rolls: 1) I fell back in love with photography, and 2) I became pretty comfortable with the 50mm focal length. In fact, it was the only focal length I used for a while, primarily because it was the only lens I had. When the Pentax died, I got an old 60's Fuji rangefinder with a fixed 48mm lens and so stayed with that same angle of view. But I kept going wider, finally feeling I had found my wheelhouse when I started using 28mm lenses.

But as I slowly started taking some paid gigs and needed lenses that offered standard and telephoto angles of view, I got back into 50mm. But that was usually only for full body portraits and when absolutely necessary. I had not WANTED to use 50mm for a long time. Aboard this cruise, however, I found that I wanted less and less to switch between lenses and more and more to just shoot.

The first day aboard the cruise had been a weird one. We'd had a very hectic morning in which we ran Link to school, Wes to the doctor, and packed in a hurry, making it to the port moments before we were to board. So, it took a minute for us to relax. I did have my camera with me after we boarded, but I just grabbed it out of the bag with the 28mm that was already mounted on it and took off. The next day, though, I made a decision to mount the Summicron 50. Previously I had found the focal length too tight and restrictive for street photography, which is mostly what I wanted to do aboard the ship (can you still call it street photography when you're floating on the open seas?), but I also wanted to make lots of portraits of Steph. "I guess I'll deal with the tightness," I figured, and left the 28mm virtually untouched.

Dramatic view of empty cruise ship walkway against cloudy sky during sunset.

We got up early for a day at sea and did some sunrise yoga and a hot girl walk, as Steph calls it. I quickly found my 50mm groove. I pushed the thoughts of the lens not being wide enough out of my mind as the compositions came into focus. And, in fact, I found the challenge of composing this way so exciting that I decided to keep the lens mounted all day.

Passengers relaxing by pool deck on cruise ship with distinctive orange and white structure.

By the time we had breakfast and decided to hit the pool I was really feeling comfortable. Normally I would have changed lenses for street style photos. But I wanted to see if I could compose stories with a 50mm. At first I thought I had made a mistake. How was I supposed to capture stories without the context provided by the wider angle of view? So, after a lap around the pool with no success, I began to walk back to my camera bag to change out the 50 for the 28. And then I saw it! I couldn't fit the entire deck into the frame, but I could compose with the woman in white sitting up on the left, with the legs cutting into the frame on the right. I had stopped down my aperture to f8 and so just about everything in front of me was in focus. I knew I had a banger before I saw the photograph - and it would be quite a while since I was prioritizing film on this trip...no instant gratification - and it invigorated me in a way that I have felt on so few occasions in my time as a photographer. Thankfully I was not let down. And despite some issues with development for the rolls of film, this exposure was spot on.

What had started as a conscious decision to challenge myself had become commitment to an experiment. I NEEDED to see how many dopamine hits I could create with a 50mm.

That dopamine chase continued into the evening. There was never a question about which lens I would have used after the sun had set. A whole stop of light makes a big difference when light is scarce. But what did change was my approach to the photographs I was making. Instead of only making portraits, of which I did make a few, I was trying to find stories to tell, leaning into the very restrictions that I previously found to be an annoyance. I found that the stories were lacking the level of context that I enjoyed including with 28mm lenses, but I was enjoying the level of intimacy and personalizing.

Silhouettes of party-goers dancing under colorful lights at nighttime cruise event.

I had eschewed the lens hood and wanted to make the bright stage lights on the pool deck work for me in creating some interesting flares. I was still figuring it out when Steph was pulled up onto the elevated dance floor by one of Virgin's dancers. Thankfully I was on my digital camera and snapped whenever I felt a great moment was about to happen and found this one, lights and flares dancing around the frame along with Steph and the dancer. The frame feels intimate, almost voyeuristic, like I'm intruding on a moment between Steph and the dancer, but with just enough context to imagine how packed with people that pool deck was.

After such a productive day of shooting 50mm, there was no chance I was changing it up the next day.

Portrait Mania

Of course, I would be remiss if I didn't mention my favorite way of using 50mm on this trip and that's for portraiture. For the past two years, I have been favoring 90mm or even 135mm for portraiture. The longer focal lengths are flattering for facial features, as is well known. And so my habit had been to skip over 50mm for portraits. But the morning of the third day, I found a perfect portrait making moment and didn't want to swap out the 50 that had stayed on the camera from the night before and instead composed and hit the shutter release button. I never would have had the space necessary for this composition with 90mm. 50 was right. 50 was perfect.

How the hell had I been missing out on the 50mm focal length for so long?! I was enjoying street photography and portraits with the same lens!

Black and white portrait of person resting on pillow with knit sweater.

Heading out for the day, I mounted the Summicron 50 to the film camera and brought nothing else with me. This day our port of call was Key West, but as Steph and I had been there many times before we decided to stay aboard the ship. We do this often at ports of call we are familiar with to take in as many of the amenities on these amazing cruise ships and to do so without a crowd as most, naturally, debark and enjoy the city.

Thankfully, I had planned ahead and brought some Kodak Portra 160 with me, giving myself film slow enough to shoot at wide apertures. I made this portrait at either f2.8 or f4 (after enough margaritas these details start to get fuzzy), but regardless of the hard numbers, I could tell through the viewfinder that it worked. Something about the 50mm field of view just works for portraits. There is just the right amount of context to place the subject in a setting, but intimate enough to never let that setting overpower the subject.

Summer vacation portrait on cruise ship deck with palm trees and ocean backdrop.

I was able to take this to the extreme on the last day of the cruise, in which we stopped over at Virgin's private beach in Bimini. I had saved the CineStill 50D for that day and boy was I glad I did. There was barely a cloud in the sky and the sun was high and bright. With ISO 50 film, I was able to shoot virtually wide open and let the Summicron 50 work its magic.

Steph was an amazingly cooperative model as she posed for this shot and that. And again I found that I missed neither the context provided by the environmental portraits I usually make with 28mm, or the strictly subject centered portraits I usually make with 90mm. Sitting right in that magical Goldilocks spot where I can balance subject and background, the portraits I made at Bimini are possibly my favorite I've ever made. The sharpness of Steph, with the painterly bokeh of the out of focus resort background, create a photograph that immediately sucks me in. It feels inviting and yet intimate all at the same time.

Final Focus

Will I ever use 90mm or 135mm for portraits ever again? Well, yes, probably. I'd be crazy to say that I won't ever go short telephoto ever again. Will I ever use 28mm again? Come on, now...its still where I lay my head down at night. That's home. But 50mm has continued to call to me. In fact, since returning from this trip, I have not used anything other than my Summicron 50. I have wanted to load up my Pentax ME with some film and take the SMC Pentax-A f1.7 for a walk. Maybe I'll do that this week. Either way, I think my perspective has changed. Where I used to think of 50mm as "that focal length I have to have for clients" I now think of it as the perfect mate to 28mm, allowing me to still capture stories, but in a more intimate and personal way. I'm finding the emotional connection I have with these 50mm photographs is deep. Very deep. Maybe this is why the master, Henri Cartier-Bresson, used this focal length for just about every photograph he ever made? And if it was good enough for Cartier-Bresson, who am I to disagree?