I have been here before and will come here again. I am making photography to complicated. Last week when we went to Norway I tried to minimize my camera gear, so that I could carry it around. Still it was to much.

The gear in it self is small and not that heavy. I brought my Leica M10 and three lenses (a 21, a 35 and a 50). With one lens mounted to the camera, I could carry the other two in my pockets or a very small bag. Compared to what I used to bring on a trip like this, the setup is minimal.

Now – as you may have read in post #315 – I also brought my Leica M3 with a 50 mounted on it. I wanted to shoot some film in the uniqe environments at Lofoten. I knew from the start that I shouldn’t carry both the M10 and the M3 with me, which I normally didn’t. At least not in my hand. I didn’t want to leave a camera in the car, so it was typically in my small backpack.

The M3 was also my reserve camera, if the M10 should fail. Not a perfect reserve – but I figured that I didn’t want to bring yet a third camera. In that case it would have been my Fuji X-T2 and a zoom lens…and a battery charger.

That is a total of two cameras and four lenses. This was were I could have made my first smart choise. I could have left one 50 at home. My argument for bringing two was that I didn’t want to change lenses that much. If I had thought about it a little longer I perhaps would have realized that I at the same time had told myself not to use more than one camera at the time. I normally only use the 50 on the M3 due to the lack of wider framelines. It would have been better to give it one minute and put on the 50 to the M3 before going out to shoot.

The next thing I learned – again – was that I had brought to many lenses. I felt it was a constant switching between lenses. I put way to much energy in changing lenses and shooting the same motive twice. I lost the moment and could not fully focus in just taking in the incredible surroundings.

Now, when I think about it, I make the same conclusion as I did after our trip to the Faroes back in 2019 (post #50). I should have brought just the 35mm lens – always mounted to the M10. I am sure that I would have adapted to it fine. There is no point in acting as if I would miss pictures due to a lack of a longer or wider lens. Up until the last week I had never been to Lofoten at all. Every picture I got was a new picture.

Why not bring only the Fuji X-T2 and a zoom lens, you may ask. Well – I thought about that. And I felt bad every second. I love shooting with my M-cameras. I feel like one with the camera in a way that I never experienced with another camera. I may have ”missed” fewer pictures with another setup – but that would have felt so wrong in my mind. For me half the fun is to use the camera, to set the focus, to think of the light and the depth of field.

I have said it before – next time I will only bring one camera and one lens. Will I do it? Probably not…