Sunday, January 5, 2014

Camera Bag Next Trip?

I have been thinking a lot about my next trip already, what gear I want to take and what photos I want to make. I will take the 5x7 camera to do more formal portraits of the families in the dump and possibly the people who live under the freeway. I think thou I might cut down on the number of boxes of film, possibly 300+ not the 500 I was thinking of before. I would go with 1 possibly 2 lens 210mm (maybe a 120mm), a light meter, reflector, dark cloth, loop, 15 holders and my new strong carbon fiber geared tripod. This tripod is big but its reasonably light and will be so much more easier to use than my last Chinese copy cat carbon which was fragile and had no geared center column.
 
Earlier I was thinking of possibly leaving behind my Leica gear next time around but now I feel that will be pretty much impossible. As I develop and scan my photos from last trip I am finding to many I like, I cannot possibly give up the Leica's. I might try traveling with less Leica gear thou, I might limit myself to 2 M6 bodies and 2 lens, the 35mm 1.4 and either the 21mm 2.8 or the 28mm 2. I would probably go with only 120 rolls of Tri-x 35mm film, quite a bit down from the 200 I shot last trip.
 
120 rolls of 35mm Tri-x and 300 sheets of 5x7 Tri-x would be a lot to shoot in 5 weeks time, more thought needed on this. I can start to see the 5x7 portraits in my mind, I can see the people in the images, folks I know quite well now, folks I hope will trust me enough to make these important pictures. I am also going to pay for a $15  computer app to learn more Burmese! I need to learn more of that difficult language to get this work done right, communication with my subjects is very important, it builds trust, it helps the pictures and its fun!