Creative Anxiety? | Sony 35mm f1.4 GM

When the best lens is also the… worst?

Packing fills me with dread, especially for travel photography.  Do I bring every lens I own?  Wide or tele?  Batteries and SD cards?  Which bag do I take? Sure I can just shoot with my iPhone but image quality aside this is the same device I need to find directions, translate menus, and pay for everything with right?  What if I run out of battery, drop, or lose the phone?  24mm - the default lens on most phones - is just a little too wide.

35mm is the sweet spot - a little tighter to avoid distorting people’s faces but still wide enough to get the shot. There’s a reason it’s a go to for wedding and documentary photographers, it just makes people and the environment look natural.

Sony’s flagship 35mm f1.4 GMaster.   The sharpest detail coupled with the creamiest bokeh, quick and silent autofocus.  Every button, switch, and ring you could want right on the lens, weather sealed gaskets to protect it against rain, dirt, and dust. All of this in a small compact form factor, especially for a bright f1.4 aperture which will take you from day to night without missing a beat.  It’s supposed to be a perfect lens, but you want to know a secret? 

I absolutely hated it when it first came out. 

4 years and 10,000 photos later has it won me over?

This lens is what I used the vast majority of time on a recent trip to Japan.  The crowded subway stations, tight alleyways, dizzying layers of walkways and crossings against a backdrop of historic landmarks all called for wider lenses to capture everything that’s going on.  Lost in that urge to shoot everything all at once are the quieter moments - individual acts of kindness, the dedication needed from every cleaner, train conductor, taxi driver, just to keep things running on time. 

Omotenashi - service without expecting anything in return, an emblem of what makes Japanese culture stand out in the global stage.  Trying to capture the core truth of Japan with a 35mm lens is tough - you need to get close to the action, and the people, and try to capture the scene without disturbing it.

I bought this lens on launch day in 2020, because it’s supposed to be the best. All the early reviews said how light and compact it was -  but it really isn’t all that light. 525 grams, but the weight is distributed awkwardly, with the half a kilogram weight being quite front-heavy across the lens barrel. Carrying it around on a shoulder strap made me bump into door knobs and cupboard corners, and while I have gotten used to it i still wish the lens was a little more balanced.   Sure the image quality is amazing - super sharp wide open, all across the frame.  Very little purple fringing in high contrast backlit scenes, creamy bokeh, but I just didn’t like any of the shots I was getting from it?  

Turns out of course it wasn’t the lens’s fault - it was me.

Anxiety and creativity are strange bedfellows.  You need the right amount of nervous tension to launch your vision,  but uncertainty can just as quickly poison your creative self-worth.  The biggest reason I hated the 35mm G-master 4 years ago was the anxiety I associated with street photography.  I’m no Bruce Gilden, and I didn’t like shooting up close.  I am an introvert, so the last thing I want to do is invade other people’s personal space with a camera, let alone using a heavy lens that I was awkwardly bumping into table corners.  I was still developing my visual aesthetic, and my own anxiety and insecurities were projected onto this lens.

Sure I can get into landscape or astrophotography where there are no people around, but my genre is street.  I studied the masters - Daido Moriyama, Saul Leiter, Alan Schaller, and learnt how to preserve a sense of mystery in each frame.  Backlit scenes filled with silhouettes.  Neon lights and window panes, diffractions and reflections that shroud people’s faces. 

Each of these scenarios are difficult to shoot - high contrast, mixed or harsh lighting, quick moving subjects in low light.   This is why I’ve come to value the autofocus and the f1.4 aperture on the 35mm GMaster so much.  It’s a powerful creative tool for tracking any subject on the street just in time for me to obscure their identity through visual layering.  

Each time out shooting was another rep to confront my creative roadblocks.

Every lightroom editing session an attempt to reflect on the triggers for my anxiety.  

Over time my skills, along with my mental state while out on the streets, got better.  I could leverage the lens’s potential, and become more worthy of this creative tool.

Happy shooting everyone, talk soon.

Jack.

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