With my shelves bursting at the seams it has come to my attention that I have too many lenses.
Photography has been my job for over 25 years, mostly from the other side of the camera. I’m a professional photo editor, and much of my working life has been spent with motorsport pictures, first trackside at race weekends and now from a desk at home. I’ve probably edited well over a million photographs professionally, so I’d like to hope I know what makes a good one. Taking one is a different matter, which is partly what this site is about.
Away from my day job, my photography passion lies partly in collecting lenses – most of which would be very ill fitting for use by my colleagues in my day job. Somewhere along the way a healthy interest in cameras became a collection: Sony, and Panasonic, and Olympus bodies, a small army of Micro Four Thirds glass; a growing pile of vintage lenses from the likes of Minolta, Helios, Super Takumar and Pentacon; not forgetting of course the plethora of third party manufacturer lenses that have revolutionised the lens market – Viltrox, TT Artisans, and Samyang to name just three. Some get used pretty much every week. Others haven’t left the shelf in years.
That’s where the Random Lens Generator comes in. A random pick from my custom spin wheel chooses first a camera and then a suitably fitting lens, and that’s what I take out on my next walk or event, however odd the pairing. Then I write up how it went, warts and all.
Alongside that you’ll find reviews of the cameras and lenses I’ve lived with, and photoshoots from days out at marathons, race circuits, city streets and country paths. I usually shoot black-and-white JPEGs alongside my raw files, so expect plenty of monochrome.
Thanks for stopping by. If you have a question about any of the kit, or just want to tell me I need fewer lenses, leave a comment on any post.