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Why do I do this?  Why do I like making flatter B&W images?  It isn’t just because I like the old images of the past which were flat B&W images that weren’t sharp that I remember from seeing in old magazines.

I think I do it because I’m a contrarian.  I get overcome and/or fed up with consumerism and the greatest and newest.  I also don’t like the new realities of the way the younger generations tend to use garish sharp colors, etc.

But flatter B&W doesn’t work for everything.  When I use it, there are some things that don’t work in B&W so I skip over them.  The other option is to sometimes use color, especially Classic Neg.

I really like the simplicity of using one camera and one lens and using one process, like flatter B&W if/when I’m photographing for myself.

I still haven’t decided about longer zoom lenses.  I used the Fuji 16-80mm F4 zoom lens to capture the above, but I still had to crop and resize a lot.  I may still return that lens due to its size and weight.  I would, in theory, like to just own a few prime lenses and optimize my photography around those prime lenses.  Recently. I even tried to buy some prime lenses so that I could compare using them against the 16-80mm zoom lens, but they were all out of stock and it might take a long time to get them.  I’ll try again after the holidays.  

My heart says, just return the 16-80mm lens and only use the 35mm F2 lens that I own.  I much prefer using the 35mm lens on the X-Pro3 camera; but, there are many things I can’t photograph that a few folks ask or expect me to do.

Since it looks like I will be housebound for at least three more months, even if I get the covid vaccine sometime during that period, my inclination is to just hunker down with my 35mm lens and camera mostly sitting in my photography drawer, unused.  I might have a few more opportunities to check out the 16-80mm lens in the next week so I’ll make the decision about keeping it or returning it in another week.