In your bag No: 680, Beat Belmont
Beat is off to Israel for a few months, and this is his kit. I hope he travels better than I do. I am useless for about a week after I travel…Just like now. Anyway, check out this great bag.
My name is Beat Belmont, I’m a 23 year old guy from Switzerland, and this is my bag for my 3-month stay in Tel Aviv, that starts next week. (I don’t want to carry the whole setup with me when I’m there, but this is what comes on the plane).
The bag is a V-reporter bag, made from brown leather
Hasselblad XPAN with 45mm and 90mm lens: fantastic camera, fantastic lenses.
Contax S2 with 50mm f/1,7 Carl Zeiss lens: my low-light solution, i still have to get used to the spot-meter
Olympus XA (for b&w film) my everyday-camera. always in my pocket
Contax T2 (for color film) love the lens on this. my only flash-option.
I like to try out different films. Right now, I’m mostly shooting TMX 100 and Superia 400.
I always carry a pen and a notebook and there’s also a wallet in the picture.
I started photographing two years ago, when I bought my first camera, a Yashica Electro 35 ME (Zone-focusing, great lens). What followed was a terrible phase of GAS, that ended with buying the S2 (to use my fathers Yashica-lenses). I don’t do a specific kind of photography but I’m living on the countryside, so there are landscapes and trees and animals in it. When I’m in towns, I’m trying to do some street photography.
Some time ago I started a tumblr which I update occasionally:
http://beat-belmont.tumblr.com
All the best,
Beat
Thanks for sharing your bag with us Beat. I hope that you have had some great photo opportunities in Israel.
Check out the link and please come and comment.
Keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com. Send me a hi resolution image of the bag (please make sure it is horizontal) and its contents, with some details about yourself and what you shoot. Oh and don’t forget your contact details (twitter, flickr, tumbler et al). Send the bag shots here. Please understand that there is a long wait now as there is a backlog of submissions. Not all make the cut, so make sure yours is funny/interesting/quirky. And please make sure the shot is of good quality, as the ones that are not do not go up.
Cheers
Japancamerahunter
Nice set-up, but in my opinion the scans on your Tumblr don’t do justice to your work…with such great lenses and cameras I think you should seriously consider investing in a decent scanner, otherwise you may as well shoot with a toy camera and (almost) not see any difference with the pictures you uploaded.
Enjoy your stay in Tel Aviv, looking forward to seeing your next pictures!
http://muju.tumblr.com/
Dear Giovanni,
thanks for your comment and you’re right. I should do better scans. I’m scanning with an Epson V330 Photo, definitely not the finest piece of machinery. One of the reasons I shoot film is, that I don’t like fiddling with my pics on the computer, so I’m really not good at scanning and at the moment, I cannot afford a flextight:)
Beat, that’s a great selection of cameras. I would be happy travelling with any of these cameras, but the bulk and weight of the complete selection shown above would be too much for me to carry all the time.
I reckon that I could cut down your system to just two of your existing cameras and preserve all the capabilities and advantages that you describe.
I would just bring the X-Pan and an extra lens, plus the T2 or XA. Carrying two cameras gives you simultaneous colour and black and white capabilities and provides for a back-up camera in case one fails or runs short on batteries.
Seeing as the X-Pan can shoot in both full frame and panoramic format, you can use the X-Pan as your primary body for regular full-frame photos. That just leaves need for a low light lens; the X-Pan lenses are optimised for compactness and aren’t fast, as you pointed out.
I occasionally use my own X-Pan with a Nikon adapter. It took some experimenting with various lenses, but I discovered that my Nikon Lens Series E 50mm 1:1.8 AIS covers X-Pan panoramic format with acceptable vignetting and no black corners. If I only plan on shooting in full frame, then any of my Nikon lenses would do, even the super fast f/1.2 lenses, though I’m not sure I’d want to focus a NOCT-NIKKOR up close with only the X-Pan RF patch to guide me.
I have checked and you can buy a Contax C/Y lens to Hasselblad X-Pan adapter, so that 50mm f/1,7 Carl Zeiss would work. Of course, I’d want to know whether it covers panoramic format before wasting photo opportunities on it. If it works, then you could swap out your 45mm X-Pan lens.
So, there you have it; simultaneous colour and black and white, backup camera, FF and panoramic format, 38mm, 45mm and 90mm focal lengths and low light capabilities all achieved with two bodies and two lenses.
“(I don’t want to carry the whole setup with me when I’m there, but this is what comes on the plane).”
I think you missed that part. ;)
I didn’t. I wouldn’t want to transport that lot on holiday. It reminds me of the time I shot Paris and Venice with a M-body and seven lenses.
Bellamy, thanks for sharing my bag.
maybe I should have pointed out more, that I’m not carrying the whole bag with me all the time. I’m staying in Tel-Aviv, doing some writing and exploring the city. One of the small cameras is always with me and when I go out with the bag, there’s either the XPAN or the S2 and one of the small ones in it.
Best,
Beat
Nice set up! I’m curious if you could provide more details about the bag itself. You said, “The bag is a V-reporter bag, made from brown leather.” Is V-reporter the brand? I’m not having much success on Google. :)
Thanks!
Joey
Dear Joey,
there’s a small marker that says: vf Reporter France. The logo was a bit confusing for my simple mind so I thought it said V Reporter:
http://www.summilux.net/cliches/2011/7/2011_7_16_584_00003.jpg (not my bag)