In your bag 1781 – Evin Grant
Evin shares his first bag on JCH and it is a cracking one to start out with. Shooting with a couple of god tier rangefinders he has what could be considered by some to be the ultimate street/landscape hybrid setup. Oh and a lens from a legend, make sure you hang on to that, Evin.
The Bag
My name is Evin Grant and I’ve recently built what is my favorite setup for landscape and urban shooting to date.
I lucked into an amazing deal on an Hasselbald Xpan II at the end of 2024 and that plus acquiring my grail M6 earlier in the year sent me on a quest for the perfect bag. I landed on the Wotancraft Pilot 7L. This bag seems pretty compact but can hold quite a bit of kit.
Leica M6 Classic with M Grip and 35mm F2 Summicron V4 (KOB)
50mm F2 Summicron V3
Hasselblad 90mm F4
Hasselblad Xpan II w/45mm F4
Nikon 35mm F2.8 PC Nikkor w/Xpan-F adapter (this lens does vignette the 24×65 frame a little at the edges giving you about 2.5:1 instead of 2.7:1)
Some notes on lens choices… I would say a good 75% of my shots are on the 45mm Hassy and the 35mm Cron. However there’s always a few shots that I want to be a little bit wider (35 Nikkor/28 Elamrit) or a little bit tighter (90mm Hassy/50mm Cron). BTW the 50mm V3 Summicron was given to me by the legendary Jim Marshall when I was assisting for him in the early aughts.
I use a lot of filtration, especially in B&W, so I have two compact filter pouches with various sizes of #15 deep yellow and #25 red filters, a Filterview for the Polarizer plus 3 & 10 stop NDs for extended exposures.
Completing the kit is a cable release, bulb blower, leader retriever and a Sekonic L-308s meter.
Film wise I’m usually shooting Santa/Aerocolor 125 in the Xpan in good light and Fuji Acros II or Ilford Delta 100 in flat light. The M6 is pretty much always loaded with T-Max 400 as my go to lower light setup, but I will occasionally throw a roll of Fuji or Portra 400 in if I know I’m going for B&W in the Xpan.
Lastly I just picked up the ultra lightweight but very sturdy travel tripod from Ulanzi/Flacam (C141K-301) It’s by far the best combo of compactness+sturdiness I’ve tried to date and I can go all day with this bag and tripod on my shoulder without complaint.
Here are some images I’ve taken with this kit…
Hughes fire…
Eaton fire aftermath…
Jay Leno…
Director of Photography
Please keep them coming folks, we need more submissions, so get your bag on Japancamerahunter.com
Send me a high resolution image of the bag. Optimum size is 1500px across. Please ensure there is a bag in the shot, unless you don’t use one. The more you can write about yourself the better, make it appealing and tell us a story. Snapshots of your gear with a camera phone and no words will not be featured.
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
