At the loading dock.

G3, kit lens @34mm, 1/2500, f/5/5, ISO320.

While the most useful focal length for street snaps is 35mm (on full frame – that’s 17mm with an MFT sensor or 24mm with APS-C) sometimes you don’t have the time to get in close, meaning you need something longer. Such was the case here where zooming in to 68mm allowed proper framing. The subject was gone two seconds later, obscured by a delivery truck.

The old Leica rangefinder film days’ outfit, sufficient to take you around the world and miss no more than 1% of picture opportunities, was comprised of three lenses – 35mm, 50mm and 90mm. Today all of that can be had in inexpensive kit zooms with their lack of speed more than compensated by excellent, sensitive sensors, and there’s no time wasted or lenses dropped from incessant changing of the optic on the camera’s body.

Here are the lens statistics from my Lightoom database for my use of the Panasonic G1 and G3 – these are post cull, but it’s reasonable to assume that cull rates are much the same across optics:

Combining the first two (the disastrous Panny 20mm was returned after one outing) gives 80% on kit lenses, with 8% and 12% on long and very wide ones, respectively. Even though their light weight means it’s no big deal to carry all three, I generally carry the kit lens only.