Some lenses are naturally exciting, the sort that inspire and excite you to go out and create images. Others are more pragmatic workhorses, and it can be easy to be tricked into thinking you can get away without them, especially when you have something like a bokeh monster in your bag. This interesting video examines one photographer’s journey away from and back to an uninspiring but highly useful lens. 

Coming to you from James Popsys, this video essay details his journey away from the 24-70mm lens and back to it a year later. Like Popsys, I have never been particularly inspired by standard zoom lenses, though I will certainly never argue their usefulness. Nonetheless, I think Popsys makes a great point about examining your EXIF data. I did this in Lightroom with my catalog and noticed that I rarely used the widest focal lengths on my 24-70mm f/2.8 and probably wouldn’t miss them if I got rid of it and used my 16-35mm lens when I really needed wide angles. I eventually sold it along with a few related primes and got the RF 28-70mm f/2L, which actually saved me money once I sold all my old lenses, and I find it far more fun, convenient, and inspiring to use. It’s important to find what works for you, though, both creatively and practically. Check out the video above for Popsys’ full thoughts.